Definition
We define two “problems of altruism.” The first is the classic problem of altruism, defined as the issue of how a behavior which decreases an individual’s lifetime reproductive success, while helping another individual (or individuals) increase their lifetime reproductive success, can evolve. We also define a “second-order problem of altruism,” where different authors have different conceptions of what does, and does not, constitute “altruism,” including approaches based on kin selection, multilevel selection theory, short-term altruism, and psychological altruism.
Introduction
Why would an organism help others at a cost to themselves, without any future reward or payoff? This, in essence, is the problem of altruism. Despite notions of “survival of the fittest” and “nature, red in tooth and claw,” seemingly altruistic acts abound in the natural world: meerkat sentinels famously forego...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Andreoni, J. (1990). Impure altruism and donations to public goods : A theory of warm-glow giving. The Economic Journal, 100(401), 464–477.
Batson, C. D., Fultz, J., & Schoenrade, P. A. (1987). Adults’ emotional reactions to the distress of others. In N. Eisenberg & J. Strayer (Eds.), Empathy and its development (pp. 163–185). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bernhard, H., Fischbacher, U., & Fehr, E. (2006). Parochial altruism in humans. Nature, 442(7105), 912–915. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04981.
Birch, J., & Okasha, S. (2015). Kin selection and its critics. Bioscience, 65(1), 22–32. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biu196.
Clutton-Brock, T. (2002). Breeding together: Kin selection and mutualism in cooperative vertebrates. Science, 296(5565), 69–72. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.296.5565.69.
Clutton-Brock, T. H., Riain, M. J. O., Brotherton, P. N. M., Gaynor, D., Kansky, R., Griffin, A. S., & Manser, M. B. (1999). Selfish sentinels in cooperative mammals. Science, 284, 1640–1644. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.284.5420.1640.
Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or preservation of Favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray.
de Waal, F. B. M. (2008). Putting the altruism Back into altruism: The evolution of empathy. Annual Review of Psychology, 59(1), 279–300. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093625.
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, 108(32), 13335–13340. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1102131108.
Downing, P. A., Griffin, A. S., & Cornwallis, C. K. (2018). Sex differences in helping effort reveal the effect of future reproduction on cooperative behaviour in birds. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285(1885), 20181164. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.1164.
Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003). The nature of human altruism. Nature, 425(6960), 785–791. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02043.
Ghiselin, M. T. (1974). The economy of nature and the evolution of sex. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gintis, H. (2000). Strong reciprocity and human sociality. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 206(2), 169–179. https://doi.org/10.1006/jtbi.2000.2111.
Grafen, A. (1984). Natural selection, kin selection and group selection. In J. R. Krebs & N. B. Davies (Eds.), Behavioural ecology (pp. 62–84). Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications.
Gurven, M., & Winking, J. (2008). Collective action in action: Prosocial behavior in and out of the laboratory. American Anthropologist, 110(2), 179–190. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2008.00024.x.
Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The Genetical evolution of social behavior. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, 17–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-5193(64)90039-6.
Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., et al. (2005). “Economic man” in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(6), 795–815. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X05000142.
Kerr, B., & Godfrey-Smith, P. (2002). Individualist and multi-level perspectives on selection in structured populations. Biology and Philosophy, 17(4), 477–517. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020504900646.
Khalil, E. L. (2004). What is altruism? Journal of Economic Psychology, 25, 97–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2003.10.004.
Lehmann, L., & Keller, L. (2006). The evolution of cooperation and altruism – a general framework and a classification of models. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 19(5), 1365–1376. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2006.01119.x.
Lukas, D., & Clutton-Brock, T. (2012). Cooperative breeding and monogamy in mammalian societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279(1736), 2151–2156. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2011.2468.
Monroe, K. R. (1994). A fat lady in a corset: Altruism and social theory. American Journal of Political Science, 38(4), 861–893.
Piliavin, J. A., Dovidio, J. F., Gaertner, S. L., & Clark, R. D. I. (1981). Emergency intervention. New York: Academic Press.
Rand, D. G., Peysakhovich, A., Kraft-Todd, G. T., Newman, G. E., Wurzbacher, O., Nowak, M. A., & Greene, J. D. (2014). Social heuristics shape intuitive cooperation. Nature Communications, 5, 3677. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms4677.
Richerson, P., & Boyd, R. (2005). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Smith, A. (1759). The theory of moral sentiments. London: A. Miller.
Sober, E., & Wilson, D. S. (1998). Unto others: The evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
West, S. A., Griffin, A. S., & Gardner, A. (2007). Social semantics: Altruism, cooperation, mutualism, strong reciprocity and group selection. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 20(2), 415–432. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2006.01258.x.
Wilson, D. S. (1990). Weak altruism, strong group selection. Oikos, 59(1), 135–140.
Winking, J., & Mizer, N. (2013). Natural-field dictator game shows no altruistic giving. Evolution and Human Behavior, 34(4), 288–293. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.04.002.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Deb, A., Smith, D. (2019). Problem of Altruism. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1199-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1199-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
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