If humans evolved, like all animal species, largely via natural selection, then we would expect our physical and behavioral features to largely serve the primary evolutionary functions of survival and reproduction. That is how natural selection works (see Geher, 2014). Yet people help one another (often at cost to themselves) regularly. That is, we often engage in prosocial behavior, or the helping of others.

This fact, often referred to as the altruism paradox (see Geher & Wedberg, 2022), has been studied extensively by evolutionarily minded scholars in the behavioral sciences. And some great answers have emerged in the research. We disproportionately help others who share our own genes (i.e., kin; see Thompson & Fitzgerald, 2017). We help others who have helped us in the past (see Trivers, 1971). And we help others who are members of our same "team"—ultimately leading to benefits that flow back to ourselves (Wilson, 2019).

As history would have it, scholars who, often critically, raised the issue of the altruism paradox ended up advancing our understanding of the evolution of human behavior considerably. Prosocial behavior, under particular kinds of conditions, is found deep in our evolutionary roots.

In a provocative recent study on the evolutionary........

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