Altruism is a very interesting subject and is the cause for much debate throughout many academic areas as well as psychology, such as biology and economics. People are always asking ‘Is there such a thing as true altruism?’ To begin I would like to define what I mean by altruism. One definition of altruism is ‘selfless concern for the well-being of others’ (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 2002). Altruism is any behaviour that has some benefit to the recipient at some cost to the donor. Evolutionary theory leads us to consider altruism in terms of the costs and benefits to the altruist. A trait is said to be evolutionarily altruistic because of the effects it has on fitness. An organism's fitness is its ability to be reproductively successful; survival is relevant to fitness only to the extent that it promotes reproductive success. The barbed stinger of the honeybee can be considered an altruistic trait; the bee disembowels itself when it stings an intruder to the nest; the stinger keeps pumping venom even after the bee has died, which is of benefit to the group. Some other examples of altruism include food sharing in vampire bats, social insects helping others to reproduce

Kin selection can only explain altruism when the helper and recipient are related. But what about those instances when the altruist is completely unrelated? For example, unrelated male baboons will often help other males gain access to fertile females (Packer, 1977, as cited in Barrett, Dunbar & Lycett, 2002). This appears to be true altruism as there is a cost for the male who helps but no benefit. However, at a later date the males may swap roles, and the altruist may have his favour returned. Trivers (1971, as cited in Plotkin, 1997) proposed that in these circumstances ‘reciprocal altruism’ might be operating. This is where one individual helps another and is later ‘repaid’ in a similar manner by the recipient. The initial altruist suffers a short-term reduction in individual fitness but both individuals eventually gain in fitness. So, this may also not be true altruism. For reciprocal altruism to evolve, the altruist must end up better in the long run.

A third explanation for explaining altruism from the evolutionary perspective is sexual selection. This is the idea that male individuals will display altruism in an attempt to show-off to possible mates and increases their attractiveness to the opposite sex. Sexual selection has been shown to be an important factor when explaining evolution with many examples in nature such as that of the peacock’s tail. Altruism could be another example of something that appears to be more of a hindrance in survival terms but is actually beneficial due to the increased chance of being sexually successful. By displaying altruism an individual is likely to be increasing their opportunity to pass on their genes, thus, making altruistic behaviour worthwhile. Individuals who displayed these behaviours would then have been more likely to pass on the ‘altruistic’ gene leading to the evolution of altruistic behaviour.

The best strategy that emerged from the study of the prisoner’s dilemma was the ‘tit-for-tat’ (TFT) strategy. Axelrod (1984, as cited in Barrett et al., 2002) discovered that TFT was able to out-compete all other strategies in the contest, and once established in a population it could not be displaced by any other strategy. This is known as an ‘Evolutionary Stable Strategy’ (or ESS). TFT is very simple in that it has only two rules; co-operate on the first move and then, on each following move, do whatever your opponent did in the previous move. This kind of strategy is the basis for reciprocal altruism and explains how such behaviour could evolve. It works because the strategy rarely gets into a self-defeating spiral of defection, but can quickly establish long co-operative interactions, as displayed by the vampire bats.

Some topics in this essay:
Woolfenden Fitzpatrick, English Dictionary, Krebs Davies, Dunbar Lycett, Sober Wilson, ESS TFT, Torres Strait, Axelrod Hamilton, , Bliege-Bird Bird, altruistic behaviour, vampire bats, sexual selection, reciprocal altruism, cited barrett, kin selection, cited barrett et, et al, genes passed, barrett et, al 2002, barrett et al, et al 2002, sexual selection idea, gene altruism evolve,