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Science 21 December 1990:
Vol. 250. no. 4988, pp. 1665 - 1668
DOI: 10.1126/science.2270480
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Articles

Science, Vol 250, Issue 4988, 1665-1668
Copyright © 1990 by American Association for the Advancement of Science

articles

A mechanism for social selection and successful altruism

HA Simon

Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.

Within the framework of neo-Darwinism, with its focus on fitness, it has been hard to account for altruism behavior that reduces the fitness of the altruist but increases average fitness in society. Many population biologists argue that, except for altruism to close relatives, human behavior that appears to be altruistic amounts to reciprocal altruism, behavior undertaken with an expectation of reciprocation, hence incurring no net cost to fitness. Herein is proposed a simple and robust mechanism, based on human docility and bounded rationality that can account for the evolutionary success of genuinely altruistic behavior. Because docility-receptivity to social influence-contributes greatly to fitness in the human species, it will be positively selected. As a consequence, society can impose a "tax" on the gross benefits gained by individuals from docility by inducing docile individuals to engage in altruistic behaviors. Limits on rationality in the face of environmental complexity prevent the individual from avoiding this "tax." An upper bound is imposed on altruism by the condition that there must remain a net fitness advantage for docile behavior after the cost to the individual of altruism has been deducted.


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