Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science pp 1–4Cite as

Nonhuman Reciprocal Altruism

  • Living reference work entry
  • Latest version View entry history
  • First Online:

  • 41 Accesses

Synonyms

Direct reciprocity; Reciprocity

Definition

An evolutionarily stable strategy of enforcing cooperation by conditionally helping based on past experience of the recipient’s help.

Introduction

How does the ruthlessly competitive process of natural selection lead to unselfish traits, such as a tendency to help others? Many birds and mammals give alarm calls that help others escape predators, rather than simply and selfishly running away to get farther from the predator than other group members. Primates spend time and energy grooming the fur of others in their group. Vampire bats regurgitate a portion of their food to feed hungry groupmates, even nonrelatives, which failed to feed. If these costly investments in helping others could have been spent furthering one’s own reproductive success, then why would natural selection reward these behaviors? The puzzle is that cooperative individuals pay a cost to increase the reproductive success of others, while more selfish individuals are...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

References

  • Axelrod, R., & Hamilton, W. D. (1981). The evolution of cooperation. Science, 211, 1390–1396.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Carter, G. G. (2014). The reciprocity controversy. Animal Behavior and Cognition, 1, 368–386. doi:10.12966/abc.08.11.2014.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Delton, A. W., Krasnow, M. M., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2011). Evolution of direct reciprocity under uncertainty can explain human generosity in one-shot encounters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108, 13335–13340.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Johnstone, R. A., Manica, A., Fayet, A. L., Stoddard, M. C., Rodriguez-Gironés, M. A., & Hinde, C. A. (2014). Reciprocity and conditional cooperation between great tit parents. Behavioral Ecology, 25(1), 216–222.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Noë, R., & Hammerstein, P. (1994). Biological markets: Supply and demand determine the effect of partner choice in cooperation, mutualism and mating. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 35, 1–11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trivers, R. L. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 46, 35–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Voelkl, B., Portugal, S. J., Unsöld, M., Usherwood, J. R., Wilson, A. M., & Fritz, J. (2015). Matching times of leading and following suggest cooperation through direct reciprocity during V-formation flight in ibis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112, 2115–2120.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama City, Panama

    Gerald Carter

Authors
  1. Gerald Carter
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gerald Carter .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland Univ Dept of Psycholgy, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana Weekes-Shackelford

  2. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  3. Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. University of Redlands, Redlands, CA, USA

    Catherine Salmon

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

About this entry

Cite this entry

Carter, G. (2016). Nonhuman Reciprocal Altruism. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3055-2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3055-2

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Nonhuman Reciprocal Altruism
    Published:
    12 December 2016

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3055-2

  2. Original

    Nonhuman Reciprocal Altruism
    Published:
    16 September 2016

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3055-1

Search

Navigation