ABSTRACT
In everyday life, one can often observe people helping others. Parents help their children to grow up, and children help their parents when they grow old. Brothers and sisters support each other when necessary. Are these behaviors manifestations of altruism? It is claimed by many that helping behavior between close relatives has nothing to do with altruistic motivation but is the result of age-old genetic processes in which the survival of one’s own genes has formed an innate urge to help relatives. Dawkins (1976), in this respect, assumes the operation of the “selfish gene” for which human beings only seem to be carriers, and which drives human beings to behave in such a way as to increase the chances of the gene’s survival; one of those behaviors is to help one’s offspring or close relatives. Economists, in addition, argue that all human behavior is directed to increasing pleasure and reducing pain. Helping close relatives is not seen as an act of altruism but as an act of self-interest: the more I help my children, the more likely it is that they will help me.
