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Altruism is helping others at some cost to the helper, eg giving away food helps nourish others that could have nourished the giver. Altruism may be a basis for explaining moral behaviour.
The study of altruism helps explain moral (ie helping) behaviour. Altruism means helping others at some cost to the one giving the help. You risk your life diving into the sea to save someone from drowning. Another example of altruism is giving money to a beggar, even though its loss may be minor for you.
Altruistic acts are common throughout the animal kingdom but usually within a species, not across species (such as a human who is altruistic to an animal). This highlights a difficulty for achieving rights for animals. Humans and some animal species are made by evolution to act altruistically and the actor does not have to know consciously why he does it or what benefit he might gain from it. However, for animal rights to make headway, human altruism to animals would benefit by having a persuasive scientific explanation to rationalise and support it.
Examples of Animal Altruism
Perhaps the highest degree of altruism is giving up your life so that others can live. For example:
Individual bees defend their colonies to the point of killing themselves. You risk being stung disturbing a honeybee nest. The sting from a bee embeds in your skin and when the bee flies away the embedded sting pulls out the bee's viscera killing the bee. Bees act altruistically by sacrificing themselves for their colony.
Some animals, such as robins and thrushes, place their lives in danger when warning others of an approaching raptor by emitting a high pitched whistle. Whistles are difficult for raptors to pinpoint but might nevertheless reveal the caller's position, who could then fall prey to the raptor. Meerkats post sentinels to watch for danger from predators and the sentinels are similarly at risk when sounding their alarm.
There is always a cost of some sort in altruistic behaviour, although the cost need not necessarily endanger the altruist's life. Two examples of altruism not involving danger come from wild chimpanzees:
Chimpanzees eat plants and fruit but occasionally catch and eat baboons. A chimpanzee who catches a baboon sometimes gives bits of the carcass to soliciting chimpanzees. By giving away the food the altruist loses potential nourishment.
The adoption of orphaned infants is another altruism characteristic of chimpanzees, and humans. A major loss to the altruist is the energy invested in raising someone else's offspring.
According to evolutionary theory individuals act to replicate their genes. The way to replicate genes is by turning out offspring, because offspring carry copies of their parent's genes.
Altruism expressed in evolutionary terms is the most effective way to understand it.
However, altruism seems to run counter to this theory in that genes will not spread if their bearer does not reproduce because he died or reproduced less successful because he gave up life-supporting resources. Some ways of explaining the spread of altruism are the following.
Kin selection was introduced by W D Hamilton in the 1960's. The idea is that it is worth sacrificing your life to save the lives of your close kin. Say you die (in a house fire) while saving the lives of your children, you still ensure that a greater number of copies of your genes survive because they are passed on in your children. Kin selection says you are more likely to help close relatives (you do not inevitably have to die) even if the cost to yourself is high. Furthermore, you help a distant relative only if the cost to yourself is low (for instance you give him food or shelter). You help strangers (non-relatives) least because unlike your family they share few copies of your genes with you. When you help your kin survive and they have inherited this altruistic way of behaving then altruism is likely to spread throughout the population.
Kin selection offers an explanation for why people help their children and relations. But people help total strangers, which led to an idea advanced by R L Trivers in the 1970's. Reciprocal altruism says you help unrelated individuals (your non-family) because they might help you in return (hence reciprocal
altruism). This kind of altruism depends on your ability to identify others who may return your help and those you think may not. If you think someone is unlikely to give back a favour, or cheat on you by taking your help and never returning it, you are not likely to do them a favour.
Multi-level Selection Theory
How can we explain helping behaviour outside kin selection and reciprocal altruism? Multi-level selection theory tries to explain altruism in terms of intensely competing groups. In this theory, elaborated in the 1990's by D S Wilson, a group with a high level of cooperation among its members is more likely to prosper than another group in competition with it that has a low level of cooperation among its members. Thus in the general population the number of altruists and cooperating groups will increase as cooperation flourishes and less successful non-cooperating groups lose out.
Costly Signalling Theory
Like multi-level selection theory, costly signalling theory endeavours to explain helping behaviour among strangers. Costly signalling theory tries to account for altruistic acts that cost an altruist a great deal of energy, time or other currency. Developed by A Zahavi in the 1970's and then by A Grafen in the 1990's, the theory proposes that your extreme benevolence serves to reinforce your status, that is your unselfish behaviour will be perceived by others as coming from a great person, and that you will benefit in the long run from this perception. Therefore if you are going to act as a 'costly signaller' your kindness must:
- Be costly to yourself.
- Be a dependable indicator about yourself, for instance your wealth, power or intelligence.
- Be easily known to others that you are being kind (you must show off your benevolence in some way, even subtly).
- Lead to some advantage for yourself, such as gaining a mate, an ally or high social position.
Costly signalling theory has another advantage, for if you fall on bad times your former generosity will encourage reciprocal altruism from those you benefited in your glory days. So scatter as much of your dosh as you can - by helping others, even animals, you may really be helping yourself !
Cross Species Altruism
A great cartoon by an unknown artist. Draw your own moral conclusion.
The above hypotheses of the way altruism works apply within a species. But we must still wait for a hypothesis that satisfactorily explains why some humans work so hard to help animals. However, although explaining altruism in evolutionary terms may illuminate the origin and benefits to animals of helping one another, it is a different problem to explain how we should
help one another. For how we should help one another we may need to include moral philosophy in our thinking.
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