The Altruistic Brain

A book by Donald W. Pfaff, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. See a review of it here. One can get a copy of it here. In Chapter One he discusses evolutionary biology and how it came to be that humans have an altruistic impulse. He covers the 3 basic responses in the field: selfish genes, kin selection and group selection. He thinks that all 3 work together to create altruism.

"It does not matter which of these paths was more important—a fact that in any case we cannot measure—so much as it does matter that they all support the notion that evolution allowed the
brain to develop in ways that support benevolent behavior" (30).