Abstract
The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that altruism, conceived as “generalized exchange, ”can evolve within a society of egoists. I define the “evolutionary giving game, ”in which each player holds some resource as its budget and can give any portion of it to any player. This game enables us to analyze the emergence of various kinds of social exchange, including generalized exchange. The results of computer simulations based on this game show the following. Though an unconditional altruist strategy is quickly beaten by nonaltruistic one, a kind of conditional altruist strategy, “in-group altruist strategy, ”will robustly evolve. The in-group altruist strategy dictates that the player gives only to “in-group members. ”Here in-group members are those who contribute sufficiently. Those who contribute sufficiently, but give even to “out-group members ”are also defined as out-group members. This strategy is consistent with in-group favoritism, observable in a variety of settings. The simulation results also show that the evolution of altruism based on this strategy is dependent on prospects of future contact, visibility, and risks.
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Takagi, E. (1996). The Generalized Exchange Perspective on the Evolution of Altruism. In: Liebrand, W.B.G., Messick, D.M. (eds) Frontiers in Social Dilemmas Research. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-85261-9_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-85261-9_17
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