The nature of human altruism

“The unique interaction between cooperation and costly punishment is defined as “strong reciprocity,” a concept which incorporates costly cooperation and costly punishment (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003).”

“One of the prominent motivations for individuals rejecting disadvantageous unequal offers in asset distribution is to preserve self-image/self-esteem and/or to punish unfair behavior [47,48].”

“…for this, including a biological imperative, utility maximization, greater interest in concerns about generativity and leaving a lasting legacy, or the social 1172 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 30(7) norms regarding parental sacrifices for children (Becker, 1981; Erikson, 1963; Rader, 2009).”

“…that is not directly self-relevant as a means to signal their prosociality, trustworthiness, or investment in relationships (Camerer, 1988; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Feinberg, Willer, & Schultz, 2014; Milinski, Semmann, & Krambeck, 2002); these signals may encourage others to believe that…”

“14 Donation as an empathic response was also evident in donors who described thinking processes where they had ‘‘put themselves in the shoes’’ of women who could not fully breastfeed.”

“For a decision process to be seen as fair, the people affected must have the opportunity to give input and possibly to influence the decision, and the decision process and rationale must be transparent and clear.”

“Here we shed light on this apparent contradiction by considering a novel class of public goods games inspired to the realistic scenario in which the natural output limits of the public good imply that the benefit of cooperation increases fast for early contributions and then decelerates.”

“A fundamental question in sociobiology is the evolution of cooperation and altruism in humans and other species (Hamilton 1964; Trivers 1971; Axelrod & Hamilton 1981; Fehr & Fischbacher 2003).”

“…Dovidio, & Piliavin, 1995; Cialdini, Brown, Lewis, Luce, & Neuberg, 1997; Maner, Luce, Neuberg, Cialdinin, & Sagarin, 2002; Batson et al., 2003; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Elster, 2005), Knez (2013) showed that egoistic individuals (rated “high” on egoism) were most concerned about…”

“The limit from which amount an offer is considered unfair is surprisingly stable in the different studies (70:30 and lower) (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Chuah et al., 2007; Hack and Lammers, 2008) and seems to have genetic components (Wallace et al., 2007).”

“Such ‘‘altruistic punishment’’ encourages the maintenance of social norms, and though it does not benefit the individual at the time, it does benefit a social group or society in the long term (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).”

“Empirical evidences demonstrated that individuals’ fairness considerations were not only determined by comparisons between self and others’ gains (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Camerer, 2005) but also affected by some contextual factors, such as the intentions of the allocator (Falk et al.”

“In the DG, altruism is indicated by the extent to which children give up a valuable resource and share out of 6 monetary units (MUs) with an anonymous child (Beneson, Pascoe, & Radmore, 2007; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Gummerum, Hanoch, Keller, Parsons, & Hummel, 2010).”

“Experimental economic games provide a unique opportunity to elicit social preferences and measure how much players are willing to sacrifice their own economic payoff if this allows them to punish defectors [4,10].”

“For example, humans playing an ultimatum game reject lower offers when they know that others will learn about their acceptance threshold (Fehr and Fischbacher 2003).”

“In a sort of second wave, a series of groundbreaking experiments by Fehr and coworkers (Fehr & Gächter, 2002; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003 ) increasingly challenged the notion that human altruism needs to be based on either direct or indirect reciprocity.”

“While there is empirical evidence for other-regarding behavior (G¨uth et al., 1982; Henrich et al., 2001; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Frey, 2008) and some theoretical implications of this have been studied (Dufwenberg et al., 2011; Sobel, 2009), a good theoretical foundation of the “homo socialis”…”

“Discussion Human social behavior is characterized by a concern for others’ welfare, a long-celebrated feature of human sociality that has been subject to intense study across the biological and social sciences (11, 36).”

“Altruism refers to an individual’s tendency to perform costly actions that confer benefits to others with the aim of helping them (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).”

“After observing the distribution and level of cooperation, the otherwise disinterested third party can determine whether to pay a cost to punish the individuals who violate the cooperation social norms (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003).”

“People (as well as animals) have been observed doing kind acts, giving to others, and helping others in need (see Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003, for overview).”

“Studies have shown that trust in the existence of these preferences in others is an essential component of trust in these situations (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003).”

“In contrast, the quantitative approach compares the quantitative level of behaviour within a specific game or treatment with that predicted by theoretical models (Levine 1998; Fehr & Fischbacher 2003; Camerer & Fehr 2006).”

“, 2013), among groups and social networks (Fehr et al., 2002; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Fehr and Camerer, 2007; de Waal, 2008; Fowler and Christakis, 2010; FeldmanHall, 2017) and within societies (Nowak, 2006).”

