Altruism: its characteristics and evolution

Cross-cultural study of kinship premium and social discounting of generosity

Social discounting predicts that one's concern for others decreases with increasing social distance. Cultural dimensions may influence this social behavior. Here, we used a dictator game, in which the participants and real members of their social entourage profited from the partition of the endowments determined by the participant, to compare how Chinese and French university students shared endowments with people at different social distances. We tested two hypotheses based on the concepts of kinship premium and cultural collectivism. Stronger ties between close family members were expected among Chinese. This may predict a larger "kinship premium," i.e., increased generosity to family members at close social distances, in Chinese relative to French participants. Similarly, because collectivism is thought to be stronger in Asian than western societies, greater generosity at larger social distances might also be expected among Chinese participants. The results showed that Chinese were more generous than French at close social distances but discounted more as social distance increased. This difference between French and Chinese was confined to family members and no significant difference in generosity was observed between French and Chinese for non-family members at any social distance. Our findings evidence a stronger kinship premium among Chinese than French students, and no significant effect of cultural collectivism.

An Archeology of Corruption in Medicine

Corruption is a word used loosely to describe many kinds of action that people find distasteful. We prefer to reserve it for the intentional misuse of the good offices of an established social entity for private benefit, posing as fair trading. The currency of corruption is not always material or financial. Moral corruption is all too familiar within churches and other ostensibly beneficent institutions, and it happens within medicine and the pharmaceutical industries. Corrupt behavior reduces trust, costs money, causes injustice, and arouses anger. Yet it persists, despite all efforts since the beginnings of societies. People who act corruptly may lack conscience and empathy in the same way as those with some personality disorders. Finding ways to prevent corruption from contaminating beneficent organizations is therefore likely to be frustratingly difficult. Transparency and accountability may go some way, but the determined corruptor is unlikely to feel constrained by moral and reporting requirements of this kind. Punishment and redress are complicated issues, unlikely to satisfy victims and society at large. Both perhaps should deal in the same currency-material or social-in which the corrupt dealing took place.

Concepts and implications of altruism bias and pathological altruism

The profound benefits of altruism in modern society are self-evident. However, the potential hurtful aspects of altruism have gone largely unrecognized in scientific inquiry. This is despite the fact that virtually all forms of altruism are associated with tradeoffs--some of enormous importance and sensitivity--and notwithstanding that examples of pathologies of altruism abound. Presented here are the mechanistic bases and potential ramifications of pathological altruism, that is, altruism in which attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm. A basic conceptual approach toward the quantification of altruism bias is presented. Guardian systems and their over arching importance in the evolution of cooperation are also discussed. Concepts of pathological altruism, altruism bias, and guardian systems may help open many new, potentially useful lines of inquiry and provide a framework to begin moving toward a more mature, scientifically informed understanding of altruism and cooperative behavior.

The social production of altruism: motivations for caring action in a low-income urban community

Contemporary social science paints a bleak picture of inner-city relational life. Indeed, the relationships of low-income, urban-residing Americans are represented as rife with distress, violence and family disruption. At present, no body of social scientific work systematically examines the factors that promote loving or selfless interactions among low-income, inner-city American individuals, families and communities. In an effort to fill that gap, this ethnographic study examined the motivations for altruism among a sample of adults (n = 40) who reside in an economically distressed housing community (i.e., housing project) in New York City. Content analyses of interviews indicated that participants attributed altruism to an interplay between 14 motives that were then ordered into four overarching categories of motives: (1) needs-centered motives, (2) norm-based motives deriving from religious/spiritual ideology, relationships and personal factors, (3) abstract motives (e.g., humanism), and (4) sociopolitical factors. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Equilibrium between the "genuine mutualists" and "symbiotic cheaters" in the bacterial population co-evolving with plants in a facultative symbiosis

The mathematical model for evolution of the plant-microbe facultative mutualistic interactions based on the partners' symbiotic feedbacks is constructed. Using the example of rhizobia-legume symbiosis, we addressed these feedbacks in terms of the metabolic (C<-->N) exchange resulting in the parallel improvements of the partners' fitness (positive feedbacks). These improvements are correlated to the symbiotic efficiency dependent on the ratio of N(2)-fixing bacterial strains ("genuine mutualists") to the non- N(2)-fixing strains ("symbiotic cheaters") in the root nodules. The computer experiments demonstrated that an interplay between the frequency-dependent selection (FDS) and the Darwinian (frequency-independent) selection pressures implemented in the partners' populations ensures an anchoring or even domination for the newly generated host-specific mutualists (which form N(2)-fixing nodules only with one of two available plant genotypes) more successfully than for the non-host-specific mutualists (which form N(2)-fixing nodules with both plant genotypes). The created model allows us to consider the mutualistic symbiosis as a finely balanced polymorphic system wherein the equilibrium in bacterial population may be shifted in favor of "genuine mutualists" due to the partner-stipulated selection for an improved symbiotic efficiency implemented in the plant population.

Altruism: Reflections on a Neglected Aspect in Death Studies

Growing out of the authors' previous studies of death (Jankofsky's in literature and in historical documents primarily of the medieval period, and Stuecher's of clinical experiences with terminally ill children and adolescents), this cooperative interdisciplinary article identifies and discusses altruism as a basic trait of human character and behavior and explores its possible implications for the dying person. Altruism can be studied as a phenomenon which is like the “good death/bad death” topos of medieval chroniclers, thus permitting comparative evaluations over long periods of time and in different socioeconomic and political structures. As a trait observable in both the daily realities of a modern hospital setting and in the literary-aesthetic representation of human society and its values in medieval and modern literature, altruism is a part of the infinite variety of humanity's perceptions, activities, and experiences that make up the mosaic of life and death.