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Which of the following supports evolutionary perspective on why people help?

Select one:
a. Lisa felt a great deal of empathy for a homeless mother and her baby, so she offered them to stay are her guest house.
b. During a fire at a hotel, Mary immediately tried to get her children out of the building, and only after they were safe she searched for her friends.
c. Joe anonymously donated money to a charity that fights malaria in Africa.
d. Penelope, a registered nurse, helped a person who had a seizure in a park.

User JeffRSon
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Final answer:

Option b, where Mary prioritizes saving her children during a fire before helping others, illustrates evolutionary perspectives on helping behaviors like kin selection that ensure the transmission of shared genes to future generations.

Step-by-step explanation:

The answer that supports the evolutionary perspective on why people help is option b:

During a fire at a hotel, Mary immediately tried to get her children out of the building, and only after they were safe she searched for her friends. This behaviour can be explained by the concept of kin selection, which is a form of natural selection that favors altruistic behaviors when those actions support the survival of close relatives who share many of the same genes as the altruistic individual.

From an evolutionary standpoint, helping close relatives ensures that genes similar to one's own are passed on to future generations. This behavior is consistent with theories like The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, which suggest that what appears to be altruistic behavior can actually be a means of assisting related individuals (who share common genes) to survive and reproduce, thereby keeping those genes in the gene pool.

User Gilson Viana
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