Simon H A
Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.
Science. 1990 Dec 21;250(4988):1665-8. doi: 10.1126/science.2270480.
Within the framework of neo-Darwinism, with its focus on fitness, it has been hard to account for altruism behavior that reduces the fitness of the altruist but increases average fitness in society. Many population biologists argue that, except for altruism to close relatives, human behavior that appears to be altruistic amounts to reciprocal altruism, behavior undertaken with an expectation of reciprocation, hence incurring no net cost to fitness. Herein is proposed a simple and robust mechanism, based on human docility and bounded rationality that can account for the evolutionary success of genuinely altruistic behavior. Because docility-receptivity to social influence-contributes greatly to fitness in the human species, it will be positively selected. As a consequence, society can impose a "tax" on the gross benefits gained by individuals from docility by inducing docile individuals to engage in altruistic behaviors. Limits on rationality in the face of environmental complexity prevent the individual from avoiding this "tax." An upper bound is imposed on altruism by the condition that there must remain a net fitness advantage for docile behavior after the cost to the individual of altruism has been deducted.
在新达尔文主义框架内，由于其关注适应性，一直难以解释那些降低利他主义者自身适应性但却提高社会平均适应性的利他行为。许多群体生物学家认为，除了对近亲的利他行为外，看似利他的人类行为实际上等同于互惠利他主义，即行为的实施是期望得到回报，因此对适应性不会产生净成本。本文提出了一种基于人类温顺性和有限理性的简单而有力的机制，该机制能够解释真正利他行为在进化上的成功。由于温顺性——对社会影响的接受性——对人类物种的适应性有很大贡献，它将被正向选择。因此，社会可以通过诱导温顺的个体从事利他行为，对个体因温顺而获得的总收益征收“税”。面对环境复杂性时的理性限制使个体无法避免这种“税”。利他主义存在一个上限，条件是在扣除个体利他行为的成本后，温顺行为必须仍然具有净适应性优势。
