Comments on: Selfless monkeys find personal reward in helping others

By: This Week in Evolution

This Week in Evolution — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:55:51 +0000

I can’t find the paper on PNAS website or using DOI.

By: Ford

Ford — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:35:40 +0000

I wonder if results would have been different if the choosing monkeys could see the other monkey but could tell that the other monkey couldn’t see them. Apparently their explanation of the effects of the opaque screen was that they wouldn’t get the pleasure of seeing the other monkey get apple, but reciprocity seems a plausible alternative hypothesis, especially for unrelated individuals.

By: tbell

tbell — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:52:46 +0000

I don’t get the reasoning about dominant monkeys, or maybe I don’t think that all of the possible alternatives have been explored…
‘But on average, the dominant monkeys were actually slightly more likely to be selfless than subordinate ones, which is exactly the opposite pattern you would expect if their charity was really motivated by fear of punishment.’
Don’t you think that dominance is partially maintained by ‘rewarding’ those lower down on the hierarchy to a certain extent? If it is at no cost to the dominant monkey, keeping subordinates happy might reasonably make them less likely to make a bid to overthrow the dominant monkey.

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:17:56 +0000

It depends on your definition of "selfless" and "altruism". I'm not going to explain it any better than one of my previous commenters did so I refer you there.

By: ennui

ennui — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:29:13 +0000

The terminology is still strange: If you have empathy, so that you have some kind of emotional reward/psycological income from helping others, how is this ‘selfless?’
Further, how would being truly selfless be rational? What would an example look like?