Coalition factor in the evolution of non-kin altruism

Jean-Louis Dessalles ()
Additional contact information
Jean-Louis Dessalles: Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, 46 rue Barrault, 75013 Paris, France

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 1999, vol. 02, issue 02, 143-172

Abstract: Animal behavior is often altruistic. In the frame of the theory of natural selection, altruism can only exist under specific conditions like kin selection or reciprocal cooperation. We show that reciprocal cooperation, which is generally invoked to explain non-kin altruism, requires very restrictive conditions to be stable. Some of these conditions are not met in many cases of altruism observed in nature. In search of another explanation of non-kin altruism, we consider Zahavis's theory of prestige. We extend it to propose a "political" model of altruism. We give evidence showing that non-kin altruism can evolve in the context of inter-subgroup competition. Under such circumstances, altruistic behavior can be used by individuals to advertise their quality as efficient coalition members. In this model, only abilities which positively correlate with the subgroup success can evolve into altruistic behaviors.

Keywords: altruism; evolution; cooperation; status; coalitions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219525999000096
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:wsi:acsxxx:v:02:y:1999:i:02:n:s0219525999000096

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0219525999000096

Access Statistics for this article

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS) is currently edited by Frank Schweitzer

More articles in Advances in Complex Systems (ACS) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().