Selfishness

"Selfish" redirects here. For other uses, see Selfish (disambiguation).

Selfishness is commonly denoted by strong concern with oneself or concern with one's own interests, to the detriment of others. Selfishness is the opposite of altruism or selflessness.

Game theory

Given two actors, oneself and someone else, there are four types of possible behavior directly impacting the welfare of the actors; selfishness, altruism, spite, and cooperation. Selfishness harming someone else in order to help oneself; Altruism is harming oneself in order to help someone else; Spite is harming oneself in order to harm someone else; Cooperation is helping someone else and also helping oneself.

The implications of selfishness have inspired divergent views within religious, philosophical, psychological, economic and evolutionary contexts.

See also

• Egotism
• Enlightened self-interest
• Ethic of reciprocity (the "Golden Rule")
• Generosity
• Little Miss Selfish
• Narcissism
• Objectivism
• Self-serving bias
• Solipsism

Further reading

• A Theory of Justice (by John Rawls)
• Twilight of the Idols, Friedrich Nietzsche Penguin Classics; Reissue edition (February 15, 1990), ISBN 0140445145
• The Evolution of Cooperation, Robert Axelrod, Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-02121-2
• The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins (1990), second edition—includes two chapters about the evolution of cooperation, ISBN 0-19-286092-5
• The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand, ISBN 0451163931