“, 2010) and maintaining large organizations in the modern world (Wilson, 1975; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003), the question is what benefits are there, if any, for the individual who is sacrificing? While theories such as kin selection (Hamilton, 1964) or reciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1971) focus on the potential, long t…”

“In humans, reciprocal altruism, involving mutual cooperative advantage (Trivers, 1971; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003), has a beneficial impact not only on the viability and welfare of individuals but can also lead to better cooperation with kin as well as promote pro-social attitudes within larger groups of culturally co…”

“The opponent was programmed (or, in the case of the confederate, instructed) to decline o ff ers lower than 30% of the stake, similar to human behavior (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003).”

“The altruistic value is based on the assumption that individuals’ actions may affect the welfare of others; thus, today’s decisions may be based on the possible consequences for future generations [69].”

“As we mentioned above, Fehr and Fischbacher (2003) review experimental evidence showing that humans have a strong drive to behave altruistically in a group.”

“…that suggest that persons who are predisposed to engage in self-sacrificing acts are less likely to screen information in a rational manner and are more likely to internalize, adhere to, and enforce societal norms even if doing so is personally costly (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Simon, 1990, 1993).”

“…a human tendency to trust and to reciprocate trust, and shows that trusting behaviour is influenced by the rewarding effects of social cooperation and knowledge about the interaction partner (Bowles & Gintis, 2002; Fehr & Gachter, 2002; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Delgado et al. 2005; Fehr, 2009).”

“Humans are an ultra-social species (e.g., Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).”

“The ability to be motivated by moral values is uniquely human (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003).”

“In particular, the ability to develop norms and enforce them through the use of sanctions is thought by many to be one of the distinguishing characteristics of the human species (Boyd, 1988; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003).”

“Cooperation is such a widespread phenomenon that we find evidence across the animal kingdom, ranging from bacteria (Crespi, 2001) to humans (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).”

“24 Consistent with this line of reasoning, Houser and Xiao (2005) report that the threat of verbal punishments increases offers in ultimatum games.”

“H cooperate; the extent of cooperation among humans marks them out from all other species (1, 2).”

“Science and Culture76(9-10), 399-417 (2010).”

“Humans readily judge individuals on the basis of the prosocial and antisocial actions they direct toward unrelated third parties, and even incur personal costs to punish those who behave antisocially (Fehr and Fischbacher 2003).”

“Defined broadly as behavior that benefits another individual or group at a personal cost to the actor (Camerer, 2003; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Henrich et al., 2006), altruism has been found to have significant, yet difficult to explain individual differences.”

“Nevertheless, since we cannot effectively track the behaviour of most people and reputation is often at stake due to the public nature of many actions [8,9], one cannot make precise inferences about the impact of the pandemic on ‘pure’ prosociality on the basis of mere observation and such anecdotal evidence.”

“A prosocial effect is detected if subjects choose the prosocial option (in this case, [1,1]) more often when a partner is present than when it is absent.”

“( ) ( ) l N M N c B l c j M N k 1 1 1 ( ) 1 ( 1) ( 0); (3) P i j k l ( , , , ) π σ αγ = − − − + − Φ − − − ≠”

“In this respect, betrayal aversion is unlike socially ‘‘beneficial’’ preferences including altruism[9], fairness[10,11] and inequity aversion[11,12], all of which encourage cooperation and exchange.”

“Among the most distinguishing human idiosyncrasies are helping, sharing, comforting, and cooperation behaviors (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).”

“Some of the current hypotheses to explain large scale cooperation are based on player reciprocity, status, or altruistic and tit–for–tat behaviors between two actors [1–4].”

“Participants’ increased tendency to reject these unfair offers can be regarded as a form of altruistic punishment – punishing proposers for the norm violation at a cost to themselves [25].”

“More recently, evidence on widespread pro-social behavior in laboratory experiments has led to renewed interest in altruism and challenged the view that economic agents mostly behave selfishly (Fehr and Fischbacher 2003).”

“Table 2 lists primary and aggregate variables organized by the categories noted in equation [5] and discussed below.”

“Prosocial behaviors are a powerful force for promoting group cohesion and acceptance, and one individual who acts generously has the ability to influence others to behave more generously (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003; Klapwijk and Van Lange, 2009; Fowler and Christakis, 2010; Layous et al., 2012).”

“…of social preference, conditional cooperation, is a major driver of cooperation in experimental public goods games (Henrich et al., 2001; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2021.36 Downloaded from…”

“…biological group selectionist explanations for punishment (Gintis, 2000; Sober & Wilson, 1998), but theoretical difficulties associated with such selection have led many to agree that some gene–culture coevolutionary scenario is more plausible (e.g., Boyd et al., 2003; Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).”

“The benefits went to known individuals ranging in relatedness to the actor, in contrast to the typical experimental situation whereby benefits go to anonymous strangers (Fehr and Fischbacher 2003).”

“Altruism is considered a particularly human characteristic that differentiates us from other species [34].”