The environmental psychological literature suggested that three different value orientations (egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric) are relevant for understanding beliefs intentions. We surveyed 365 Italian adults of ages (range 18–87) to examine whether the egoistic, biospheric can lead personal and/or family related well-being. Additionally, it is examined perception presence accessibility tw...

Altruistic behavior improves the welfare of another individual while reducing the altruist's welfare. Humans' tendency to engage in altruistic behaviors is unevenly distributed across the population, and individual variation in altruistic tendencies may be genetically mediated. Although neural endophenotypes of heightened or extreme antisocial behavior tendencies have been identified in, for ex...

Young adolescents are generally considered to be self-absorbed. Studies indicate that they lack relevant general cognitive abilities, such as impulse control, that mature in early adulthood. However, their idealism may cause them to be more intolerant of unfair treatment to others and thus result in their engaging in more altruistic behavior. The present study aimed to clarify whether young ado...

We study the inefficiency of equilibria for several classes of games when players are (partially) altruistic. We model altruistic behavior by assuming that player i’s perceived cost is a convex combination of 1−αi times his direct cost and αi times the social cost. Tuning the parameters αi allows smooth interpolation between purely selfish and purely altruistic behavior. Within this framework, ...

The concept of altruism is used in very different forms by computer scientists,economists, philosophers, social scientists, psychologists and biologists. Yet, in order to be useful in social simulations, the concept "altruism" requires a more precise meaning. A quantitative formulation is proposed here, based on the cost/benefit analysis of the altruist and of society at large. This formulation...