Altruism

نویسندگان

  • Stuart A. West
  • Andy Gardner
  • Ashleigh S. Griffin
چکیده

What is altruism? Altruism is a type of social behaviour. From an evolutionary point of view, a behaviour is social if it has consequences for both the actor and another individual — the recipient. Social behaviours can be categorized according to whether their consequences for the actor and recipient are beneficial, increasing fitness, or costly, decreasing fitness (Figure 1). Altruism is when a behaviour reduces the fitness of the actor, but increases the fitness of the recipient. This contrasts with the other forms of social behaviour: selfish, mutually beneficial and spiteful (Figure 1): a behaviour that increases the fitness of the actor is mutually beneficial if the recipient also benefits, and selfish if the recipient suffers a loss; a behaviour that reduces the fitness of both the actor and the recipient is spiteful.

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عنوان ژورنال:
  • Current Biology

دوره 16  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2006