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:
“A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.”
—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
“The thing that makes our friendships so short and changeable is that the qualities and dispositions of the soul are very hard to know, and those of the understanding and wit very easy.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“In ordinary speech the words perception and sensation tend to be used interchangeably, but the psychologist distinguishes. Sensations are the items of consciousness—a color, a weight, a texture—that we tend to think of as simple and single. Perceptions are complex affairs that embrace sensation together with other, associated or revived contents of the mind, including emotions.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)
“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)
“Those words freedom and opportunity do not mean a license to climb upwards by pushing other people down. Any paternalistic system that tries to provide for security for everyone from above only calls for an impossible task and a regimentation utterly uncongenial to the spirit of our people.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Of course we will continue to work for cheaper electricity in the homes and on the farms of America; for better and cheaper transportation; for low interest rates; for sounder home financing; for better banking; for the regulation of security issues; for reciprocal trade among nations and for the wiping out of slums. And my friends, for all of these we have only begun to fight.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)