The nature of human altruism

“Fehr & Fischbacher 2003; Henrich et al. 2005; Kurzban & Houser 2005).”

“Namely, that they may help shed light on findings from the field of evolutionary economics, where strong prosocial tendencies have been found to characterize human behaviour (Fehr & Gächter 2002; Fehr & Fischbacher 2003).”

“T need to work together in large social groups characterizes the social life of humans to an extent that is unparalleled in the animal kingdom (1).”

“…and to punish those who do not help others) has been presented as a novel evolutionary mechanism that explains cooperation among nonrelatives in the absence of reputational consequences and/or opportunities for repeated interaction (e.g., Fehr and Fischbacher 2003; Gintis 2000; Gintis et al. 2003).”

“We investigate a twofold operational definition of social cohesion, comprising cooperation (4, 5) and agglomeration (6).”

“Far from potentially reflecting egoistic motives, the notion of altruism aims to benefit other human beings and is an integral part of human nature (Fehr and Fischbacher 2003; Piliavin and Charng 1990).”

“This propensity to share the fruits of collaborative labor in a “fair” way is extremely strong in humans; people in almost all cultural groups have internalized norms for sharing and fairness (see Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003 , for a review).”

“However, cooperation is not stable along the RPDG and it tends to deteriorate when the game is played anonymously over ten rounds [19,29].”

“Altruism is characterized by non-reciprocal prosocial acts which are aimed at improving the welfare of another individual at a personal cost to the altruist (Batson 2011; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003).”

“…justice affect individual behavior – in the precise and well-documented sense that they induce sizable deviations from the behaviors predicted by models based on the assumption of purely self-regarding preferences (e.g. Fehr and Schmidt, 1999; Fehr and Gachter, 2000; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003).”

“Cooperation in such tasks is more stable when participants have the opportunity to find out about each other (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).”

“The possibility of group-level regulation of behavior is also supported by evidence from laboratory research on group altruism (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Gintis, Bowles, Boyd, & Fehr, 2003) and by evidence of third-party altruistic punishment in sequential public-goods games (Boyd, Gintis, Bowles,…”

“They are willing to play C, provided the co-player also plays C (see, e.g., Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Yamagishi et al., 2005).”

“Thus a growing literature on cooperative behavior has emerged in recent decades that concerns a range of economic interactions and different social environments (see Fehr and Fischbacher 2003).”

“…fairness norms (Knoch et al., 2006; Baumgartner et al., 2011), but the observation that costly punishment can promote fair behavior in the group (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003) does not necessarily imply that all punishment is motivated by fairness preferences (Herrmann et al., 2008; Houser and…”

“…cooperate at high levels with non-kin and have deep-seated non-selfish preferences that are unique among living animals (Bowles & Gintis 2011, Fehr & Fischbacher 2003, Fehr & Gächter 2002, Henrich 2004, Henrich et al 2001, Henrich & Henrich 2006) while varying by cultural context (Henrich et…”

“Experimental economists study behavior in trust games (e.g., Berg et al. 1995; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003 ) and anthropologists have conducted trust game experiments in different small societies around the world (Henrich et al. 2004).”

“This has been dubbed ‘cultural group selection’ (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Henrich, 2004; Boyd & Richerson, 2010).”

“Importantly, such information is also conveyed by observing and detecting other’s errors (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Behrens et al., 2008), suggesting that pMFC activations may be increased for all types of errors independent of the associated reward.”

“Social Justice Research 25(2):213-231.”

“Altruistic punishment may be a mechanism through which social norms, or what constitutes appropriate behavior within groups, are enforced [15,16,18].”

“For example, altruism—the desire to give without any expectation of reciprocation—is a widely observed trait in the human population [Fehr and Fischbacher 2003].”

“However, there is a large literature indicating that a substantial share of experimental subjects is not completely selfish (see Fehr & Fischbacher 2003 for a review).”

“Humans are predisposed to distinguish ingroups from outgroups and this dichotomy is adaptive given that survival is contingent upon cooperation and reciprocity from other ingroup members (6, 7).”

“Similarly, using a series of social dilemma tasks, Yamagishi and colleagues (2012) found that the tendency to reject unfair offers in the Ultimatum Game (which has been interpreted as a form of costly punishment owing to strong reciprocity preferences; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003; Fehr and Gächter 2002b; Gintis et al. 2…”

“Although reciprocal altruism [1] has been found in animals [2], genuine altruism, defined as a costly act that confers benefits on non-kin regardless of reward prospects, is considered uniquely human [3].”

“- 22 - fraction of inequality averse players in a public good game with punishment is sufficient to credibly threaten that free riders will be punished, in ucing even selfish agents to contribute to the public good (see Fehr and Gächter 2000b and 2002, or Fehr and Fischbacher 2003, for instance).”

“Theorists (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003) have proposed that altruism enables cooperation between unrelated individuals and is a major contributor to the development of large-scale human societies.”

“Individuals and manufacturers may well exploit open knowledge for competitive advantage (22).”

“…its robustness, and alternative human models, such as Homo reciprocus, satisficer, and heuristic decision maker, have been proposed in economics and related disciplines (e.g., Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982; Polanyi, 1944/2001; Sahlins, 1972; Sen, 1977; Simon, 1955).”

“Results from experiments in behavioral economics showing prosocial behavior in anonymous one-shot experimental games, such as the ultimatum game, prisoner’s dilemma, and public goods games, have been interpreted as inconsistent with the predictions of reciprocal altruism and in need of an alternative evolutionary expl…”

“Understanding the emergence and persistence of altruistic behavior among selfish individuals has long been an enormous challenge for research community.(3,12,15,17,40,47,48,56,60) This conundrum of collective behaviors has been of-”

“The proportion of altruists within a group, for example, can have important implications for group dynamics (Fehr & Fischbacher 2003).”

