From the simple act of sharing an ice cream cone with a friend to giving and volunteering without expecting anything in return, human altruistic behavior continues even when it’s economically damaging. Richard Dawkins’ “selfish gene” and the kin selection hypothesis explain how these behaviors have helped us survive and thrive from an evolutionary biology perspective. It explores the reasons for altruistic behavior in kinship and the role of genes, highlighting the importance and evolutionary background of cooperation in human society.
Sometimes when you’re eating ice cream, your friends will say, “Just one bite. When they do, you give them a bite. You might think it’s nothing. However, from an economic point of view, giving your friend free ice cream that you paid for makes them feel good, but you are clearly losing money. Altruistic behavior isn’t limited to friends. Some people donate money, give blood, or volunteer their time without expecting anything in return. From an evolutionary biology perspective, which is based on the survival of the fittest, this kind of altruism is hardly a survival strategy. So why have altruistic behaviors persisted through evolution? There are several hypotheses for this, and we’re going to look at the kin selection hypothesis.
One of the easiest places to observe altruistic behavior in people is in kinship. Parents are naturally boundlessly devoted to their children. No one knows why. Their parents did it, their parents did it, their parents did it, they got it, they gave it. From birth to independence, they take care of them without expecting anything in return. In addition, it’s not uncommon to see relatives giving and receiving help in small and large ways. We receive pocket money from uncles we haven’t seen in a long time on holidays, or we owe money to relatives because we have work in another province. We do these selfless acts just because we are family or relatives. The kin selection hypothesis is a theory that explains how altruistic behaviors have survived among blood relatives.
To understand the kin selection hypothesis, it’s worth referring to Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. He argues that human behavior is not driven by us, but by our genes. He thinks of humans as “vessels” for genes. Humans act according to the commands of their genes, and we should look at human behavior from the perspective of the commander (the gene), not from the perspective of the doer (the human). For example, when humans act to have many children, they do so because their genes tell them to, not because they think they should. It’s a shocking statement. But if you think about the fact that all the information that makes up our bodies is contained in our genes, our genes make up our brains, and our brains tell our bodies what to do. This makes sense because genes are what drive human behavior.
Let’s use the gene perspective to explain human altruistic behavior. A gene’s primary goal is to replicate itself. They give orders to humans based on this goal. The primary way genes can replicate is through human reproduction, and indirectly through the reproduction of humans who share the same genes as you. Therefore, genes try to increase their chances of replicating by helping their blood relatives reproduce. In this way, the reproductive nature of genes has led to human altruistic behavior toward family members. The genes that command altruistic behavior in the family have survived so far. This means that altruistic behavior is advantageous for survival.
A feature of kin selection is that helping someone who shares more genes with you is more beneficial to the replication of your genes than helping someone who does the same. In practice, altruistic behavior doesn’t happen uniformly within a kinship. In general, the more distant the relatives, the more estranged they become. Let”s take a closer look at gene sharing. Humans have sexual reproduction. A child receives n genes from his father and n genes from his mother, totaling 2n. Therefore, a child always shares 50% of its genes with both its father and mother. Siblings receive genes from the same parent, but they may or may not receive the same genes from their parents, so on average they share 50% of their genes. Thinking about other relationships in the same way, grandparents-grandchildren always share 25%, uncles-nieces and nephews and first cousins share 25% and 12.5%, respectively, on average. People generally have more altruistic relationships with their parents than with their siblings, and with their grandparents than with their uncles. It seems that genes tend to invest in the sure thing rather than the average. The exception to this is that people have closer relationships with cousins than uncles, which is likely due to other external factors such as age. There seems to be no doubt that altruistic behavior is more prevalent in the order of gene sharing (parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles).
These altruistic behaviors can be easily seen in everyday life. For example, altruistic behavior is not only common among family members for help and support, but also among friends. To some extent, this is for the mutual benefit of friends, but if we look deeper, our social instincts and evolutionary background play an important role. Cooperation and support among friends and coworkers who aren’t blood relatives is common because humans are social animals and have evolved to survive and thrive through cooperation. These social bonds and cooperation go beyond mere survival; they are the basis for the complex structure of human societies and civilizations.
Through the lens of the “selfish gene,” the kin selection hypothesis explains why altruistic behavior emerges in people who share blood, and how the more genes we share, the more altruistic our relationships become. As a theory of evolutionary biology, the hypothesis of kin selection is not limited to humans. We’ve all seen mothers in the animal kingdom foraging for food for their young. This lends credence to the idea that altruistic behavior toward kin is a survival advantage. The problem with the kin selection hypothesis is that it doesn’t explain altruistic behavior among non-kin. However, if we consider the fact that for 99% of human history, social life was limited to kinship, it explains the largest part of altruistic behavior, and since there have been few external influences on human behavior, it is clear that kinship altruism is a product of evolution, which explains the roots of altruistic behavior.
