Final answer:
Inclusive fitness, as explained by sociobiologists, does account for altruistic behaviors in human beings, as it describes how organisms benefit genetically by supporting relatives that share their genes, even at a cost to their own direct reproductive success.
Step-by-step explanation:
According to sociobiologists, the concept of inclusive fitness is indeed used to explain why human beings display altruistic behaviors. Inclusive fitness refers to behavioral strategies that improve the survival and reproductive success of an organism's genetic relatives, even at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. This form of selection, known as kin selection, operates on the premise that behaviors which support the survival of close genetic relatives indirectly aid in perpetuating the organism's own genes within the population, even if the individual itself does not reproduce. Therefore, such behaviors can evolve and persist within a species.
For instance, the sterile workers in social insect colonies such as bees and ants engaging in altruistic acts towards the queen help to ensure that their shared genetic materials continue within the population, despite the workers' own inability to reproduce. This can be interpreted as an increase in their inclusive fitness. Furthermore, evolutionary game theory has been utilized to show that many behaviors perceived as altruistic may contain elements beneficial to the individual's genetic success, challenging the definition of pure altruism.
Even with these considerations, it might be an oversimplification to label all animal behaviors as strictly altruistic or selfish. The key is to recognize that such behaviors can be driven by complex genetic strategies aimed at maximizing genetic representation in future generations, which may exhibit as seemingly altruistic actions. Richard Dawkins' notion of the Selfish Gene reflects this complex interplay where genes appear to cause individuals to act in ways that favor the persistence of those genes, through direct reproduction or by aiding genetically related individuals.