考研时文阅读(2)

考研时文阅读（2）

Altruism（利他主义）, according to the text books, has two forms. One is known technically as kin selection, and familiarly as nepotism. This spreads an individual's genes collaterally, rather than directly, but is otherwise similar to his helping his own offspring. The second form is reciprocal altruism, or “you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours”. It relies on trust, and a good memory for favours given and received, but is otherwise not much different from simultaneous collaboration (such as a wolf pack hunting) in that the benefit exceeds the cost for all parties involved. Humans, however, show a third sort of altruism—one that has no obvious pay-off. This is altruism towards strangers, for example, charity. That may enhance reputation. But how d oes an enhanced reputation weigh in the Darwinian balance? To investigate this question, the researchers made an interesting link. At first sight, helping charities looks to be at the opposite end of the selfishness spectrum from conspicuous consumption. Yet they have something in common: both involve the profligate deployment of resources. That is characteristic of the consequences of sexual selection. An individual shows he (or she) has resources to burn—whether those are biochemical reserves, time or, in the human instance, money—by using them to make costly signals. That demonstrates underlying fitness of the sort favoured by evolution. Viewed this way, both conspicuous consumption and what the researchers call “blatant benevolence” are costly signals. A nd since they are behaviours rather than structures, and thus controlled by the brain, they may be part of the mating mind. Researchers divided a bunch of volunteers into two groups. Those in one were put into what the researchers hoped would be a “romantic mindset” by being shown pictures of attractive members of the opposite sex. They were each asked to write a description of a perfect date with one of these people. The unlucky members of the other group were shown pictures of buildings and told to write about the weather. The participants were then asked two things. The first was to imagine they had $5,000 in the bank. They could spend part or all of it on various luxury items such as a new car, a dinner party at a restaurant or a holiday in Europe. They were also asked what fraction of a hypothetical 60 hours of leisure time during the course of a month they would devote to volunteer work. The results were just what the researchers hoped for. In the romantically primed group, the men went wild with the Monopoly money. Conversely, the women volunteered their lives away. Those women continued, however, to be skinflints, and the men remained callously indifferent to those less fortunate than themselves. Meanwhile, in the other group there was little inclination either to profligate spending or to good works. Based on this result, it looks as though the sexes do, indeed, have different strategies for showing off. Moreover, they do not waste their resources by behaving like that all the time. Only when it counts sexually are men profligate and women helpful. （选自Economist, 08/02/2007）参考译文根据教科书，利他主义有两种表现形式：一种就是所谓的血缘选择，即家庭亲戚关系。这种利他主义是通过一个人的基因间接传播的，而不是直接的，但是另一方面也就像一个人会无私地帮助自己的孩子一样。第二种形式是互惠的利他主义，或者说“你帮我搓背我也帮你搓背”。这种利他主义的基础在于信任，并对自己得到和付出过的帮助保持较好的记忆，但是除此以外，这种利他主义和物种天然的合作关系（比如狼群共同寻找猎物）没有什么大的区别，因为对于所有的参与者来说，他们合作的所得远远超过其付出。但是人类却表现出了第三种利他主义—一种不会有什么赢利的利他主义。这是一种对陌生人的利他主义，比如说慈善业，从而能够增进人们的名誉。但是名誉的增加如何在达尔文平衡中找到其位置呢？为了探讨这一问题，研究者们找到了一个有趣的关系。乍一看，从自私角度来说参与慈善事业