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Altruistically Inclined?: The Behavioral Sciences, Evolutionary Theory, And The Origins Of Reciprocity, Alexander J. Field Jan 2001

Altruistically Inclined?: The Behavioral Sciences, Evolutionary Theory, And The Origins Of Reciprocity, Alexander J. Field

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Altruistically Inclined? examines the implications of recent research in the natural sciences for two important social scientific approaches to individual behavior: the economic/rational choice approach and the sociological/anthropological. It considers jointly two controversial and related ideas: the operation of group selection within early human evolutionary processes and the likelihood of modularity—domain-specific adaptations in our cognitive mechanisms and behavioral predispositions.

Experimental research shows that people will often cooperate in one-shot prisoner's dilemma (PD) games and reject positive offers in ultimatum games, contradicting commonly accepted notions of rationality. Upon first appearance, predispositions to behave in this fashion could not have been favored …