Altruism, Selfishness and Social Cohesion

Antonio Luigi Paolilli

.

DOI: 10.4236/sm.2011.14018                

Abstract

Recently has been shown that, given certain conditions, altruism can prevail in a population even without the help of mechanisms as kin selection, reciprocal altruism and group selection. At the light of this hypothesis, it is shown how altruism and cooperative aptitudes can favor the concentration of a population and how an (incomplete) evolution of altruism, caused by group selection, into the Benthamian form, determining the emergence of sentiments and behaviors, such as a sense of justice, as well as envy and gossip, can lead to the formation of a regulated society. From this standpoint, altruism leads to group selection, and not the contrary.

Keywords

Altruism, Selfishness, Group Selection, Economic Development

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	Alexander, R. D. (1987). The biology of moral systems. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
[2]	Altman, M. (1996). Human agency and material welfare: Revisions in microeconomics and their implications for public policy. Boston, Dordrecht, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
[3]	Altman, M. (2001). Worker satisfaction and economic performance. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe Publishers.
[4]	Altman, M. (2005). Reconciling altruistic, moralistic, and ethical behavior with the rational economic agent and competitive markets. Journal of Economic Psychology, 26, 732-757. doi:10.1016/j.joep.2005.06.004
[5]	Altman, M. (2006). Opening-up the objective function: choice behavior and economic and non-economic variables-core and marginal altruism. Economics Bulletin, 4, 1-11.
[6]	Axelrod, R., & Hamilton, W. D. (1981). The evolution of cooperation. Science, 211, 1390-1396. doi:10.1126/science.7466396
[7]	Bergstrom, T. C., & Stark, O. (1993). How altruism can prevail in an evolutionary environment. The American Economic Review, 83, 149- 155.
[8]	Biavati, M., et al. (2002). Preferenze endogene e dinamiche relazionali: un modello coevolutivo. In P. L. Saccoand, & S. Zamagni (Eds.), Complessità relazionale e comportamento economico (pp. 431-485). Bologna: Il Mulino.
[9]	Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (2003). The origins of human cooperation. In P. Hammerstein (Ed.), Genetic and cultural evolution of cooperation. MIT Press, 430-443.
[10]	Bowles, S., & Choi, J.-K. (2003). The co-evolution of love and hate. Quaderni, 401, Università degli Studi di Siena.
[11]	Cosmides, L., & Toby, J. (1996). Are humans good intuitive statisticians after all? Rethinking some conclusions from the literature on judgment under uncertainty. Cognition, 58, 1-73. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(95)00664-8
[12]	Dawkins, R. (1976), The selfish gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[13]	Eberhard, M. J. W. (1975). The evolution of social behavior by kin selection. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 50, 1-33. doi:10.1086/408298
[14]	Fehr, E., Kirchsteiger, & G., Riedl, A. (1993). Does fairness prevent market clearing? An experimental investigation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 108, 437-459. doi:10.2307/2118338
[15]	Field, A. J. (2001). Altruistically inclined: The behavioral sciences, evolutionary theory and the origins of reciprocity. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
[16]	Forges Davanzati, G., & Paolilli, A. L. (2004). Altruismo, scambi e sviluppo economico. In L. Tundo Ferente (Eds.), La responsabilità del pensare. Napoli: Liguori Editore, 289-307.
[17]	Forsythe, R., et al. (1994). Fairness in simple bargaining experiments. Games and Economic Behavior, 6, 347-369. doi:10.1006/game.1994.1021
[18]	Frank, S.A. (1998). Foundation of social evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[19]	Frank, S.A. (2006). Social selection. In: C. W. Fox, & J. B. Wolf (Eds.), Evolutionary genetics: Concepts and case studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 350-363.
[20]	Gigerenzer, G., & Hoffrage, U. (1995). How to improve Bayesian reasoning without instruction: frequency format. Psychological Review, 102, 684-704. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.102.4.684
[21]	Gintis, H. (2000). Strong reciprocity and human sociality. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 206, 169-179. doi:10.1006/jtbi.2000.2111
[22]	Gintis, H. (2003). The Hitchhiker’s guide to altruism: genes, culture, and the internalization of norms. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 220, 407-418. doi:10.1006/jtbi.2003.3104
[23]	Güth, W., et al. (1982). An experimental analysis of ultimatum bargaining. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 3, 367- 388. doi:10.1016/0167-2681(82)90011-7
[24]	Güth, W. (1995). On ultimatum bargaining experiments-a personal review. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 27, 329- 344. doi:10.1016/0167-2681(94)00071-L
[25]	Khalil, E. L. (2003). What is altruism? Journal of Economic Psychology, 1, 97-123.
[26]	Leibenstein, H. (1966). Allocative efficiency vs. ‘x-efficiency’. American Economic Review, 56, 392-415.
[27]	Leibenstein, H. (1973). Notes on x-efficiency and technical change. In E.B. Ayal, (Eds.), Micro-aspects of development (pp. 18-38). New York: Praeger.
[28]	Lorenz, K. (1994). L’aggressività. Milano: Il Saggiatore. Italian translation of Das sogenannte b?se: Zur naturgeschichte der aggression (1963). Wien: Verlag.
[29]	North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[30]	Paolilli, A. L. (2009). About the “economic” origin of altruism. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 38, 60-71. doi:10.1016/j.socec.2008.08.006
[31]	Paolilli, A. L., & Pollice, F. (2011). “Trajectories of State Formation in Eurasia: a Discussion”. Historical Social Research, 136, 343-376.
[32]	Price, G. R. (1970). Selection and covariance. Nature, 227, 520-521. doi:10.1038/227520a0
[33]	Reilly, W. J. (1929). Methods for the study of retail relationships. University of Texas Bulletin, Monograph 4, n. 2944.
[34]	Simon, H. A. (1957). Models of man: Social and rational. New York: Wiley.
[35]	Simon, H. A. (1983). Reason in human affairs. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
[36]	Simon, H. A. (1990). A mechanism for social selection and successful altruism. Science, 250, 1665-1668. doi:10.1126/science.2270480
[37]	Simon, H. A. (1992). Bounded rationality and the cognitive revolution. Elgar: Aldershot.
[38]	Simon, H. A. (1993). Altruism and economics. The American Economic Review, 83, 156-161.
[39]	Sober, E. (1991). Organisms, individuals, and units of selection. In A. I. Tauber (Eds.), Organism and the origins of self (pp. 275-296). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer. doi:10.1007/978-94-011-3406-4_13
[40]	Sober, E., & Wilson, D. S. (1998). Unto others: Evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
[41]	Tversky, A., & Kahnemann, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124-1131. doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124
[42]	Vignolo, T. (2005). When envy helps explain coordination. Economics Bulletin, 3, 1-7.
[43]	Williams, G. C. (1966). Adaptation and natural selection: A critique of some current evolutionary thought, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
[44]	Wilson, D. S., & Sober, E. (1994). Reintroducing group selection to the human behavioral sciences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 17, 585- 654. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00036104
[45]	Winne-Edwards, V. C. (1962). Animal dispersion in relation to social behaviour. New York: Hafner.
[46]	Witt, U. (1985). Imagination and leadership-the neglected dimension of an evolutionary theory of the firm. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 35, 161-177. doi:10.1016/S0167-2681(98)00058-4
[47]	Witt, U., & Yaary, M. (1992). An evolutionary approach to explain reciprocal behavior in a simple strategic game. In: U. Witt (Eds.), Explaining process and change—Approaches to evolutionary economics (pp. 23-34). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.