This article explains why altruistic behavior is rare in humans from an evolutionary perspective and discusses how the reciprocity hypothesis suggests that altruistic behavior is actually for mutual benefit. In doing so, it highlights the continued importance of altruistic behavior in human society and nature.
Thick, thick, thick, I’ll give you my old house, I’ll give you a new one!
We are constantly bombarded with news stories about “rich people giving big” and “celebrities volunteering”. The reason why these acts of altruism, volunteering, and donations are so controversial and prominent in our society is because they are rarely seen in everyday life. The reason why altruistic behaviors are so rare can be traced back to the “survival problem” of humans in the past. In the distant past, humans were dependent on survival for every single action. At that time, altruistic humans may have benefited society as a whole, but on an individual level, they were at a survival disadvantage compared to selfish humans who only cared about themselves. As a result, humans with altruistic traits had a hard time surviving and passing on their altruistic traits to the next generation, which is why it is difficult to find people with altruistic traits and altruistic behavior in everyday life.
In other words, the behaviors mentioned at the beginning of this article are rarely seen in humans with the “selfish” traits that are common in today’s society. These “altruistic” behaviors, which are out of the ordinary for many humans, have existed and continue to exist throughout human history, like beans in a drought, but they never die out. This curious fact has been studied by many scholars over the years, especially evolutionary biologists on the evolutionary side of humanity and economists on the economic side. This has led to a number of hypotheses and conclusions, one of which is the iterative reciprocity hypothesis.
I chose the reciprocity hypothesis because it is the most mathematically “correct” of the many hypotheses. Recently, one of the issues that has been attracting attention not only in Korea but also around the world is the Go match between Lee Sedol 9 and the artificial intelligence computer AlphaGo, which is represented by the confrontation between humans and computers. In the tense confrontation between the two, AlphaGo showed a slight edge, and one of the reasons why this is possible is that the computer ‘correctly’ calculates the advantageous number of moves (unless the human programming is wrong). This “accuracy” of computer calculations has also been used to analyze human selfish and altruistic behavior. A classic example of the study of selfish and altruistic behavior is the prisoner’s dilemma, a situation in which two different parties are faced with the choice of cooperation or betrayal. If they both cooperate, they both benefit, but if only one cooperates, the betrayer benefits more and the cooperator loses, resulting in mutual betrayal), the method of reaching the maximum benefit through computer calculations was based on the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth). This suggests that the reciprocity hypothesis is a relatively “correct” hypothesis that is better than other hypotheses that explain altruistic behavior.
But what makes the reciprocity hypothesis “correct” and “an eye for an eye”? In short, it states that altruistic behaviors are only altruistic because they appear to be altruistic, not because they are truly altruistic, i.e., I do something altruistic because the person I’m doing it for benefits me in return. For example, if you arrive at work earlier than anyone else and clean up beforehand, is it truly altruistic to be more mindful of your boss (or the most powerful person in the office) at that time? Is it truly altruistic to do so because you care about what he gives you (a good rating, a good perception, etc.)? You can also find examples of this in the donations of the rich or the volunteer work of celebrities. They may have done it out of the goodness of their hearts, but they may have also done it for the positive feelings and attitudes of the recipients and the good social perception that comes from doing seemingly altruistic acts. In other words, altruistic acts are not completely one-sided. Someone gives something to me, I give something to someone else, and the cycle repeats.
This sequence of altruistic behaviors is not actually altruistic, but ultimately self-interested. This repetition-reciprocity hypothesis is not contradicted by the fact that many selfish humans have survived over the years and there are not many people in the world who do not possess altruistic traits, and it can explain the phenomenon of altruistic behavior over the years. It’s not just humans. Repetitive and reciprocal altruistic behaviors have also been observed in animals, such as vampire bats giving their own blood to starving vampire bats that were unable to feed that night, and chimpanzees grooming each other’s fur, with the giver receiving and the receiver giving back.
However, the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis is a hypothesis and has limitations. Some experiments (such as the public goods game. Prisoner’s dilemma game with 3 or more players. The Prisoner’s Dilemma, where everyone wins if they cooperate, but the betrayer gains more if they betray alone), or unselfish behavior in a few experiments (the Public Goods Game, the Prisoner’s Dilemma). In a perfect world, however, these would be “laws” that hold true in all general cases, not “hypotheses” that hold true only under special conditions or in specific cases. These examples show some counterexamples of hypotheses. However, it is possible that these counterexamples are exceptions to the mainstream hypothesis. Does this mean that the computer calculations described above are not always right and can be wrong? Again, the assumptions in the calculations are wrong, not the computer calculations. The assumption is that all actions are iterative. Given this assumption, the method that maximizes profit is the one based on the iteration-reciprocity hypothesis.
There are counterexamples, so it’s not a law. The assumptions are not always correct, and the computer’s calculations are not always correct, but there is no such thing as “once in a lifetime.” There is even a Buddhist concept of reincarnation that even life repeats itself. The assumption of the recurrence-reciprocity hypothesis is that the world repeats itself, so we hope that altruistic actions will be taken in the world to increase the benefit of all.
The toad will give us the new home we need, so why not give them the old home they need ‘first’?
