Studies have found that chimpanzees show spontaneous helping behavior toward humans and fellow chimps.
Discovering the relative importance of pure selfishness can help to solve the larger question of how helping behavior evolves.
John Darley and Daniel Batson at Princeton attempted to find some causes of good Samaritanism, or helping behavior, through an experiment at the Princeton Theological Seminary".
Such helping behavior seems hard to evolve by conventional selection, since it's easily subverted by cheaters who accept help but don't reciprocate.
Cooperation and helping behavior may be intentional.
Cooperation and helping behavior are simple evolutionary puzzles.
Since psychological altruism will lead to helping behavior, it is argued, psychological altruism can evolve only when a disposition to helping behavior can.
So, for instance, if extroversion is correlated with helping behavior at.25, then extroversion explains 6.25% of the variance in helping behavior.
We help others only because we recognize helping behavior as a means to egoistic ends.
Through indirect kin selection, the helping behavior, while costly, increases her inclusive fitness.
Alternatively, helping behavior among kin may be explained noncognitively as biological altruism.
