Adult influence on children's altruistic behavior may differ between cultural communities. We used an experimental approach to assess the influence of adult models on children's altruistic giving in a city in the United States and rural villages in India. Children between 3 and 8 years of age were tested with their parents in the United States (n=163) and India (n=154). Parents modeled either a...

This paper explores the following question: how a fixed-size population of autonomous agents (such as a swarm of robotic agents) may evolve altruistic behaviors during open-ended evolution. In particular, we focus on a situation where the tragedy of commons can possibly occur: a situation where individuals must display altruistic behaviors in order for the whole population to avoid extinction. ...

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...

While altruistic behavior and bonding in altruistic pairs or groups of cooperators is observed throughout the animal kingdom, the genetic evolution of such is on an ongoing source of debate, curiosity, and conflict in the behavioral sciences. Many such bonded groups and pairs are observed to take part in costly ritualized movement behavior that is hypothesized to trigger or maintain altruistic ...

In this paper we explored the effects of exposure to images of the suffering and vulnerability of others on altruistic, trust-based, and reciprocated incentivized economic decisions, accounting for differences in participants' dispositional empathy and reported in-group trust for their recipient(s). This was done using a pictorial priming task, framed as a memory test, and a triadic economic ga...

Altruism toward strangers is considered a defining feature of humans. However, manifestation of this behaviour is contingent on the costliness of the selfless act. The extent of altruistic tendencies also varies cross-culturally, being more common in societies with higher levels of market integration. However, the existence of local variation in selfless behaviour within populations has receive...

Environmentally beneficial actions come in diverse forms and occur in a wide range of settings ranging from personal decisions in households to negotiated agreements between nations. This article draws upon both social and ecological theory to outline, theoretically, the circumstances in which localized actions, undertaken by citizens, should cumulate to have global effects. The beliefs behind ...

Some researchers have proposed that natural selection has given rise in humans to one or more adaptations for altruistically punishing on behalf of other individuals who have been treated unfairly, even when the punisher has no chance of benefiting via reciprocity or benefits to kin. However, empirical support for the altruistic punishment hypothesis depends on results from experiments that are...

Recent experimental research has revealed forms of human behavior involving interaction among unrelated individuals that have proven difficult to explain in terms of kin or reciprocal altruism. One such trait, strong reciprocity is a predisposition to cooperate with others and to punish those who violate the norms of cooperation, at personal cost, even when it is implausible to expect that thes...

BACKGROUND In the UK there is a short-fall between individuals requiring a renal transplant and kidneys available for transplantation. Non-directed 'altruistic' living kidney donation has emerged as a strategy for bridging this gap between supply and demand, with the number increasing each year. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to explore the views of potential recipients towards non-directed 'altr...