The nature of human altruism

“…closely mirrors sequential human transactions that require both trust by the first mover (e.g., loan officer, HR manager, supplier) and reciprocity by the second mover (e.g., borrower, worker, buyer), especially in incomplete contract situations (Fehr and Fischbacher 2003, Johnson and Mislin 2011).”

“When individuals face the possibility of attain - ing higher status, such as when their behavior is more public, they tend give more generously (Fehr and Fischbacher 2003; Milinski et al. 2002a, b, 2006; Nowak and Sigmund 1998 ).”

“In some cases, such as in humans (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003) and in the cleaner fish mutualism (Raihani et al., 2010), it has even been observed that third parties may engage in costly punishment.”

“Genuine altruism, or a costly act to benefit another, has been considered uniquely human (Fehr and Fishbacher 2003).”

“Human cooperation is characterized by a high degree of prosocial and altruistic behaviour [1,2].”

“Altruistic acts have been defined, in economic terms, as “...costly acts that confer economic benefits on other individuals” (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).”

“In a second setting, a one-shot interaction was conducted to eliminate the participant’s desire to obtain benefits in the future (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).”

“However, altruistic behaviour evolves in real social systems, particularly in human societies (Fehr & Fischbacher 2003).”

“…to inequity in ultimatum games, in which participants typically reject proposals by other players to split shares below 25% of the available amount and instead opt to receive nothing, even though this action does not maximize the participant’s self interest (reviewed in Fehr & Fischbacher 2003).”

“Second, there are numerous experiments within the literature that test other predictions of Prospect Theory, and show that people behave consistent with Prospect Theory in some circumstances and Expected Utility Theory in others (see, e.g., Babcock and Loewenstein, 1997; Güth, Schmittberger and Schwarze, 1982; Camerer…”

“Altruistic punishment (i.e., costly taking) and altruistic reward (i.e., costly giving) are crucial in the evolution of human cooperation [Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003].”

“What may be special about human cooperation is that we have the capacity to establish and enforce social norms (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003, 2004a,b) because our societies are based on large-scale cooperation among genetically unrelated individuals (Henrich et al., 2003).”

“A series of indirect reciprocity experiments between donors and recipients shows that if donors can acquire a reputation, they help recipients in 74% of the cases, whereas if donors cannot acquire a reputation, they help in 37% of the cases (Engelmann & Fischbacher in Fehr & Fischbacher 2003).”

“, their degrees of envy or guilt [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], could well differ.”

“Specifically, on a five-point scale [(1) almost no one, (2) few people, (3) some people, (4) many people, (5) almost everyone] participants rated first what portion of the population ever engages in each behaviour, and then, regardless of real world frequency, what portion of the population should engage in each behav…”

“Fehr & Schmidt (1999) suggested that human beings are averse to social inequities, which may be a necessary component (e.g. cheater detection) of the evolution of cooperation among human beings (Fehr & Fischbacher 2003).”

“A wide variety of economic games shows that people demand fairness in wealth allocation and are often willing to sacrifice their own interest to punish behaviors that they feel are unfair (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Corradi-Dell’Acqua et al., 2013; Pedersen et al., 2013).”

“…games as instances of social exchange whereby the principle of reciprocity tends to dominate their behavior (Falk, Fehr, and Fischbacher, 2003; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Fehr and Gächter, 2000; Hayashi, Ostrom, Walker, and Yamagishi, 1999; Kiyonari, Tanida, and Yamagishi, 2000; McCabe,…”

“…the way for an institutional analysis, which emphasises more the role of e.g. moral (Elster, 2007), mental models (Knight and North, 2004), civic culture (Mockus, 2002) or altruism (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003), all factors, which have become more prominent in institutional analysis in recent years.”

“However, human cooperation arguably occurs in large groups of unrelated individuals, where these explanations of cooperation might not apply [15,16].”

“Furthermore, evolution has promoted moral systems as well as cooperative and caring behaviors that go beyond relatedness and genetic similarities (Boyd, 2006; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003).”

“These interpretations notwithstanding, there are many reports of truly altruistic behavior in humans, in particular in experiments among anonymous subjects that interact only once (see, e.g., Kagel and Roth, 1995; Camerer, 2003; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Henrich et al., 2004 for reviews).”

“Yet, while significant empirical evidence exists that humans [13,14] and non-human species [16] are indeed willing and act to punish in the role of an uninvolved third party, very little is known about the evolutionary conditions under which 3PP can evolve.”

“…where a Responder is given less than an equal split of the total are often categorized in the literature as “unfair” offers, while offers in which the Responder is given an equal split or greater than half of the total are considered to be “fair” (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Sanfey et al., 2003).”

“Areas where there have been major developments include: (i) evolutionary ecology and evolutionary psychology [5]; (ii) experimental and field studies of short-term evolution [6,7]; and (iii) molecular evolution in general.”

