Report: giving benefits the giver

WASHINGTON, June 25 (UPI) -- It's better to give than to receive, especially if somebody is watching you, new research indicates.

And tossing a buck to a down-on-his-luck street musician may do more for you than him, Dr. Claus Wedekind of the University of Bern in Switzerland reports in Thursday's issue of the journal Science.

Whether the person to whom you're altruistic acknowledges your benevolence or not, if people see you giving, and you know they do, it's sure to enhance your self-esteem, Wedekind writes.

On the other hand, if you look the other way and don't give the street person a handout, you'll likely regret it later, if you believe others noticed your stinginess. And those who noticed your stinginess will see you in a dimmer light, too, he says, just as those who see you as generous when you you are altruistic will think more of you.

``The idea is that being observed giving something to, for example, the street musician, increases your social status and that being observed withholding your gift decreases it,'' Wedekind says. ``So giving, in the long run, may increase your social status if people you interact with in the future see your social stature in a better light because of your generosity,'' he says.

Therefore, he adds, giving that seems to be an altruistic act may really be more of an evolutionary act, ``a sophisticated investment into one's own future.''

Wedekind says recent research shows that ``our social experience makes us intuitive masters of highly sophisticated social games,'' such as giving when we know someone is watching.

``It is funny we are only now starting to understand the rules that we use in our own games,'' he says. He commented on recent research by scientists Martin Nowak and Karl Sigmunds of the universities of Oxford and Wien, that showed cooperation among people is done largely for expected rewards, even though we often help people who never recriprocate.

Altruism pays ``because it confers the image of a valuable community member to the cooperating individual,'' Nowak and Sigmund report, who ``propose that the emergence of indirect reciprocity was a decisive step for the evolution of human societies.''

In short, helping someone improves reputation, which in turns makes you more likely to be helped. According to this view, Darwinian evolution not only explains survival of the fittest, but of the most generous.