Selfishness as Second-Order Altruism

Authors

• Omar Tonsi Eldakar, Binghamton University--SUNYFollow
• David Sloan Wilson, Binghamton University--SUNY

ORCID

0000-0002-4807-4979

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

ISSN

1091-6490

Publication Date

5-13-2008

Keywords

Punishment, Cooperation, Mutualism, Game Theory, Public Goods

Abstract

Selfishness is seldom considered a group-beneficial strategy. In the typical evolutionary formulation, altruism benefits the group, selfishness undermines altruism, and the purpose of the model is to identify mechanisms, such as kinship or reciprocity, that enable altruism to evolve. Recent models have explored punishment as an important mechanism favoring the evolution of altruism, but punishment can be costly to the punisher, making it a form of second-order altruism. This model identifies a strategy called “selfish punisher” that involves behaving selfishly in first-order interactions and altruistically in second-order interactions by punishing other selfish individuals. Selfish punishers cause selfishness to be a self-limiting strategy, enabling altruists to coexist in a stable equilibrium. This polymorphism can be regarded as a division of labor, or mutualism, in which the benefits obtained by first-order selfishness help to “pay” for second-order altruism.

DOI

10.1073/pnas.0712173105

Volume

105

Issue

19

First Page

6982

Last Page

6986

NSUWorks Citation

Eldakar, Omar Tonsi and David Sloan Wilson. 2008. "Selfishness as Second-Order Altruism." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, (19): 6982-6986. doi:10.1073/pnas.0712173105.