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Runaway Social Selection for Displays of Partner Value and Altruism

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The Moral Brain

Abstract

The discovery of evolutionary explanations for cooperation is one of the great achievements of late 20th century biology. As most readers know, benefits to the group rarely explain tendencies to help others (Williams, 1966; Dawkins, 1976), benefits to kin explain altruism in proportion to the coefficient of relatedness (Hamilton, 1964), and mutual benefits and reciprocal exchanges explain much cooperation between nonrelatives (Trivers, 1971). Subsequent theoretical and empirical studies have blossomed into a body of knowledge that can explain much social behavior (Wilson, 1975; Trivers, 1985; Dugatkin, 1997; Alcock, 2001; Hammerstein, 2003).

Reprinted from: Nesse, R. M. (2007). Runaway social selection for displays of partner value and altruism. Biological Theory, 2, 143–155.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Reprinted from: Nesse, R. M. (2007). Runaway social selection for displays of partner value and altruism. Biological Theory, 2, 143–155.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks for very helpful comments from two anonymous reviewers, and to members of my laboratory group, and to colleagues who offered valuable advice along the way including Robert Axelrod, Lee Dugatkin, Steve Frank, Kern Reeve, Bobbi Low, Richard Nisbett, Peter Railton, Mary Rigdon, Stephen Salant, Stephen Stearns, Barbara Smuts, Mary Jane West-Eberhard, and to Lucy for inspiration.

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  1. The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Randolph M. Nesse

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  1. Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, Gent, 9000, Belgium

    Jan Verplaetse

  2. Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, Gent, 9000, Belgium

    Jelle Schrijver

  3. Dept. Neurosurgery, University Hospital Antwerp, Wilrijkstraat 10, Edegem, 2650, Belgium

    Sven Vanneste

  4. Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, Gent, 9000, Belgium

    Johan Braeckman

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Nesse, R.M. (2009). Runaway Social Selection for Displays of Partner Value and Altruism. In: Verplaetse, J., Schrijver, J., Vanneste, S., Braeckman, J. (eds) The Moral Brain. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6287-2_10

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