Competitive Altruism, Mentalizing and Signalling

Ed Hopkins

Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series from Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh

Abstract: The human tendency to cooperate with nonkin even in short-run relationships remains a puzzle. Recently it has been hypothesized that altruism may be a byproduct of "mentalizing", the process of understanding and predicting the mental states of others. Another idea is based on sexual selection: altruism is a costly signal of good genes. The paper shows that these two arguments are stronger when combined in that altruists who can mentalize have a greater advantage over non-altruists when they can signal their type, even though these signals are costly. Further, once such an equilibrium is established, altruists will not be supplanted by mutants who have similar mentalizing abilities but who lack altruism.

Keywords: altruism; sexual selection; mentalizing; social preferences; signalling; tournaments; evolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C73 D64 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13
Date: 2010-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth and nep-hpe
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http://www.econ.ed.ac.uk/papers/id197_esedps.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Competitive Altruism, Mentalizing, and Signaling (2014)
Working Paper: Competitive Altruism, Mentalizing and Signalling (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:edn:esedps:197

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