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 .
Read more about this topic: Reciprocal Altruism
Famous quotes containing the words emotional, dispositions, complex, regulating, system and/or reciprocal:
“There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art.... Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Virtues are not emotions. Emotions are movements of appetite, virtues dispositions of appetite towards movement. Moreover emotions can be good or bad, reasonable or unreasonable; whereas virtues dispose us only to good. Emotions arise in the appetite and are brought into conformity with reason; virtues are effects of reason achieving themselves in reasonable movements of the appetites. Balanced emotions are virtue’s effect, not its substance.”
—Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274)
“I have met charming people, lots who would be charming if they hadn’t got a complex about the British and everyone has pleasant and cheerful manners and I like most of the American voices. On the other hand I don’t believe they have any God and their hats are frightful. On balance I prefer the Arabs.”
—Freya Stark (1893–1993)
“What makes some internal feature of a thing a representation could only its role in regulating the behavior of an intentional system.”
—Daniel Clement Dennett (b. 1942)
“Television is an excellent system when one has nothing to lose, as is the case with a nomadic and rootless country like the United States, but in Europe the affect of television is that of a bulldozer which reduces culture to the lowest possible denominator.”
—Marc Fumaroli (b. 1932)
“I had no place in any coterie, or in any reciprocal self-advertising. I stood alone. I stood outside. I wanted only to learn. I wanted only to write better.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)