Selflessness:

Richard D. Alexander:

"Selflessness, the second general kind of behavioral act in terms of positive or negative social effects, is, as noted earlier, essentially opposite to selfishness. Whatever selfless behavior does, by itself alone (i.e., without return benefits), causes some of the selfless person’s calories to use some of its fitness to benefit another individual (or individuals), because some calories are being donated to the person(s) those calories assist. Without some kind of compensating forces, selflessness must continually decrease the organism’s likelihood of maximizing reproductive success.

Selfish acts are not likely to generate cooperative tendencies that can help the selfish person increase his or her likelihood of extending reproductive capabilities across generations. Helping selfish people is likely to decrease the fitness (probability of reproductive success) of the helpers because helping selfish individuals is likely to impose selflessness on the part of a helper. Cooperation as selflessness is unlikely to benefit the cooperator if the helped individual behaves selfishly. Selfless acts are not likely to be rewarded, or compensated, by assistance given to truly selfish individuals. But selfless acts that come about accidentally or incidentally can also be detrimental to the receiving or “helped” individual. We will need to ask whether selflessness can evolve, and if so, how. Genes and gene groups that are consistently surviving across generations are by definition successful. Genes that continue to fail trans-generationally eventually disappear, sometimes along with parts or entireties of genomes that fail because of dependence on failing genes. For genes and their combinations, success or “winning” is little more than continuing to exist, via changes with positive effects, generation after generation, which is all that natural selection can accomplish. Unsuccessful genes may persist temporarily if their negative effects are nullified by incidental appearances of novel modifying genes that (at least temporarily) cancel or mask the deleterious effects of the unsuccessful gene, which nevertheless is doomed to disappear, to be replaced eventually by successfully functioning mutants at the same locus (assuming no significant changes in organismal function, as when environments change). Complicated human behavioral topics are among the most difficult ones to interpret. Several concepts require understanding for the topic of selflessness. Thus, social investment refers to any personally expensive act (including selflessness) that, with or without conscious intent or knowledge, may yield no positive returns to affected individuals, such as a selfless, useless, or reproductively negative act. But social investment may also initiate or precipitate return beneficence in the form of direct and indirect social reciprocity. An example of direct reciprocity is “You scratch my back and I’ ll scratch yours.” Another is “Turn-about is fair play.” Indirect reciprocity occurs when a needy person is assisted without return (that is, direct) compensation from the helped individual. But others may observe a helper’s behavior and in turn help the helper, or they may mimic the helper by helping others, and those others may be among the ones who assist the original selfless helper. Such interactions potentially generate complex and widespread flows of beneficence that can be broadly rewarding because of numerous small and large benefits returned from many individuals (cf. Trivers 1971, Alexander 1979, 1987). Such indirect reciprocity -- the interplay of selflessness as social investment and return beneficence from diverse persons (see below) -- surely represents the most widespread, complex, and difficult interacting networks of human behavior, the interactions of everyday social behaviors. What has been termed selflessness -- and what may be thought of as evolved selflessness (meaning adaptive selflessness shaped by consistent natural selection in the form of return beneficence) -- can cause what appears to be net-cost altruism to become social investment, with or without conscious awareness of the selfless or socially investing person. Without compensating return benefits, what we humans have learned to label as selflessness cannot, it seems, exist for long, if it is consistently exposed to negative consequences of continuing differential reproduction, or natural selection. Enhancing the reputation of a socially investing individual can itself be a significant return of beneficence (Trivers 1971; Alexander 1979, 1987; Milinski et al 2002). But we are faced with a startling and at first seemingly unlikely claim. Contrary to what might be thought of as common sense, neither evolved selflessness nor incidental or accidental selflessness can persist indefinitely without return beneficence. Selflessness alone, except in kin relationships, seems not to contribute to the persistence of its own genetic elements. But return beneficence that, for example, transfers more beneficence than the cost of the original selflessness, converts that selflessness to a positive gain, essentially turning the completed exchange into a selfish transaction. This transaction provides “the other side of the coin” that includes both evolved selfishness and evolved selflessness in human sociality. These transactions can be difficult to identify because they can occur with or without conscious knowledge of likely or potential results."