Display Settings:

Format

Send to:

Choose Destination
    Science. 2007 Oct 26;318(5850):636-40.

    The coevolution of parochial altruism and war.

    Source

    School of Economics and Trade, Kyungpook National University, 1370 Sankyuk-dong, Buk-gu, Daegu 702-701, Korea.

    Abstract

    Altruism-benefiting fellow group members at a cost to oneself-and parochialism-hostility toward individuals not of one's own ethnic, racial, or other group-are common human behaviors. The intersection of the two-which we term "parochial altruism"-is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective because altruistic or parochial behavior reduces one's payoffs by comparison to what one would gain by eschewing these behaviors. But parochial altruism could have evolved if parochialism promoted intergroup hostilities and the combination of altruism and parochialism contributed to success in these conflicts. Our game-theoretic analysis and agent-based simulations show that under conditions likely to have been experienced by late Pleistocene and early Holocene humans, neither parochialism nor altruism would have been viable singly, but by promoting group conflict, they could have evolved jointly.

    PMID:
    17962562
    [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

      Supplemental Content

      Icon for HighWire Press

      Save items

      loading

      Recent activity

      Your browsing activity is empty.

      Activity recording is turned off.

      Turn recording back on

      See more...
      Write to the Help Desk