Spontaneous Altruism by Chimpanzees and Young Children
TLDR
Experimental evidence that chimpanzees perform basic forms of helping in the absence of rewards spontaneously and repeatedly toward humans and conspecifics is reported, indicating that chimpanzees share crucial aspects of altruism with humans and suggesting that the roots of human altruism may go deeper than previous experimental evidence suggested.Abstract:
People often act on behalf of others. They do so without immediate personal gain, at cost to themselves, and even toward unfamiliar individuals. Many researchers have claimed that such altruism emanates from a species-unique psychology not found in humans’ closest living evolutionary relatives, such as the chimpanzee. In favor of this view, the few experimental studies on altruism in chimpanzees have produced mostly negative results. In contrast, we report experimental evidence that chimpanzees perform basic forms of helping in the absence of rewards spontaneously and repeatedly toward humans and conspecifics. In two comparative studies, semi–free ranging chimpanzees helped an unfamiliar human to the same degree as did human infants, irrespective of being rewarded (experiment 1) or whether the helping was costly (experiment 2). In a third study, chimpanzees helped an unrelated conspecific gain access to food in a novel situation that required subjects to use a newly acquired skill on behalf of another individual. These results indicate that chimpanzees share crucial aspects of altruism with humans, suggesting that the roots of human altruism may go deeper than previous experimental evidence suggested.read more
Citations
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References
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Ernst Fehr,Simon Gächter +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that negative emotions towards defectors are the proximate mechanism behind altruistic punishment and that cooperation flourishes if altruistic punishments are possible, and breaks down if it is ruled out.
Posted Content
Altruistic Punishment in Humans
Ernst Fehr,Simon Gaechter +1 more
TL;DR: It is shown experimentally that the altruistic punishment of defectors is a key motive for the explanation of cooperation, and that future study of the evolution of human cooperation should include a strong focus on explaining altruistic punished.
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Journal ArticleDOI
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Ernst Fehr,Urs Fischbacher +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors point out that current gene-based evolutionary theories cannot explain important patterns of human altruism, pointing towards the importance of both theories of cultural evolution as well as gene-culture co-evolution.