Known Emotional Dispositions As A Complex Regulating System For Reciprocal Altruism
The human altruistic system is a sensitive and unstable one. Therefore, the tendency to give, to cheat, and the response to other’s acts of giving and cheating must be regulated by a complex psychology in each individual. Individuals differ in the degree of these tendencies and responses. According to Trivers the following emotional dispositions and their evolution can be understood in terms of regulation of altruism.
- Friendship and emotions of liking and disliking.
- Moralistic aggression. A protection mechanism from cheaters acts to regulate the advantage of cheaters in selection against the altruists. The moralistic altruist may want to educate or even punish a cheater.
- Gratitude and sympathy. A fine regulation of altruism can be associated with gratitude and sympathy in terms of cost/benefit and the level in which the beneficiary will reciprocate.
- Guilt and repetitive altruism. Prevents the cheater from cheating again. The cheater shows his regret in order to save him from paying too dearly for his acts.
- Subtle cheating. A stable evolutionary equilibrium could include a low percentage of mimics in controversial support of adaptive sociopathy.
- Trust and suspicion. These are regulators for cheating and subtle cheating.
- Partnerships. Altruism with the purpose of creating friendships.
However, it is to be noted that there is no concrete explanation on how individuals pick partners because of the scarcity of theoretical and experimental researches that assess the importance of choice; theoretically, models indicate that evolution of behaviors associated with altruism involving partner choices rarely occur due to variability of costs and benefits between multiple individuals. Therefore, it is believed that the time or frequency of reciprocal actions contribute more to an individual's choice of partner than the actual reciprocal act itself .
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