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The nature of human altruism
Abstract
Some of the most fundamental questions concerning our evolutionary origins, our social relations, and the organization of society are centred around issues of altruism and selfishness. Experimental evidence indicates that human altruism is a powerful force and is unique in the animal world. However, there is much individual heterogeneity and the interaction between altruists and selfish individuals is vital to human cooperation. Depending on the environment, a minority of altruists can force a majority of selfish individuals to cooperate or, conversely, a few egoists can induce a large number of altruists to defect. Current gene-based evolutionary theories cannot explain important patterns of human altruism, pointing towards the importance of both theories of cultural evolution as well as gene-culture co-evolution.
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“Yet, when the PGG is repeated over multiple rounds, contributions tend to decline with the number of rounds; this is due to a few individuals who free ride in the first round, thereby triggering further free riding in subsequent rounds11,14,27.”
From Cooperation without punishment (2023) · cites this paper as [11]
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“The fact that costly punishment plays an undisputed role in other contexts, such as public goods games, ultimatum games and trust games 43-46 , shows that this form of discrimination is highly plausible.”
From Evolution of indirect reciprocity (2005) · cites this paper as [46]
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“which theory and experimentation shows is a more effective means of preserving cooperation than individual-level punishment (Fehr & Gachter, 2002; Fehr & Fischbacher 2003)”
From The origins of language in teaching (2017) · cites this paper as Fehr & Fischbacher 2003
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“Free riding poses a major challenge to self-governance, and a prominent solution to this challenge has been altruistic punishment.”
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“Free riding poses a major challenge to self-governance, and a prominent solution to this challenge has been altruistic punishment.”
From Cooperation without punishment (2023) · cites this paper as [11]
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In the citing paper
“Yet, when the PGG is repeated over multiple rounds, contributions tend to decline with the number of rounds; this is due to a few individuals who free ride in the first round, thereby triggering further free riding in subsequent rounds11,14,27.”
From Cooperation without punishment (2023) · cites this paper as [11]
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“Parametric regressors were not orthogonalized in the design matrix, ensuring that parameter estimates were not confounded by spurious correlations due to signals related to other regressors 59 .”
From Oxytocin modulates social value representations in the amygdala (2019) · cites this paper as [59]
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“It has been shown that people reward others for cooperative behaviour but punish violations of social fairness even at a personal cost15,16, an effect likely to be mediated by neural mechanisms that provide intrinsic motivation (that is, satisfaction) from punishing violators21.”
From Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others (2006) · cites this paper as [16]
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“Many theories explaining various types of cooperation have been proposed in biology and economics (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Gurven, 2004) but a theoretical explanation of unconditional altruism (de W ned as bene W ting others at a cost to oneself, Wilson, 1976) has remained elusive to date.”
From Altruistic behavior as a costly signal of general intelligence (2007) · cites this paper as Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003
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BackgroundEvolution of indirect reciprocity
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“On the other hand, Fehr and Fischbacher (2003) find that responders react strongly to the possibility of acquiring a reputation; Andreoni and Miller (1993) report similar insights using data drawn from a prisoner’s dilemma game.”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U.
- Affiliations
- University of Zurich (CH)
- Corresponding author
- Fehr, Ernst
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2003-10
- Volume
- 425
- Issue
- 6960
- Pages
- 785-791
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W1481402319
- Cited by
- 3,475
- References
- 60
- Citations by year
- 2026: 142 · 2025: 177 · 2024: 166 · 2023: 161 · 2022: 189 · 2021: 232 · 2020: 144 · 2019: 162 · 2018: 186 · 2017: 136 · 2016: 179 · 2015: 202 · 2014: 159 · 2013: 173 · 2012: 157
- FWCI
- 38.85
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Language and cultural evolution
- Keywords
- selfishness, cooperation, individual heterogeneity, cultural evolution, gene-culture coevolution, social evolution
- MeSH terms
- Altruism, Cooperative Behavior, Culture, Biological Evolution, Humans, Punishment, Reward
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