IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jas/jasssj/2006-66-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Evolution of Altruism in Spatially Structured Populations

Author

Abstract

The evolution of altruism in humans is still an unresolved puzzle. Helping other individuals is often kinship-based or reciprocal. Several examples show, however, that altruism goes beyond kinship and reciprocity and people are willing to support unrelated others even when this is at a cost and they receive nothing in exchange. Here we examine the evolution of this "pure" altruism with a focus on altruistic teaching. Teaching is modeled as a knowledge transfer which enhances the survival chances of the recipient, but reduces the reproductive efficiency of the provider. In an agent-based simulation we compare evolutionary success of genotypes that have willingness to teach with those who do not in two different scenarios: random matching of individuals and spatially structured populations. We show that if teaching ability is combined with an ability to learn and individuals encounter each other on a spatial proximity basis, altruistic teaching will attain evolutionary success in the population. Settlement of the population and accumulation of knowledge are emerging side-products of the evolution of altruism. In addition, in large populations our simple model also produces a counterintuitive result that increasing the value of knowledge keeps fewer altruists alive.

Suggested Citation

  • András Németh & Károly Takács, 2007. "The Evolution of Altruism in Spatially Structured Populations," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 10(3), pages 1-4.
    • Handle: RePEc:jas:jasssj:2006-66-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.jasss.org/10/3/4/4.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Henk de Vos & Rita Smaniotto & Donald A. Elsas, 2001. "Reciprocal Altruism Under Conditions Of Partner Selection," Rationality and Society, , vol. 13(2), pages 139-183, May.
    2. Herbert Gintis, 2000. "Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2000-02, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    3. Henrich, Joseph, 2004. "Cultural group selection, coevolutionary processes and large-scale cooperation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 3-35, January.
    4. Rosaria Conte & Mario Paolucci, 2001. "Intelligent Social Learning," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 4(1), pages 1-3.
    5. Martin A. Nowak & Karl Sigmund, 1998. "Evolution of indirect reciprocity by image scoring," Nature, Nature, vol. 393(6685), pages 573-577, June.
    6. Alberto Acerbi & Domenico Parisi, 2006. "Cultural Transmission Between and Within Generations," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 9(1), pages 1-9.
    7. M.A. Nowak & K. Sigmund, 1998. "Evolution of Indirect Reciprocity by Image Scoring/ The Dynamics of Indirect Reciprocity," Working Papers ir98040, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
    8. Anatol Rapoport & Andreas Diekmann & Axel Franzen, 1995. "Experiments with Social Traps IV," Rationality and Society, , vol. 7(4), pages 431-441, October.
    9. Andreas Flache & Rainer Hegselmann, 1999. "Rationality vs. Learning in the Evolution of Solidarity Networks: A Theoretical Comparison," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 97-127, July.
    10. Becker, Gary S, 1976. "Altruism, Egoism, and Genetic Fitness: Economics and Sociobiology," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 817-826, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jakson Alves de Aquino, 2011. "Cooperation among Virtual Anthropoids in a Complex Environment," Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems - scientific journal, Croatian Interdisciplinary Society Provider Homepage: http://indecs.eu, vol. 9(1), pages 56-80.
    2. Brosnan, Sarah F., 2011. "An evolutionary perspective on morality," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 23-30, January.
    3. Bogliacino, Francesco & Codagnone, Cristiano, 2021. "Microfoundations, behaviour, and evolution: Evidence from experiments," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 372-385.
    4. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, 2004. "Social norms and human cooperation," Macroeconomics 0409026, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Wolff, Irenaeus, 2009. "Counterpunishment revisited: an evolutionary approach," MPRA Paper 16923, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Haruto Takagishi & Michiko Koizumi & Takayuki Fujii & Joanna Schug & Shinya Kameshima & Toshio Yamagishi, 2014. "The Role of Cognitive and Emotional Perspective Taking in Economic Decision Making in the Ultimatum Game," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(9), pages 1-7, September.
    7. Cristina Acedo-Carmona & Antoni Gomila, 2014. "Personal Trust Increases Cooperation beyond General Trust," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(8), pages 1-10, August.
    8. Mullins, Daniel A. & Whitehouse, Harvey & Atkinson, Quentin D., 2013. "The role of writing and recordkeeping in the cultural evolution of human cooperation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(S), pages 141-151.
    9. Johnson, Dominic D.P. & Price, Michael E. & Van Vugt, Mark, 2013. "Darwin's invisible hand: Market competition, evolution and the firm," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(S), pages 128-140.
    10. Friedman, Daniel & Singh, Nirvikar, 2003. "Negative Reciprocity: The Coevolution of Memes and Genes," Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt8n49r3t2, Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz.
    11. Radzvilavicius, Arunas, 2021. "Tolerant moral judgment drives evolution of collective action," OSF Preprints neq9g, Center for Open Science.
    12. Swami Iyer & Timothy Killingback, 2020. "Evolution of Cooperation in Social Dilemmas with Assortative Interactions," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-31, September.
    13. Jeffrey Winking, 2014. "Anonymity versus Privacy in the Dictator Game: Revealing Donor Decisions to Recipients Does Not Substantially Impact Donor Behavior," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(12), pages 1-11, December.
    14. Tim Phillips & Jiawei Li & Graham Kendall, 2014. "The Effects of Extra-Somatic Weapons on the Evolution of Human Cooperation towards Non-Kin," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(5), pages 1-8, May.
    15. Daniel Friedman & Nirvikar Singh, 2004. "Vengefulness Evolves in Small Groups," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Steffen Huck (ed.), Advances in Understanding Strategic Behaviour, chapter 3, pages 28-54, Palgrave Macmillan.
    16. Fehr, Ernst & Henrich, Joseph, 2003. "Is Strong Reciprocity a Maladaptation? On the Evolutionary Foundations of Human Altruism," IZA Discussion Papers 712, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. D. Darcet & D. Sornette, 2008. "Quantitative determination of the level of cooperation in the presence of punishment in three public good experiments," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 3(2), pages 137-163, December.
    18. Durrett, Richard & Levin, Simon A., 2005. "Can stable social groups be maintained by homophilous imitation alone?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 267-286, July.
    19. Herbert Gintis, 2003. "Solving the Puzzle of Prosociality," Rationality and Society, , vol. 15(2), pages 155-187, May.
    20. Sethi, Rajiv & Somanathan, E., 2003. "Understanding reciprocity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 1-27, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jas:jasssj:2006-66-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Francesco Renzini (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.