Self-interested behavior from individuals can collectively lead to poor societal outcomes. These outcomes can seemingly be improved through the actions of altruistic agents, which benefit other agents in the system. However, it is known in specific contexts that altruistic agents can actually induce worse outcomes compared to a fully selfish population -- a phenomenon we term altruistic perversity. This paper provides a holistic investigation into the necessary conditions that give rise to altruistic perversity. In particular, we study the class of two-strategy population games where one sub-population is altruistic and the other is selfish. We find that a population game can admit altruistic perversity only if the associated social welfare function is convex and the altruistic population is sufficiently large. Our results are a first step in establishing a connection between properties of nominal agent interactions and the potential impacts from altruistic behaviors.

翻译：个体自利行为可能集体导致不良的社会结果。这些结果似乎可以通过利他性智能体的行为得到改善，因为这类智能体的行为能使系统中的其他智能体受益。然而，在特定情境中已知，与完全自私的群体相比，利他性智能体实际上可能诱发更糟糕的结果——我们将这种现象称为利他性悖论。本文对引发利他性悖论的必要条件进行了系统性研究。具体而言，我们研究了一类双策略群体博弈，其中一个子群体是利他性的，另一个是自私的。我们发现，仅当相关社会福利函数为凸函数且利他性群体规模足够大时，群体博弈才可能出现利他性悖论。我们的研究结果在建立名义智能体交互特性与利他行为潜在影响之间的关联方面迈出了第一步。