Selfishness

Photo on 2011-05-06 at 11.15

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

Selfishness denotes an excessive or exclusive concern with oneself, and as such it exceeds mere self interest or self concern. Insofar as a decision maker knowingly burdens or harms others for personal gain, the decision is selfish. In contrast, self-interest is more general. Self-interest is merely including one's own needs and desires in the schema of priorities, and is inclusive of both cooperation and selfishness.

Selfishness is the opposite of altruism (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 is 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 oneself and helping someone else.

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
• 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