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Friendship and the Banker's Paradox: Other Pathways to the Evolution of Adaptations for Altruism
Abstract
The classical definition of altruism in evolutionary biology requires that an organism incur a fitness cost in the course of providing others with a fitness benefit. New insights are gained, however, by exploring the implications of an adaptationist version of the 'problem of altruism,' as the existence of machinery designed to deliver benefits to others. Alternative pathways for the evolution of altruism are discussed, which avoid barriers thought to limit the emergence of reciprocation across species. We define the Banker's Paradox, and show how its solution can select for cognitive machinery designed to deliver benefits to others, even in the absence of traditional reciprocation. These models allow one to understand aspects of the design and social dynamics of human friendship that are otherwise mysterious. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... Helpers often have a stake in a recipient's welfare: If A provides benefits to B, intentionally or not, then B has a vested interest in helping A so that A is in a better position to provide such benefits (Roberts, 2005). This principle has been invented numerous times under various names, including stake (Roberts, 2005), pseudoreciprocity (Connor, 1986), by-product reciprocity (Sachs et al., 2004), partnership (Eshel & Shaked, 2001), group augmentation (Kokko et al., 2001), interdependence (Aktipis et al., 2018;Brown & Brown, 2006), 1 irreplaceability (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996), and vested interests (Barclay & Van Vugt, 2015). Stake can occur within species, such as when villagers have a vested interest in the soldiers who guard their city and thus benefit from helping those soldiers stay fed, alert, and able to defend the city. ...
... In other words, reciprocity creates stake. However, participants' stake in their partner depended on that partner being irreplaceable (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996): Participants were less willing to help their partners if they could easily replace that partner with another cooperator. ...
Why do we care so much for friends—much more than one might predict from reciprocity alone? According to a recent theory, organisms who cooperate with each other come to have a stake in each other’s well-being: A good cooperator is worth protecting—even anonymously if necessary—so they can be available to cooperate in the future. Here, we present three experiments showing that reciprocity creates a stake in a partner’s well-being, such that people are willing to secretly pay to protect good cooperative partners, if doing so keeps those partners available for future interaction. Participants played five rounds of a cooperative game (Prisoner’s Dilemma) and then received an opportunity to help their partner, without the partner ever knowing. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were more willing to help a cooperative partner if doing so kept that partner available for future rounds, compared to when the help simply raised the partner’s earnings. This effect was specific to cooperative partners: The type of help mattered less for uncooperative partners or for recipients that participants did not directly interact with. In other words, an ongoing history of reciprocity gave people a stake in their partner’s good condition but not their partner’s payoff. Experiment 3 showed that participants had less stake in their partners if those partners could be easily replaced by another cooperator. These findings show that reciprocity and stake are not separate processes. Instead, even shallow reciprocity creates a deeper stake in a partner’s well-being, including a willingness to help with zero expectation of recognition. Future work should examine how one’s stake in partners is affected by ecological factors that affect the gains of cooperation and the ease of finding new partners.
... On the other hand, reputation management would require that we help victims, thereby burnishing our image as generous, dependable cooperators (Sperber & Baumard, 2012). Maintaining this reputation would also make it more likely that we will receive help when we in turn need it (Sugiyama & Sugiyama, 2003;Tooby & Cosmides, 1996). ...
In four preregistered studies, we tested implications from a cooperation model that explains victim-blaming as a strategic move, as a way for people to avoid the costs of helping victims (who seem to be unpromising cooperation partners) without paying the reputational cost of being seen as ungenerous, reluctant cooperators. An implication of this perspective is that, if an individual is identified as a poor cooperation prospect to start with, people would be likely to blame that individual for his/her own misfortune, notably by suggesting that the victim was negligent. The four studies presented here support this interpretation, as participants attributed more negligence to an accident victim if that victim had been initially described as less prosocial, either because they denied benefits to others or because they created costs for others. These results are consistent with a familiar result, that people blame victims more if they feel (or want to be seen as) more socially distant from that victim. The present studies may offer a simple, cooperation-based account of this and other aspects of victim-blaming.
... Additionally, certain activities crucial for survival, such as hunting in foraging societies, required cooperation among individuals from different families (Lee & Devore, 1968). Establishing friendships offered individuals additional sources of support and assistance, making a significant difference in their survival during times of need (Aktipis et al., 2016;Hruschka, 2010;Kruger, 2003;Tooby & Cosmides, 1996; see also Ayers et al., 2023aAyers et al., , 2023b. ...
Friendship constitutes an important aspect of human interaction. However, not all friendships are equally desirable, and the current study aimed to identify the strategies that people use to strengthen desirable friendships. More specifically, Study 1 employed open-ended questionnaires on a sample of 218 Greek-speaking participants and identified 54 acts that people use for this purpose. Study 2 utilized a close-ended questionnaire on a sample of 434 Greek-speaking participants and classified these acts into seven broader strategies that people employ to strengthen desirable friendships. The most commonly used strategy was “provide support,” followed by “more frequent interaction,” and “show trust.” Additionally, women indicated a higher willingness to use these strategies than men, while age effects were observed for several strategies. Furthermore, individuals who scored higher in agreeableness and openness indicated a greater willingness to use most of the identified strategies.
Axelrod and Hamilton (1981) used the repeated prisoner's dilemma game as a basis for their widely cited analysis of the evolution of reciprocal altruism. Recently, it has been argued that the repeated prisoner's dilemma is not a good model for this task. Some critics have argued that the single period prisoner's dilemma represents mutualistic rather than altruistic social interactions. Others have argued that reciprocal altruism requires that the opportunities for altruism occur sequentially, first one individual and then after some delay the other. Here I begin by arguing that the single period prisoner's dilemma game is consistent with the definition of altruism that is widely accepted in evolutionary biology. Then I present two modified versions of the repeated prisoner's dilemma, one in which behavior is sequential, and a second in which behavior occurs in continuous time. Each of these models shares the essential qualitative properties with the version used by Axelrod and Hamilton.