“Altruistic or egalitarian sharing of resources is one of the foremost properties of human social relationships (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Henrich et al., 2001).”

“Human morals and values such as altruism vary signifi cantly between human groups and what is good and legitimate for one group does not necessarily apply to others.[2] As widely demonstrated for the failed export of Western models of democracy into other types of societies, export of Western blood donation models, ev…”

“…free riders (altruistic punishment) because the motives underlying altruistic punishment reflect equality concerns (Fowler, Johnson, & Smirnov, 2004), group orientation (Barclay, 2006) and fairness concerns (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003, Singer & Steinbeis, 2009, Tabibnia, Satpute, & Lieberman, 2008).”

“While Fehr and Fischbacher (2003) suggest a description of altruism based on evolutionary grounds and claim that ‘[a]ltruistic behaviour in real-life circumstances can almost always be attributed to different motives’, others (e.g. Batson et al., 2002; Clohesy, 2000) define altruism as a unique…”

“Altruism is a recognized feature of human society, and it goes far beyond that which has been observed in the animal world (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003), and extends beyond reciprocal altruism and reputation-based cooperation, taking the form of strong reciprocity (Gintis, 2000; Fehr et al., 2002).”

“A common paradigm in the study of human cooperation is the multi-player public good/common-pool resource game, where players can cooperate by investing in a communal resource (Fehr and Gachter 2002; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003; Cinyabugama et al. 2005; Milinski et al. 2006, 2008).”

“These behaviors lie at the core of healthy social relationships and are a key facilitator of social cohesion and group bonding (de Waal, 2008; Fehr & Camerer, 2007; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).”

“These ‘prosocial’ behaviours are crucial for human success as they allow us to cooperate and address global challenges, and have important benefits for the individual, society and the recipient 35,36 .”

“Behavioral research has shown that individuals with altruistic preferences, armed with punishment mechanisms, are capable of enforcing widespread cooperation ( Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003 ).”

“9 Fehr and Fischbacher 3 suggest that if two strangers are allowed to engage in repeated anonymous monetary exchanges in the laboratory, there exists a high probability that altruistic behavior will spontaneously emerge.”

“Thoni (13) summarizes a large literature on this as showing that sur­ vey measures of trust are informative with regard to the cooperative­ ness of others, but there are sometimes discordant findings between play in incentivized games and answers to trust questions (9, 12) and studies showing that other factors are al…”

“In humans, altruism seems to be motivated at least in part by social preferences based on empathy, concern for the welfare of others, and a preference for equity ( Batson, 1991 ; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003 ; see also Chapter 19 of this volume).”

“Critically, there was no main effect of culture as a between-subjects factors on the latency to the first fixation on the emotional target faces measure, F (1, 91) = 0.”

“Prosocial behavior can be defined as a costly act that confers benefits on other people [3,4].”

“…nuclear family, antipathy for strangers, self-motivated learning, exploratory behavior, territoriality, fear, ethical behavior, authority acceptance, cooperation, play, group affiliation, aggression, competitiveness, and hierarchical groups (e.g., Fehr and Fischbacher 2003; Fehr and Gachter 2000).”

“…help to establish and maintain cooperative and fair group outcomes even in situations with limited scope for reputation-building (Bowles 2006; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003), anti- social preferences (such as spitefulness and aggressive competitiveness) can contribute to the deterioration of…”

“Economic games, the most common experimental paradigm employed in the study of prosocial behavior, serve as a powerful tool to uncover social preferences and the underlying motivations of prosociality (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).”

“…personal obligations, drawing on principles of social exchange (Blau, 1964; Emerson, 1976; Homans, 1958; Kelley & Thibaut, 1978), reciprocity (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Gouldner, 1960), procedural justice and fair treatment (Tepper et al., 2001), and relational forms of psychological…”

“Prior research has shown that most individuals value a sense of equity in social decisions (Camerer, 2003; Dawes, Fowler, Johnson, McElreath, & Smirnov, 2007; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Fehr & Schmidt, 1999; Loewenstein, Thompson, & Bazerman, 1989).”

“…experiments on social dilemmas show that average contributions to public goods deteriorate significantly after a few iterations if no punishment opportunity exists (e.g., Fehr & Gächter, 2002; Herrmann, Thöni & Gächter, 2008; for reviews, see Camerer, 2003; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Ledyard, 1995).”

“This yielded main effects of group [F(1, 38) = 5.”

“In keeping with recent efforts to incorporate biological evolution into the organizational sciences (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Frederick, 2012; Ilies et al., 2006; Nicholson & White, 2006; Saad, 2006), our goal in this volume is to inform sustainability research about novel ways to motivate…”

“Altruism was first put forward by Auguste Comte, the founder of French sociology, in 1875, and has been extensively studied in various fields (e.g., [1], [10], [18], [19], and [38]).”

“Given equation (4) and G1(p, q) 5 1 for any (p, q), we can see that Gt11(p*, q*) depends on p* but not q* for any moral assessment rules.”