Time to Face the Consequences of Conflating Altruism and Cooperation

Scientific and public discourse often conflate the concepts of altruism and cooperation, although these orientations reflect distinct tendencies in allocating resources to oneself and to others. This opinion-article highlights the serious consequences that may arise when the distinction is not made. Some of these consequences are practical and others are sociopolitical. Three core arguments are advanced. First, altruism may be undermined when it goes unrecognized as such. Second, altruism contributes to cooperation without imposing net costs on cooperators. In fact, cooperators will incur costs to protect altruistic behavior only insofar as it ultimately benefits themselves. Third, depending on how inclusively the self is defined (or experienced), altruism may produce self-benefit at a higher level of the evolutionary hierarchy. Clarifying these relations and underlying distinctions helps prevent errors in diagnosing social failures and avoids misrepresentations such as the claim that altruism is inherently costly and should therefore be curtailed, a narrative that is sometimes invoked by exclusionary or nationalist perspectives to oppose other-regarding policies. Generally, models of social system dynamics can be more accurate and predictive when incentive structures are parameterized according to population composition.