PNAS: Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Max Krasnow and Andrew Delton study the evolution of generosity

Content: 

Commonplace acts of generosity have long posed a scientific puzzle to evolutionary biologists and economists. In acting generously, the donor incurs a cost to benefit someone else. But choosing to incur a cost with no prospect of a compensating benefit is seen as maladaptive by biologists, and irrational by economists. If traditional theories in these fields are true, such behaviors should have been weeded out long ago by evolution or by self-interest. Recently, however, a team of scientists at UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Evolutionary Psychology conducted a series of computer simulations designed to test whether it was really true that evolution would select against generosity in situations where there is no future payoff. Their work surprisingly shows that generosity — acting to help others in the absence of foreseeable gains — emerges naturally from the evolution of cooperation. READ MORE (UCSB Featured News)

News Date: 

Thursday, July 28, 2011
January 22, 2015 - 4:14pm