Altruism or Egoism: A Review About Sober and Wilson's Model on the Evolution of Altruism

Since 1960's,social biologists have tried to explain altruism based on evolution but without invoking the cruel natural selection rule of Darwinism. Group selection and family selection theories were then established to explain altruism within groups and families.Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson introduced a new perspective in their book Unto others: The evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior.They further developed the group selection theory by distinguishing between intra-group selection and inter-group selection to justify selections at the group level.In the light of this theory,altruism is superior in the inter-selection while egoism is superior in the intra-selection,and altruism will evolve in the global population in this way.