IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/oxecpp/v56y2004i2p307-330.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Group selection and the evolution of altruism

Author

Listed:
  • Ben Cooper
  • Chris Wallace

Abstract

'Group selection' is an oft-cited but controversial explanation for the survival of altruism. Rather than enter this debate, this paper asks whether a group structure alone can provide a reasonable explanation for the survival of altruistic behaviour in an evolving population. If altruism (defined as taking a cooperative action in a standard Prisoners' Dilemma) is to flourish, either groups need to be isolated from one another for multiple generations, or groups need to be constructed in a positively-assortative manner. Concentrating on the former case the paper shows that the size of the group, the relative benefit to cost of altruism and the number of generations in isolation all play a critical role. The smaller the group size, or the larger the benefit-to-cost ratio, the higher the survival chances of altruism. Additionally, for altruism to survive, the number of generations spent in isolated groups must be neither too big nor too small. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Ben Cooper & Chris Wallace, 2004. "Group selection and the evolution of altruism," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 56(2), pages 307-330, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:oxecpp:v:56:y:2004:i:2:p:307-330
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oep/gpf043
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    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. Jacob Weisdorf & Paul Sharp, 2009. "From preventive to permissive checks: the changing nature of the Malthusian relationship between nuptiality and the price of provisions in the nineteenth century," Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC), vol. 3(1), pages 55-70, January.
    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. Herold, Florian, 2003. "Carrot or Stick? Group Selection and the Evolution of Reciprocal Preferences," Discussion Papers in Economics 40, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    2. Oded Stark & Doris Behrens & Yong Wang, 2009. "On the evolutionary edge of migration as an assortative mating device," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 95-109, February.
    3. Florian Herold, 2012. "Carrot or Stick? The Evolution of Reciprocal Preferences in a Haystack Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 914-940, April.
    4. Martin Kaae Jensen & Alexandros Rigos, 2018. "Evolutionary games and matching rules," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 47(3), pages 707-735, September.
    5. Martin Kaae Jensen & Alexandros Rigos, 2012. "Evolutionary Games with Group Selection," Discussion Papers 13-05, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    6. Daniel G. Arce, 2011. "Putting Agency and Integrity to the Test," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 77(4), pages 843-855, April.
    7. Richard Povey, 2014. "Punishment and the potency of group selection," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 799-816, September.
    8. Pfeuffer, Wolfgang, 2006. "Religion as a Seed Crystal for Altruistic Cooperation," Munich Dissertations in Economics 5788, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    9. Daniel G. Arce, 2006. "Taking Corporate Culture Seriously: Group Effects in the Trust Game," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 73(1), pages 27-36, July.

    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. Studer, Roman, 2008. "India and the Great Divergence: Assessing the Efficiency of Grain Markets in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century India," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(2), pages 393-437, June.
    2. David Greasley & Les Oxley, 2010. "Cliometrics And Time Series Econometrics: Some Theory And Applications," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(5), pages 970-1042, December.
    3. Zizzo, Daniel John, 2002. "Racing with uncertainty: a patent race experiment," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 877-902, June.
    4. Jacob Weisdorf & Paul Sharp, 2009. "From preventive to permissive checks: the changing nature of the Malthusian relationship between nuptiality and the price of provisions in the nineteenth century," Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC), vol. 3(1), pages 55-70, January.
    5. repec:oxf:wpaper:69.2 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Chalkley, Martin & Malcomson, James M., 2002. "Cost sharing in health service provision: an empirical assessment of cost savings," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 219-249, May.
    7. Daudin, Guillaume, 2010. "Domestic Trade and Market Size in Late-Eighteenth-Century France," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 70(3), pages 716-743, September.
    8. Jacob Weisdorf, 2024. "Church Book Registry: A Cliometric View," Springer Books, in: Claude Diebolt & Michael Haupert (ed.), Handbook of Cliometrics, edition 3, pages 589-610, Springer.
    9. Niels Framroze Møller & Paul Sharp, 2008. "Malthus in Cointegration Space: A new look at living standards and population in pre-industrial England," Discussion Papers 08-16, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    10. Tommy E. Murphy, 2010. "Persistence of Malthus or Persistence in Malthus? Mortality, Income, and Marriage in the French Fertility Decline of the Long Nineteenth Century?," Working Papers 363, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    11. Grajzl, Peter & Murrell, Peter, 2023. "A macrohistory of legal evolution and coevolution: Property, procedure, and contract in early-modern English caselaw," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games

    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:oup:oxecpp:v:56:y:2004:i:2:p:307-330. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/oep .

    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.