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Related Concept Videos

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Evolutionary psychology explores the origins of human behavior and mental processes by framing them within the context of natural selection, a theory famously propounded by Charles Darwin. This field asserts that many behaviors common across human societies — ranging from instinctive fear reactions to complex social interactions — arose as evolutionary adaptations. These adaptations enhanced the survival and reproductive success of our ancestors, thereby becoming embedded in the...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 10, 2026

Daily Transfers, Archiving Populations, and Measuring Fitness in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli
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Does evolution lead to maximizing behavior?

Laurent Lehmann1, Ingela Alger2, Jörgen Weibull3,4

  • 1Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. laurent.lehmann@unil.ch.

Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution
|June 18, 2015
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Organisms do not evolve to maximize simple individual goals. Instead, under weak selection, they act as if maximizing a mix of self-interest, group benefit, and local competition.

Keywords:
Nash equilibriumgame theoryinclusive fitnessmaximizing behavioruninvadable

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Behavioral economics
  • Game theory

Background:

  • A central question in biology and economics is whether organisms evolve to act as if maximizing a specific goal function.
  • This study investigates this
  • as if
  • hypothesis in structured populations where social interactions yield material payoffs influencing fitness.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To formalize and analyze whether individuals in uninvadable population states appear to maximize conventional goal functions.
  • To determine if this apparent maximization reflects the genetic-level maximization of invasion fitness.

Main Methods:

  • Formalizing the
  • as if
  • question within a patch-structured population model.
  • Analyzing invasion fitness as a gene-centered, multigenerational measure of evolutionary success.
  • Investigating the role of weak selection and identity-by-descent in shaping behavior.

Main Results:

  • No simple, general individual-centered goal function consistently emerges from the analysis.
  • Under weak selection, multigenerational effects are captured by a neutral type-distribution.
  • Individuals behave as if maximizing a weighted sum of personal and group material payoffs, incorporating local rivalry.

Conclusions:

  • Evolutionary success is fundamentally gene-centered and multigenerational, precluding simple individual-goal maximization.
  • In uninvadable states with weak selection, behavior resembles a Nash equilibrium incorporating self-interest, group interest, and local competition.