The Puzzle of Altruism Reconsidered: Biological Theories of Altruism and One-Shot Altruism

Doron Shultziner () and Arnon Dattner ()
Additional contact information
Doron Shultziner: Politics & International Relations Department, Oxford University
Arnon Dattner: Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University

No 103, Ratio Working Papers from The Ratio Institute

Abstract: This paper critically examines the state of the literature in evolutionary biology regarding theories of altruistic behavior. The shared theoretical problems of Kin-selection and Group-selection are examined. Theoretical and severe methodological problems of Reciprocal Altruism theory are also discussed. We offer new conceptual clarifications of the Handicap Principle theory regarding costs and benefits to both the donor and the recipient of an altruistic act. We also summarize supportive empirical studies which demonstrate how Handicap Principle theory easily explains altruistic behavior on a different logic than the one employed by other theories of altruistic behavior. Finally, we discuss the phenomenon of one-shot altruism in order to evaluate, and distinguish between, the predictive and explanatory power of different theories of altruistic behavior.

Keywords: altruism; altruistic behavior; theories of altruism; handicap principle; reciprocity; reciprocal altruism; group selection; kin selection; one-shot altruism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2006-09-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-hpe, nep-knm and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/ds_ad_altruism.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/ds_ad_altruism.pdf [308 Permanent Redirect]--> https://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/ds_ad_altruism.pdf [308 Permanent Redirect]--> https://ratio.se/pdf/wp/ds_ad_altruism.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:ratioi:0103

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Ratio Working Papers from The Ratio Institute The Ratio Institute, P.O. Box 5095, SE-102 42 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Martin Korpi ().