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Egoism and Altruism

Egoism and Altruism

Voluntary behavior with the intent to help other people is called prosocial behavior. Why do people help other people? Is personal benefit such as feeling good about oneself the only reason people help one another?

Altruism

Altruism

Altruistic behaviors are “unselfish” behaviors—those that help another individual at the expense of the individual carrying out the behavior. Despite the negative consequences for the altruistic animal, these behaviors are thought to have evolved for several reasons.

Bystander Effect

Bystander Effect

The discussion of bullying highlights the problem of witnesses not intervening to help a victim. This is a common occurrence, as the following well-publicized event demonstrates. In 1964, in Queens, New York, a 19-year-old woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked by a person with a knife near the back entrance to her apartment building and again in the hallway inside her apartment building. When the attack occurred, she screamed for help numerous times and eventually died from her stab wounds.

Inclusive Fitness

Inclusive Fitness

Most altruistic behavior—in which one animal helps another at a cost to themselves—occurs between relatives. Scientists think these altruistic behaviors evolved because they increase the inclusive fitness of the animal providing help.

Empathy

Empathy

Some researchers suggest that altruism operates on empathy. Empathy is the capacity to understand another person’s perspective, to feel what he or she feels. An empathetic person makes an emotional connection with others and feels compelled to help (Batson, 1991). Empathy can be expressed in several ways, including cognitive, affective, and motor.

Humanistic Psychology

Humanistic Psychology

Humanistic psychology emerged in the mid-20th century as a response to the deterministic and pessimistic nature of behaviorism and psychoanalysis. While behaviorism focused on observable behaviors influenced by the environment and psychoanalysis delved into unconscious motivations, both theories suggested that human actions lacked free will. In contrast, humanistic psychology offers a perspective that emphasizes the innate potential for goodness and growth within every individual.
This approach...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 16, 2026

The HoneyComb Paradigm for Research on Collective Human Behavior

The HoneyComb Paradigm for Research on Collective Human Behavior

Published on: January 19, 2019

Why humans might help strangers.

Nichola J Raihani¹, Redouan Bshary²

¹Department of Genetics Evolution and Environment, University College London London, UK.

Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

|March 10, 2015

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Humans often help strangers, even in anonymous, one-time interactions. This study explores why this seemingly altruistic behavior, which is biologically disadvantageous, occurs, examining lab game limitations and real-world cooperation strategies.

Keywords:

cultural group selection error-management human cooperation one-shot games prisoner’s dilemma strong reciprocity

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Area of Science:

Evolutionary Biology
Behavioral Economics
Social Psychology

Background:

Humans exhibit altruistic behavior towards strangers in anonymous, one-shot interactions, a phenomenon seemingly counter to biological self-interest.
Laboratory simulations using games like the prisoner's dilemma often replicate this cooperation, despite conditions favoring non-cooperation.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the evolutionary and psychological explanations for human cooperation with strangers in one-shot interactions.
To critically evaluate the ecological validity of standard laboratory games in representing real-world cooperative scenarios.

Main Methods:

Review and synthesis of existing theories: "big mistake"/mismatch hypothesis and cultural group selection.
Analysis of how real-world conditions, absent in standard lab games, might favor cooperation.

Main Results:

Standard lab games may not accurately reflect real-life decision-making due to differences in interaction context (e.g., anonymity, repetition).
Cooperation with strangers can be adaptive by facilitating partner choice and identifying cooperative individuals.
Non-linear benefits of cooperation and the ability to segment investments can promote cooperation even in one-shot scenarios.

Conclusions:

Human cooperation with strangers is complex and influenced by factors beyond simple biological altruism or evolved psychological mechanisms for repeated interactions.
Real-world conditions, including perceptual error costs, partner selection, non-linear benefits, and repeated decision-making, offer alternative explanations for cooperation with unknown individuals.