Modern theories of the evolution of human cooperation focus mainly on altruism. In contrast, we propose that humans’ species-unique forms of cooperation—as well as their species-unique forms of ...cognition, communication, and social life—all derive from mutualistic collaboration (with social selection against cheaters). In a first step, humans became obligate collaborative foragers such that individuals were interdependent with one another and so had a direct interest in the well-being of their partners. In this context, they evolved new skills and motivations for collaboration not possessed by other great apes (joint intentionality), and they helped their potential partners (and avoided cheaters). In a second step, these new collaborative skills and motivations were scaled up to group life in general, as modern humans faced competition from other groups. As part of this new group-mindedness, they created cultural conventions, norms, and institutions (all characterized by collective intentionality), with knowledge of a specific set of these marking individuals as members of a particular cultural group. Human cognition and sociality thus became ever more collaborative and altruistic as human individuals became ever more interdependent.
Charity could do the most good if every dollar donated went to causes that produced the greatest welfare gains. In line with this proposition, the effective-altruism movement seeks to provide ...individuals with information regarding the effectiveness of charities in hopes that they will contribute to organizations that maximize the social return of their donation. In this research, we investigated the extent to which presenting effectiveness information leads people to choose more effective charities. We found that even when effectiveness information is made easily comparable across options, it has a limited impact on choice. Specifically, people frequently choose less effective charity options when those options represent more subjectively preferred causes. In contrast to making a personal donation decision, outcome metrics are used to a much greater extent when choosing financial investments and when allocating aid resources as an agent of an organization. Implications for effective altruism are discussed.
Altruistic Capital Ashraf, Nava; Bandiera, Oriana
The American economic review,
05/2017, Volume:
107, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
To understand altruistic behavior, we must understand the process through which altruism develops and is shaped by the agents' own choices and exogenous factors. We introduce the concept of ...altruistic capital, which grows with effort devoted to altruistic acts and facilitates future altruism. We illustrate its potential use in the context of banking and conclude by showing that returns to altruistic effort shape the agent's choices and are shaped by external events such as the financial crisis.
Humans extensively help others altruistically, which plays an important role in maintaining cooperative societies. Although some nonhuman animals are also capable of helping others altruistically, ...humans are considered unique in our voluntary helping and our variety of helping behaviors. Many still believe that this is because only humans can understand others’ goals due to our unique "theory of mind" abilities, especially shared intentionality. However, we know little of the cognitive mechanisms underlying helping in nonhuman animals, especially if and how they understand others’ goals. The present study provides the empirical evidence for flexible targeted helping depending on conspecifics’ needs in chimpanzees. The subjects of this study selected an appropriate tool from a random set of seven objects to transfer to a conspecific partner confronted with differing tool-use situations, indicating that they understood what their partner needed. This targeted helping, (i.e., selecting the appropriate tool to transfer), was observed only when the helpers could visually assess their partner's situation. If visual access was obstructed, the chimpanzees still tried to help their partner upon request, but failed to select and donate the appropriate tool needed by their partner. These results suggest that the limitation in chimpanzees’ voluntary helping is not necessarily due to failure in understanding others’ goals. Chimpanzees can understand conspecifics’ goals and demonstrate cognitively advanced targeted helping as long as they are able to visually evaluate their conspecifics’ predicament. However, they will seldom help others without direct request for help.
Explaining the evolution and maintenance of cooperation among unrelated individuals is one of the fundamental problems in biology and the social sciences. Recent findings suggest that altruistic ...punishment is an important mechanism maintaining cooperation among humans. We experimentally explore the boundaries of altruistic punishment to maintain cooperation by varying both the cost and the impact of punishment, using an exceptionally extensive subject pool. Our results show that cooperation is only maintained if conditions for altruistic punishment are relatively favourable: low cost for the punisher and high impact on the punished. Our results indicate that punishment is strongly governed by its cost-to-impact ratio and that its effect on cooperation can be pinned down to one single variable: the threshold level of free-riding that goes unpunished. Additionally, actual pay-offs are the lowest when altruistic punishment maintains cooperation, because the pay-off destroyed through punishment exceeds the gains from increased cooperation. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that punishment decisions come from an amalgam of emotional response and cognitive cost-impact analysis and suggest that altruistic punishment alone can hardly maintain cooperation under multi-level natural selection. Uncovering the workings of altruistic punishment as has been done here is important because it helps predicting under which conditions altruistic punishment is expected to maintain cooperation.
