Abstract
In situations involving a single relative in distress and several potential helpers, the advantage of leaving the risky job of aiding the relative in need to any of the other potential helpers is quite obvious. Hence, even if Hamilton's condition for altruism in the one-to-one situation is satisfied, it might seem that altruistic behavior would not evolve if there is more than one potential helper. In this paper we investigate the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) of helping behavior in situations involving several potential helpers and a necessarily instantaneous response. The main result is that if Hamilton's condition is met, the ESS is usually a mixed strategy of altruism and selfishness, with a decreasing (yet positive) probability of helping as the number of potential helpers increases.
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