What is altruism?

Kerr, Benjamin; Godfrey‐Smith, Peter; Feldman, Marcus W.

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2003.10.004

Cited by 138 publications

(136 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…In the kin-selection terminology due to Hamilton (1964), which defines "altruism" as a behavior with a negative direct fitness effect and positive indirect fitness effects (Rousset 2004;Lehmann and Keller 2006), this means that whether cooperation is "altruistic" depends on both behavioral responsiveness and demographic factors that affect the scaled-relatedness coefficient r. Thus, cooperation in a public-goods game may be "mutually beneficial" (West et al 2007) and not "altruistic" when behavioral responsiveness is high, since the direct effect on fertility (and consequently fitness) may be positive. The distinction between mutually beneficial and altruistic cooperation is conceptually important in social evolution, and a number of recent reviews attempt to clarify this issue in detail (e.g., Lehmann and Keller 2006;West et al 2007), because it has often generated confusion (Kerr et al 2004). In this regard, the group-selection partition may be a more natural framework for public-goods scenarios than the kinselection partition, since the direction of between-and within-group selection does not depend on r or r. In fact, a public-goods scenario could be defined by payoffs that yield positive between-group selection and negative within-group selection.…”

Section: Behavioral Responses and The Levels Of Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral Responses in Structured Populations Pave the Way to Group Optimality

Akçay

Cleve

2012

The American Naturalist

185

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An unresolved controversy regarding social behaviors is exemplified when natural selection might lead to behaviors that maximize fitness at the social-group level but are costly at the individual level. Except for the special case of groups of clones, we do not have a general understanding of how and when group-optimal behaviors evolve, especially when the behaviors in question are flexible. To address this question, we develop a general model that integrates behavioral plasticity in social interactions with the action of natural selection in structured populations. We find that group-optimal behaviors can evolve, even without clonal groups, if individuals exhibit appropriate behavioral responses to each other's actions. The evolution of such behavioral responses, in turn, is predicated on the nature of the proximate behavioral mechanisms. We model a particular class of proximate mechanisms, prosocial preferences, and find that such preferences evolve to sustain maximum group benefit under certain levels of relatedness and certain ecological conditions. Thus, our model demonstrates the fundamental interplay between behavioral responses and relatedness in determining the course of social evolution. We also highlight the crucial role of proximate mechanisms such as prosocial preferences in the evolution of behavioral responses and in facilitating evolutionary transitions in individuality. Disciplines Behavior and Ethology | Biology | Population Biology CommentsAt the time of publication, author Erol Akçay was affiliated with the University of Tennessee. Currently, he is a faculty member at the Department of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania. Online enhancement: appendix.abstract: An unresolved controversy regarding social behaviors is exemplified when natural selection might lead to behaviors that maximize fitness at the social-group level but are costly at the individual level. Except for the special case of groups of clones, we do not have a general understanding of how and when group-optimal behaviors evolve, especially when the behaviors in question are flexible. To address this question, we develop a general model that integrates behavioral plasticity in social interactions with the action of natural selection in structured populations. We find that group-optimal behaviors can evolve, even without clonal groups, if individuals exhibit appropriate behavioral responses to each other's actions. The evolution of such behavioral responses, in turn, is predicated on the nature of the proximate behavioral mechanisms. We model a particular class of proximate mechanisms, prosocial preferences, and find that such preferences evolve to sustain maximum group benefit under certain levels of relatedness and certain ecological conditions. Thus, our model demonstrates the fundamental interplay between behavioral responses and relatedness in determining the course of social evolution. We also highlight the crucial role of proximate mechanisms such as prosocial preferences in the evolution of behavioral respons...

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Section: Behavioral Responses and The Levels Of Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral Responses in Structured Populations Pave the Way to Group Optimality

Akçay

Cleve

2012

The American Naturalist

185

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“…Some question calling the behaviour altruistic in this case, but requiring altruism to be fitness-reducing in the whole population in the long run amounts to excluding the possibility of altruism by definition [73]. I shall stick to a more fruitful definition of altruism, according to which the behaviour of an individual is altruistic if it benefits other members of the group and the individual would increase his own payoff by switching to another behaviour [74].…”

Section: Altruism Is An Emergent Property Of Human Gene -Culture Evolmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gene–culture coevolution and the nature of human sociality

Gintis

2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

138

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Human characteristics are the product of gene-culture coevolution, which is an evolutionary dynamic involving the interaction of genes and culture over long time periods. Gene -culture coevolution is a special case of niche construction. Gene -culture coevolution is responsible for human other-regarding preferences, a taste for fairness, the capacity to empathize and salience of morality and character virtues.

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“…"Altruism is generally understood to be behavior that benefits others at a personal cist to the behaving individual" (p. 135, Kerr, Smith & Feldman, 2004). As Waenaken and Tomasello reported in their article ʽThe roots of human altruism' (2009) babies are naturally altruistic and "socialization and feedback from social interactions with others become important mediators of these initial altruistic tendencies" (p.455).…”

Section: F Altruismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental health literacy about depression and schizophrenia among Swedish teenagers: a vignette study

Tartani¹

2011

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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What is altruism?

Cited by 138 publications

References 16 publications

Behavioral Responses in Structured Populations Pave the Way to Group Optimality

Behavioral Responses in Structured Populations Pave the Way to Group Optimality

Gene–culture coevolution and the nature of human sociality

Mental health literacy about depression and schizophrenia among Swedish teenagers: a vignette study

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