The Selfish Altruist

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Why are people philanthropists?  Amotz Zahavi’s handicap principle posits that people selfishly compete for altruism because they are trying to “increase [their] social prestige [thereby] deterring rivals and attracting collaborators.”  According to this theory, “self-less” giving demonstrates the giver’s superiority in a way that’s hard to fake.  The bad news then is that the altruist is a show-off vying for power.  The good news is that at least he is ostentatiously honest about it.

Many find this argument persuasive.  Gilbert Roberts feels that the handicap principle may be better at explaining “competitive altruism” than other theories; Richard Dawkins changed the second edition of his Selfish Gene to accommodate Zahavi’s theory; and Roy Shapira assures us that, of all the hypotheses he has examined, costly signaling is best at explaining corporate philanthropy.

Of course not everyone agrees.  Rufus Johnstone and Alan Grafen argue that signals (such as philanthropy) need only be honest “on average” because most people simply can’t verify everything they’re told.  In other words, the altruist might well be able to get away with talking much and doing precious little.  In a similar vein, Utpal Bhattacharya and Amy Dittmar contend that a good but ignored firm is far more likely to “engage in cheap talk to attract scrutiny” but, once the firm is well-known, the company is forced to “put its money where its mouth is.”  (The Economist doubts that corporate philanthropy is the right strategy in the first place.  According to the Economist, a lot of corporate philanthropy “smacks of appeasement.  Advocates of corporate social responsibility suggest that business has something to apologize for, and thus encourage its critics to find ever more to complain about.  Crocodiles never go away if you feed them.”)  Even the otherwise admiring Geoffrey Miller bemoans Zahavi’s lack of methodology.  (For his part, Zahavi doesn’t see why a complex mathematical model he does not understand is necessary to demonstrate his theory.)

Despite these legitimate objections, I think that the handicap principle is probably best at explaining the human impulse for ostentatious generosity.  Consider: according to the National Philanthropic Trust, Americans gave three hundred and eight billion dollars (or 2.2% of the GDP) to charity in 2008.  That’s money people might have used to help themselves and their families in these tough times but which they instead gave to complete strangers.  There are other theories (such as the theory of reciprocal altruism and the Tit-for-Tat principle) that try to explain this seemingly bizarre behavior.  But to my way of thinking, these other theories have just as many problems as the handicap principle and (most importantly) do not account for our tendency to show off.

For let’s admit it—showing off is at least as natural to us as charity.  And, since nature never does anything without a reason, it is quite possible that these two natural impulses are related.

It is, in other words, quite likely that the altruist is a show-off vying for status.