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strong reciprocity: the fact that people sometimes help unrelated strangers even when reciprocation and reputation enhancement are out of the question. As with extreme altruism, this type of behavior probably isn’t an evolved tendency in itself; we presumably don’t have a specific evolved motivation to help strangers we’ll never meet again when no one else is watching. Instead, we have a relatively generalized willingness to help others, which usually produces adaptive behavior but sometimes doesn’t. The deeper lesson here is that, when we’re testing the water for an adaptive explanation, we shouldn’t ask “How might this particular behavior in this particular circumstance enhance this person’s fitness?” What we should ask is “How might the emotions and motivations underpinning this behavior enhance people’s fitness in general?”
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