Altruism is defined by sustained patterns of costly acts, not any single act.
Evidence
The relation of biological evolution of altruism to behavioral evolution of altruism becomes clear if a person’s altruism is thought of not in terms of any act alone, but rather in terms of the act in the context of a pattern of altruistic acts extended over time. Outside of such a pattern, an individual altruistic act might be accidental or part of a pattern of calculated or manipulative selfish behavior. Only in the context of a consistent pattern of altruistic behavior should an individual act be considered altruistic. (The apparent one-shot games of laboratory experiments should be seen in the context of the stream of everyday-life situations that the games are intended to model.) Even though every individual act of altruism is by definition costly to the actor, an overall altruistic pattern may be highly valuable (Rachlin 2002). What we inherit through biological evolution would be the capacity to highly value (and repeat) such patterns. This sort of situation – a high-valued pattern consisting of individually low-valued or costly acts – is exactly that of most self-control problems in everyday life (Rachlin 2000). — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 497
Categorization
- DEFINE: Reframes altruism as a temporally extended pattern rather than any single act, mirroring how one-shot laboratory games must be read against everyday streams of behavior.
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how the fumi-e ritual breaks an entire pattern of apostasy-obedience rather than just one act — the same pattern logic in a religious-narrative context. — connects to: Altruism without genuine moral emotion signals unreliable future cooperation. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 68
Related
Broader Connections
- Altruism without genuine moral emotion signals unreliable future cooperation.
#complicates(0.80) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 68