UC Davis

People are often generous even when it is not in their apparent self-interest to do so as demonstrated by numerous experiments using the dictator game (DG). More recent research using DGs has varied the number of dictators and recipients and used these games to investigate the bystander effect and congestible altruism. These studies have found that people are less generous when there are others who could be generous (the bystander effect) and also less generous when there are multiple recipients (congestible altruism) though the sum of their generosity to all recipients increases. A working hypothesis is proposed that the context-sensitive generosity observed in n-person DGs can be explained as equitable behavior. From an evolutionary perspective, explaining the evolution of equitable behavior is challenging at best. To provide an evolutionary explanation, a second working hypothesis is proposed: equitable offers evolve because they reduce resource deficits produced by variability in the accumulation of resources and thereby minimize the length of interbirth intervals (IBIs) and increase fitness. Based on this working hypothesis, an evolutionary model was developed for n-person DGs to investigate the evolution of equitable offers as a resource allocation problem when reproduction is constrained by IBIs. Simulations demonstrated that equitable offers could evolve in group-structured populations when there is a cost (i.e., longer IBIs) to running resource deficits. Mean evolved offers also varied as a function of the number of dictators and recipients in patterns consistent with the bystander effect and congestible altruism. Equitable offers evolved because they reduced resource variability among group members and thereby reduced resource deficits, which insured higher average rates of reproduction for more equitable groups of agents. Implications of these results are discussed.