“…efficiency concerns—helps to establish and maintain cooperative and fair group outcomes even in situations with a limited scope for reputation-building (Bowles 2006; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003), while spitefulness leads to the deterioration of cooperation (Falk et al. 2005; Herrmann et al. 2008).”

“Third, we address the question of why people cooperate in oneshot situations (for example, in laboratory experiments, such as the dictator game) (37).”

“However, the same literature often emphasises the signalling of status (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Griskevicius et al., 2007; Nelissen and Meijers, 2011), and while status is relevant to Aaker’s original definition of brand personality (the set of human characteristics associated with a brand), it…”

“2 There are many other examples of how social preferences impact individual and group decision making, e.g. reciprocity (see for example Dufwenberg & Kirchsteiger, 2004; Falk & Fischbacher, 2006), altruism (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003) and spite (Hamilton, 1970; Riechmann, 2006; Schaffer, 1989).”

“Such observations endorse the idea that neural mechanisms supporting vicarious reinforcement are derived specializations of the human brain, which support complex social behavior including observational learning, cooperation, and even altruism (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003).”

“Economists have suggested that, because reputation judgments may be used to predict future behavioral interactions, they represent an essential feature of cooperative exchanges among humans (Brandt et al. 2003; Brandt and Sigmund 2005; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003; Nowak and Sigmund 1998; Sigmund et al. 2001; Wedekind an…”

“…should make those choices catering for the maximization of short-term self-interest, definitions such as these typically lead to research on individual choices in economic games, with clear pay-off matrices provided for each choice to be made in the situation (e.g., Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).”

“The analysis yielded only a significant Condition × Event interaction, F(2, 48) = 11.”

“Human cooperation has been called a “huge anomaly” in the animal kingdom (7), whereas our closest relative, the chimpanzee, is used as a foil marked by limited cooperation, lacking in shared intentionality (11), and cognitively more adapted to competition than cooperation (12).”

“Interactions between learning and evolution are not trivial (Hinton 1987); adding cooperating subgroups within a species brings a new level of complexity (Aoki 2001; Fehr & Fischbacher 2003; Nowak & Sigmund 2004).”

“proposed in biology and economics ( Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Gurven, 2004) but”

“The Innate Mind 3:367–91. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ acprof:oso/9780195332834.003.0019. [SA] Haidt, J., Koller, S. H. & Dias, M. G. (1993) Affect, culture, and morality, or is it wrong to eat your dog? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65:613–28.”

“This estimate is remarkably close to the 0.625 reported in Fehr and Fischbacher (2003).”

“While altruistic punishment has been hypothesized to result from relatively complex evolutionary mechanisms , such as cultural group selection (Fehr & Fischbacher 2003), animal personality provides a simpler alternative explanation.”

“However, cooperation among genetically non-related individuals is often observed in actual ecosystems and in human societies (Connor & Norris 1982; Wilkinson 1984; Fehr & Fischbacher 2003).”

“We analyze four sets of outcomes: 1) agreement to submit a review, 2) time taken to submit the review, 3) report quality, and 4) performance at other journals.”

“Other researchers suggest that reciprocity is a powerful, deeply-held belief, likely based on genetically and culturally evolved ‘hardwiring’ that shapes human behavior across many cultures (e.g., [22,48]).”

“Primates 49:153-156 736 Kuroshima H, Fujita K, Adachi I, Iwata K, Fuyuki A (2003) A Capuchin monkey 737 (Cebus apella) recognizes when people do and do not know the location of food. 738 Anim Cogn, 6:283-291 739 Kuroshima H, Fujita K, Fuyuki A, Masuda T (2002) Understanding of the relationship 740 between seeing and k…”

“Exceptions are procedural (Hansson, 1996; Fehr and Schmidt, 1999) and other-regarding preferences (Mueller, 2003; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003).”

“These observations are not easily explained in an evolutionary framework, and have been used as evidence for the unique social structure of humans (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003).”

“Social cohesion depends on motivation and on people being willing to incur costs to help others (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).”

“Communication is essential to the emergence of trust and cooperative behaviors (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2002; Ostrom, 1998, pp. 6-7).”

“We believe that in this process language capability of humans must play an important role (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003).”

“It lies at the heart of economists’ ongoing dispute on whether human decision making is necessarily self-oriented or can be otheroriented (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).”

“It has been termed altruistic punishment (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Fehr & Gächter, 2002; Heckathorne, 1989), strong reciprocity (e.g., Gintis, 2000), norm enforcement (e.g., Horne & Cutlip, 2002), third-party revenge (Tripp & Bies, 2009), or deontic justice (Cropanzano, Goldman, & Folger, 2003;…”

“Behavioral economics experiments suggest that large-scale cooperation depends on the willingness of at least some individuals to endure the costs of punishing free riders (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Henrich and Henrich, 2006).”

“However, cooperation remains a problem in species such as humans, where cooperation often occurs between non-relatives (Fehr & Fischbacher 2003).”

“…effects, economic games, altruism Introduction Prosociality is defined as any voluntary behavior intended to benefit other people and economic games have proven useful tools to learn about the nature of social preferences and motivations behind this behavior (e.g., Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003).”

“The challenge is how to get the benefits of trading favors without being exploited (Krebs and Dawkins 1984; Alexander 1987; Cosmides 1989; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003).”

“…sacrifices for unrelated others who are likely to provide at least as much help in the future in a reciprocal fashion, so it entails an evolved ability to recognize potential partners to transactions and the likelihood that they will indeed reciprocate (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Trivers, 1971).”

“Thus the truster’s unwillingness to transfer some of his endowment to his trustee can be attributed to inequity aversion (Fehr and Fischbacher 2003, 2004; Fehr and Gächter 2000).”