Kin selection: would someone be more likely to exhibit altruistic behavior toward a parent, sibling, or cousin

Question

rB - C > 0

r = coefficient of relatedness

B = the average number of extra offspring

C = cost to be altruistic

I'm stuck on my AP Bio summer work! Please help me!

Btw, B for the average human is 2 children each but does this apply to the prent since its already had kids?

Answer 1

Average number extra offspring; not average. The average human reproductive rate is not exactly two, but varies by area. Cost of altruism to kin remains low. It is the coefficient of relatedness that counts. Toward parent; = 1/2. Toward sibling; = 1/2. Toward cousin.; 1/4; 1/8. So, you see that kin selection is driven by genetic relatedness. You would care more about you brother that your cousin and extend more benefit. Thus ultimate causation, kin selection, is supported by proximate causation, varying love of kin.

rB-C>0. This is Hamilton's rule. Also expressed by adding C to each side. rB>C

Answer 2

If one is bound to someone by any family ties, then it isn't really altruism.  It's loyalty, and a few other things, but not altruism.  From an ethical point of view, this is a dangerous conflation of ideas.  Imagine what would happen if everyone came to be convinced that altruism operated through family ties.  Human intelligence is localized physically, in that it is subject to the experience of the sense organs of a physical body as it moves through the world.  It tends to treat its here-and-now experience as more fundamental, and distant, general, and abstract mental experiences as less fundamental.  It's easy to care for one's family, but it takes something else to care for strangers and those who seem unfamiliar.  If the concept of altruism is adulterated just to fit into some sociobiologist's model, and the adulterated concept catches on, then authentic altruism is in jeopardy.  The result is a reduction of the good that people do in the world.  Is this worth some prof getting a book published?

___Similar things happen when people come to expect forgiveness to be forgetting, and just as easy, or expect toleration only to apply to things that aren't repugnant to them.  The paradoxes that are forgiveness and toleration, which rest on the notion of withholding hatred toward things that we would otherwise hate, are diminished when they are diluted when we play fast and loose with them.  Altruism is a less obvious case, but it's still a bad thing to reduce it to a mere algorithm.

Answer 3

Look into Trobriand Island culture for a good example of how and why familial altruism makes sense.  Basically the goal is to make sure your genetics are extended into the next generation.  Anything that helps this is beneficial.  In the Trobriands a man does not provide for his wife and her offspring but for his sister and her children.  The reason for this is a man is not related to his wife (share no genetics) and the father of the children could be another man (again not his genetics).  But he knows he shares a good deal of genetics with his sister and that her children share his genes as well.  The term altruism is tricky because this is not really altruistic but then again few human actions ever are.  Take Hobbes, the ultimate anti-altruist, who was once seen giving money to a begger.  Someone saw this and said, 'What are you doing?'.  Hobbes' response?  'I'm giving him money so I don't have to see him like that'...