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| | ScienceDirect - Journal of Economic Psychology : What is altruism?*1 |
 | | There are three major interactional (rationalistic) theories of altruism, viz., "egoistic," "egocentric," and "altercentric." I call them "interactional" because, despite their differences, they model action after the standard economic approach, viz., as the outcome of optimization (see [Khalil, 2003b]). |
 | | In economics, it is developed further by [Hirshleifer and Rasmusen, 1989], and extended with an evolutionary perspective by [Guttman, 1996] and others. |
 | | This motivation is clearest in acts of self-sacrifice, where agents do not count on remaining alive to claim any benefit or, when the acts are executed spontaneously as in wars or emergencies, agents do not have time to fancy their imaginations with the pleasure of the recipients. |
| www.towson.edu /~jpomy/behavioralecon/whatisaltjepsyfeb04.html (12437 words) |
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