Reciprocal Altruism

People are basically selfish. It's take, take, and take... and me, me and me.

Psychologists use the term Reciprocal Altruism to describe the behavior of those people who overcome that tendency towards selfishness and work together. "We tend to extend help to others on the understanding that some other will expend a few resources to save us," says psychologist Andrew Shatte.

Expert on resilience psychology might or might not agree but it seems to this engineer that eventually the giver quits giving unless he feels others are giving back. Does this also describe co-dependency? Yes, the co-dependent does look for something back, usually words of gratitude, otherwise the co-dependency relationship eventually becomes unstable, a solution is sought and detachment is obtained, resulting in the peace necessary to heal the wounded soul.

Yes, sometimes love leaves softly. Accept it.

Example: One of our Habitat houses became a crack house, and volunteers dried up for quite a while.

I'm starting to catch on to psychology.

Freud rocks!


- text © 2009 by Willy



P.S., Reciprocal Altruism is many-on-many (or one-on-many) and co-dependency is one-on-one, and thus a similar tie-in between a peacegame (opposite of a wargame) and the Prisoner's Dilemma.