Who identified inclusive fitness theory?
Inclusive fitness in humans
A common source of confusion around inclusive fitness theory is that Hamilton's early analysis included some inaccuracies, that, "although corrected by him in later publications", are often not fully understood by other researchers who attempt to apply inclusive fitness to understanding organisms' behaviour. For example, Hamilton had initially suggested that the statistical correlation in his formulation could be understood by a correlation coefficient of genetic relatedness, but quickly accepted George Price's correction that a general regression coefficient was the more relevant metric, and together they published corrections in 1970. A related confusion is the connection between inclusive fitness and multi-level selection, which are often incorrectly assumed to be mutually exclusive theories. The regression coefficient helps to clarify this connection:
Social Bonding and Nurture Kinship
Holland shows that, in the 1970s and 80s, the first wave of attempts (known as "human sociobiology" or "Darwinian anthropology") to apply inclusive fitness theory to human social behavior relied on, and further reinforced, this same misinterpretation (above section) about the theory's predictions and the proximate mechanisms of social behavior. Holland also shows that this period of research was burdened with many misplaced assumptions about "universal" attributes of the human sexes, sexuality and gender roles, apparently projected from the "specific cultural values" of the researchers themselves. Holland also shows that, following the perceived failures of this early wave, and particularly its methodological agnosticism regarding proximate mechanisms of social behavior, the evolutionary psychology school grew up in its place. Although this latter school typically avoided engaging with the ethnographic data on human kinship, Holland argues that in the few cases where it did so, it repeated the misinterpretation of inclusive fitness theory that characterized the first wave. Holland also notes that Kitcher, in his critique of the sociobiological position, suggested that perhaps the expression of social behaviors in humans might quite simply be based on cues of context and familiarity, rather than genetic relatedness "per se".