ABSTRACT
One way to understand the evolutionary genetics of altruism is to look at altruism's ugly doppelganger, victimization. This chapter looks specifically at altruism in human beings, first through the cross-cultural lens of anthropologists, and then bringing that focus closer to home. Kinship systems are a central concern of all human beings. Turning from antagonism to amicability, one thing stands out as a human universal: nepotism. Furthermore, nepotism doesn't appear in a social vacuum, and in fact, cultural rules and family traditions typically urge people to treat their relatives with special care and kindness. An interesting way to test whether genetic "knowledge" is reflected in peoples' actual behavior is to examine the details of inheritance. Inheritance patterns are strikingly in tune with kin selection theory; in particular, relatives are consistently favored over non-relatives or impersonal organizations, and closely related kin are favored over those more distantly related.