To understand the “pure” incentives of altruism, economic laboratory research on humans almost always forbids communication between subjects. In reality, however, altruism usually requires ...interaction between givers and receivers, which clearly must influence choices. Charities, for example, speak of the “power of asking.” Indeed, evolutionary theories of altruism are built on human sociality. We experimentally examine communication in which one subject allocates $10 between herself and a receiver, and systematically altered who in the pair could speak. We found that any time the recipient spoke, giving increased — asking is powerful. But when only allocators could speak, choices were significantly more selfish than any other condition. When empathy was heightened by putting allocators “in the receiver's shoes,” giving appeared as if recipients had been able to ask, even when they were silent. We conclude that communication dramatically influences altruistic behavior, and appears to largely work by heightening empathy.
► Acts of giving in the real world are almost always social acts— giver and the receiver communicate. ► We study communication by varying who (giver, recipient, neither, both) could speak. ► Messages from recipients, especially if givers also spoke, greatly enhanced giving. ► This is despite the fact that the request is perfectly obvious (majority are 50–50). ► Communication makes it is harder to ignore another’s (perhaps obvious) point of view.
Why do individuals volunteer their time even when recipients receive far less value than the donor’s opportunity cost? Previous models of altruism that focus on the overall impact of a gift cannot ...rationalize this behavior, despite its prevalence. We develop a model that allows for differential warm glow depending on the form of the donation. In a series of laboratory experiments that control for other aspects of volunteering, such as its signaling value, subjects demonstrate behavior consistent with the theoretical assumption that gifts of time produce greater utility than the same transfers in the form of money. Subjects perform an effort task, accruing earnings at potentially different wage rates for themselves or a charity of their choice, with the ability to transfer any of their personal earnings to charity at the end of the experiment. Subjects exhibit strong preferences for donating time even when differential wage rates make it costly to do so. The results provide new insights on the nature of volunteering and gift giving.
Data, the online appendix, and the experimental instructions are available at
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2951
.
This paper was accepted by Teck-Hua Ho, behavioral economics.
We conducted online field experiments in large real-world social networks in order to decompose prosocial giving into three components: (1) baseline altruism toward randomly selected strangers, (2) ...directed altruism that favors friends over random strangers, and (3) giving motivated by the prospect of future interaction. Directed altruism increases giving to friends by 52% relative to random strangers, whereas future interaction effects increase giving by an additional 24% when giving is socially efficient. This finding suggests that future interaction affects giving through a repeated game mechanism where agents can be rewarded for granting efficiency-enhancing favors. We also find that subjects with higher baseline altruism have friends with higher baseline altruism.
What if we could prove that love heals mental illness and is vital to successful therapeutic outcomes in all areas of health care? What if we could prove that people who live more for others than for ...self have greater psychological well-being?In Unlimited Love, Post examines the question of what we mean by "unlimited love"; his focus is not on "falling" into love, which is "altogether natural, easy, and delusional." Rather, he focuses on the difficult learned ascent that "begins with insight into the need for tolerance of ubiquitous imperfection, and matures into unselfish concern, gratitude, and compassion." He considers social scientific and evolutionary perspectives on human altruistic motivations, and he analyzes these perspectives in a wide interdisciplinary context at the interface of science, ethics, and religion.In Unlimited Love, Stephen Post presents an argument for the creation of a new interdisciplinary field for the study of love and unlimited love, "engaging great minds and hoping to shape the human future away from endless acrimony, hatred, and violence.".
The formation of physician altruism Attema, Arthur E.; Galizzi, Matteo M.; Groß, Mona ...
Journal of health economics,
January 2023, 2023-Jan, 2023-01-00, 20230101, 2023-01, Volume:
87
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We study how patient-regarding altruism is formed by medical education. We elicit and structurally estimate altruistic preferences using experimental data from a large sample of medical students (N = ...733) in Germany at different progress stages in their studies. The estimates reveal substantial heterogeneity in altruistic preferences of medical students. Patient-regarding altruism is highest for freshmen, significantly declines for students in the course of medical studies, and tends to increase again for last year students, who assist in clinical practice. Also, patient-regarding altruism is higher for females and positively associated to general altruism. Altruistic medical students have gained prior practical experience in healthcare, have lower income expectations, and are more likely to choose surgery and pediatrics as their preferred specialty.
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