IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbioec/v10y2008i3p203-238.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why multilevel selection matters

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander Field

Abstract

In spite of its checkered intellectual history, and in spite of the myriad proposals of alternative models that claim to account for the broad range of human behavior and to dispense with the need for selection above the organism level, a multilevel selection framework remains the only coherent means of accounting for the persistence and spread of behavioral inclinations which, at least upon first appearance at low frequency, would have been biologically altruistic. This argument is advanced on three tracks: through a review of experimental and observational evidence inconsistent with a narrow version of rational choice theory, through a critique of models or explanations purporting to account for prosocial behavior through other means, and via elaboration of the mechanisms, plausibility, and intellectual history of group selection.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Field, 2008. "Why multilevel selection matters," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 203-238, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbioec:v:10:y:2008:i:3:p:203-238
    DOI: 10.1007/s10818-007-9018-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10818-007-9018-1
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10818-007-9018-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Herbert A. Simon, 1955. "A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 69(1), pages 99-118.
    2. Hirshleifer, J, 1978. "Competition, Cooperation, and Conflict in Economics and Biology," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 68(2), pages 238-243, May.
    3. Simon Gachter & Ernst Fehr, 2000. "Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 980-994, September.
    4. Roth, Alvin E. & Vesna Prasnikar & Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara & Shmuel Zamir, 1991. "Bargaining and Market Behavior in Jerusalem, Ljubljana, Pittsburgh, and Tokyo: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1068-1095, December.
    5. Adam Gifford, 2000. "The Bioeconomics of Cooperation," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 153-168, May.
    6. Greif, Avner, 1989. "Reputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade: Evidence on the Maghribi Traders," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(4), pages 857-882, December.
    7. Bendor, Jonathan & Swistak, Piotr, 1997. "The Evolutionary Stability of Cooperation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 91(2), pages 290-307, June.
    8. Alford, John R. & Funk, Carolyn L. & Hibbing, John R., 2005. "Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 99(2), pages 153-167, May.
    9. Field, Alexander James, 1984. "Microeconomics, Norms, and Rationality," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(4), pages 683-711, July.
    10. Henrich, Joseph & Boyd, Robert & Bowles, Samuel & Camerer, Colin & Fehr, Ernst & Gintis, Herbert (ed.), 2004. "Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199262052.
    11. Axelrod, Robert, 1986. "An Evolutionary Approach to Norms," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 80(4), pages 1095-1111, December.
    12. Herbert Gintis, 2000. "Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2000-02, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    13. 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.
    14. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, 2003. "The nature of human altruism," Nature, Nature, vol. 425(6960), pages 785-791, October.
    15. Henrich, Joseph, 2004. "Reply," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 127-143, January.
    16. Samuelson, Paul A, 1993. "Altruism as a Problem Involving Group versus Individual Selection in Economics and Biology," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 143-148, May.
    17. Field, Alexander James, 1981. "The problem with neoclassical institutional economics: A critique with special reference to the North/Thomas model of pre-1500 Europe," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 174-198, April.
    18. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher & Michael Kosfeld, 2005. "Neuroeconomic Foundations of Trust and Social Preferences: Initial Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 346-351, May.
    19. Field, Alexander James, 1991. "Do legal systems matter?," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 1-35, January.
    20. Ken Binmore, 1994. "Game Theory and the Social Contract, Volume 1: Playing Fair," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262023636, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Janet Landa, 2008. "The bioeconomics of homogeneous middleman groups as adaptive units: Theory and empirical evidence viewed from a group selection framework," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 259-278, December.
    2. John Hartwick, 2010. "Encephalization and division of labor by early humans," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 77-100, July.
    3. Janet Landa, 2009. "Homogeneous middleman groups as superorganisms, endogamous ethnic groups, and trust networks: Reply to comments on Janet Landa’s target article, ‘The bioeconomics of homogeneous middleman groups as ad," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 191-199, August.
    4. Alexander Field, 2014. "Prosociality and the military," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 129-154, July.
    5. David Wilson, 2009. "Convergent cultural evolution and multilevel selection: Reply to comments on Janet Landa’s ‘The bioeconomics of homogenous middleman groups as adaptive units: Theory and empirical evidence viewed from," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 185-190, August.
    6. Alexander Field, 2008. "Biological and cultural group selection: Comments on Janet Landa’s paper," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 287-290, December.
    7. van den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M. & Gowdy, John M., 2009. "A group selection perspective on economic behavior, institutions and organizations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 1-20, October.
    8. Alexander J. Field, 2014. "Schelling, von Neumann, and the Event that Didn’t Occur," Games, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-37, February.

    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. Attila Gulyás, 2010. "- Friends?... Fair enough," Proceedings of FIKUSZ '10, in: László Áron Kóczy (ed.),Proceedings of FIKUSZ 2010, pages 72-92, Óbuda University, Keleti Faculty of Business and Management.
    2. Tünde Paál & Tamás Bereczkei, 2015. "Punishment as a Means of Competition: Implications for Strong Reciprocity Theory," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-14, March.
    3. 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.
    4. Francesco GUALA, 2010. "Reciprocity: weak or strong? What punishment experiments do (and do not) demonstrate," Departmental Working Papers 2010-23, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    5. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann, 2008. "Reciprocity, culture, and human cooperation: Previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment," Discussion Papers 2008-14, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    6. Murnighan, J. Keith & Wang, Long, 2016. "The social world as an experimental game," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 80-94.
    7. Shade T. Shutters, 2009. "Strong reciprocity, social structure, and the evolution of fair allocations in a simulated ultimatum game," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 64-77, June.
    8. Gulyás, Attila, 2007. "A méltányosságelmélet alapjai. Modellek és nézőpontok [The foundations of quity theory. Models and viewpoints]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(2), pages 167-183.
    9. 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.
    10. Ingela Alger & Jörgen W. Weibull, 2013. "Homo Moralis—Preference Evolution Under Incomplete Information and Assortative Matching," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(6), pages 2269-2302, November.
    11. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, "undated". "Why Social Preferences Matter - The Impact of Non-Selfish Motives on Competition," IEW - Working Papers 084, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    12. Gächter, Simon & Herrmann, Benedikt, 2011. "The limits of self-governance when cooperators get punished: Experimental evidence from urban and rural Russia," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 193-210, February.
    13. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, "undated". "Theories of Fairness and Reciprocity - Evidence and Economic Applications," IEW - Working Papers 075, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    14. Bartoš, Vojtěch, 2021. "Seasonal scarcity and sharing norms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 303-316.
    15. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2000. "Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 159-181, Summer.
    16. Chesney, Thomas & Chuah, Swee-Hoon & Hoffmann, Robert, 2009. "Virtual world experimentation: An exploratory study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 618-635, October.
    17. Xiaofeng Wang & Xiaojie Chen & Long Wang, 2020. "Evolution of egalitarian social norm by resource management," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(1), pages 1-16, January.
    18. Angelo Antoci & Luca Zarri, 2015. "Punish and perish?," Rationality and Society, , vol. 27(2), pages 195-223, May.
    19. Guererk, Oezguer & Rockenbach, Bettina & Wolff, Irenaeus, 2010. "The effects of punishment in dynamic public-good games," MPRA Paper 22097, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Heller, William B. & Sieberg, Katri K., 2010. "Honor among thieves: Cooperation as a strategic response to functional unpleasantness," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 351-362, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Group selection; Evolutionary theory; Behavioral sciences; C72; DO1; D64; D87; Z13;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • D87 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Neuroeconomics
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:kap:jbioec:v:10:y:2008:i:3:p:203-238. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.