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This Open-Access-book examines the phenomenon of discrimination using a descriptive approach. Discrimination is omnipresent, whether it is people who discriminate against other people or, more recently, also machines that discriminate against people. The first part of the analysis employs decision theory on discrimination, leading to two fundamental subtypes: taste-based discrimination and statistical discrimination. The second part links taste-based discrimination to social identity theory, demonstrates that not all taste-based discrimination is ultimately statistical discrimination, and reveals the evolutionary origins of our tastes. The third part surveys how people get their beliefs for statistical discrimination and thereby shows that they often deviate from Bayesianism: they have inherent prior beliefs and do not exclusively update their beliefs according to Bayes’ law. Additionally, the analysis of belief formation highlights the importance of the learning environment. The last part reassembles the previously dissected aspects of discrimination, presents a new descriptive model of discrimination, and lists five implications for a normative theory of discrimination.

Business ethics & social responsibility --- Bayesianism --- intergroup behaviour --- parochial altruism --- statistical discrimination --- taste-based discrimination --- Open Access

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A number of recent influential publications have promoted the idea that the high levels of altruism and violent intergroup conflicts observed in humans might be the result of a joint evolution of behavioral traits causing cooperativeness among group members ('in-group love') and spite and aggression between members of different groups ('out-group hate'). This hypothesis, dating back to Darwin himself, has been dubbed 'parochial altruism'. While much empirical evidence has been collected which shows that humans readily condition their social behaviors on their conspecifics' group membership, a number of important questions still remain unanswered. These include: Which selective mechanisms are at work in the suggested co-evolution of in-group love and out-group hate: individual selection, kin selection, sexual selection? When and why does altruism become parochial? When and why can parochialism be altruistic? How does parochial altruism fare in comparison to other explanatory approaches to the question of why humans are altruistic and why they are collectively aggressive? Did human prehistory really offer the conditions required for parochial altruism to evolve? Is parochial altruism universal across situational contexts and cultures? Which factors can explain individual differences in parochial altruism? This Research Topic brings together current interdisciplinary works on the topic. Lab and field experiments using different methods critically investigate the antecedents, forms, and consequences of parochial altruism. As such, the Research Topic contributes to close some important research gaps but also provides an overview of the diverse methods for studying parochial altruism across scientific disciplines.

in-group favoritism --- In-group love --- Intergroup conflict --- Out-group hate --- prosociality --- Discrimination --- intergroup relations --- evolution --- Parochial altruism

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Why do humans, uniquely among animals, cooperate in large numbers to advance projects for the common good? Contrary to the conventional wisdom in biology and economics, this generous and civic-minded behavior is widespread and cannot be explained simply by far-sighted self-interest or a desire to help close genealogical kin. In A Cooperative Species, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis--pioneers in the new experimental and evolutionary science of human behavior--show that the central issue is not why selfish people act generously, but instead how genetic and cultural evolution has produced a species in which substantial numbers make sacrifices to uphold ethical norms and to help even total strangers. The authors describe how, for thousands of generations, cooperation with fellow group members has been essential to survival. Groups that created institutions to protect the civic-minded from exploitation by the selfish flourished and prevailed in conflicts with less cooperative groups. Key to this process was the evolution of social emotions such as shame and guilt, and our capacity to internalize social norms so that acting ethically became a personal goal rather than simply a prudent way to avoid punishment. Using experimental, archaeological, genetic, and ethnographic data to calibrate models of the coevolution of genes and culture as well as prehistoric warfare and other forms of group competition, A Cooperative Species provides a compelling and novel account of how humans came to be moral and cooperative.

Cooperation. --- Cooperativeness. --- Behavior evolution. --- Behavioral evolution --- Cooperation (Psychology) --- Collaborative economy --- Cooperative distribution --- Cooperative movement --- Distribution, Cooperative --- Peer-to-peer economy --- Sharing economy --- Evolutionary psychology --- Social psychology --- Economics --- Profit-sharing --- Cooperation --- Cooperativeness --- Behavior evolution --- E-books --- Australia. --- altruism. --- altruistic cooperation. --- altruistic punishment. --- ancestral humans. --- behavior. --- beliefs. --- coevolution. --- common good. --- constraints. --- coordinated punishment. --- correlated equilibrium. --- costly signaling. --- cultural transmission. --- culture. --- early humans. --- equilibrium selection. --- ethical norms. --- evolution. --- evolutionary dynamics. --- fitness-reducing norm. --- fitness. --- folk theorem. --- foragers. --- free-riders. --- free-riding. --- gene-culture coevolution. --- genetic differentiation. --- genetic inheritance. --- group competition. --- group membership. --- guilt. --- helping behavior. --- hostility. --- human cooperation. --- hunter-gatherer society. --- inclusive fitness. --- indirect reciprocity. --- institutions. --- intergroup conflict. --- internalization. --- multi-level selection. --- norms. --- parochial altruism. --- parochialism. --- peer pressure. --- phenotypic expression. --- positive assortment. --- preferences. --- prehistoric human society. --- private information. --- prosocial behavior. --- public goods game. --- public information. --- punishment. --- reciprocal altruism. --- repeated game. --- reproductive leveling. --- sacrifice. --- selective extinction. --- self-interest. --- shame. --- social behavior. --- social dilemmas. --- social emotions. --- social institutions. --- social interactions. --- social norms. --- social order. --- social preferences. --- socialization. --- sociobiology. --- strong reciprocity. --- within-group segmentation.