"Self-sacrifice" as an accidental outcome of extreme within-group mutualism

Abstract

Whitehouse makes no room for evolutionary approaches to extreme behaviors based on partner choice and mutualism, which have been convincingly invoked to make sense of ordinary morality. Extended to intergroup warfare, these evolutionary mechanisms may play a pivotal role in explaining the existence of extreme - though not functionally sacrificial - behaviors, benefiting non-kin fellow fighters, together with the distinctive phenomenology those behaviors display.