Altruism provides something of an evolutionary conundrum. Darwin told us that the fittest will survive to reproduce and pass their genes onto the next generation. Logic tells us then that people should try to maximise their fitness in order to maximise their chances of reproducing. But altruism is a willful act of self-sacrifice for the benefit of someone else. It is deliberately reducing your own fitness to help someone else.
As humans we are pre-disposed to bonding in groups. We all know the joy in belonging, whether that’s to a family group, a sports team, or some kind of club or society. We rapidly develop a sense of loyalty to groups to which we feel we belong, this is known as ‘in-group loyalty’. At its most intense in-group loyalty takes the form of ‘identity fusion’ which is when a person feels a visceral sense of belonging to a group, a sensation so strong that the person primarily identifies themselves as a member of the group rather than an individual (1).
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