At first glance, selfishness, greed, and risk-taking seem like potentially problematic personality traits. On the other hand, cooperation and risk aversion are seen as evolutionarily advantageous in many circumstances.
I came across an insightful paper, "Selfish risk-seeking can provide an evolutionary advantage in a conditional public goods game" – https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0261340
that examines "whether there are environmental and social conditions that favour selfish risk-seeking individuals within a community and whether tolerating such individuals may provide benefits to the community itself in some circumstances."
The results, as you might imagine, are pretty interesting. It turns out, selfish risk-seekers can outperform generous risk-averse agents in conditions where their survival is moderately challenged. This finding supports the theory that selfish and risk-seeking traits are not dysfunctional when combined but can be evolutionarily advantageous instead.
The "results show how behaviours aligning with core characteristics of psychopathy were advantageous for agents, as long as the conditions were not extreme." Still, the authors urge us to remember that psychopathy is a much more complex set of behaviours, and they've considered only a small subset in their model.
This paper and its agent-based model touches on the evolutionary role of a combination of traits (selfishness and risk-seeking) central to the psychopathy construct. The results point towards an evolutionarily adaptive role of selfishness and risk-seeking behaviours. They also marginally support the adaptive theory that psychopathic traits may not be a dysfunction after all but an adaptive consequence of human evolution.
That's fascinating research and makes a lot of sense.
It's interesting that there is a balance to be maintained, and that too many individuals with selfish or psychopathic behaviour is damaging to the survival of the species.
If I remember correctly Dawkins has written some interesting work arguing why altruism, as well as other behaviors, exist. You certainly see what happens when the impulsivity and risk-taking of psychopaths leads to extremely damaging consequences, especially in fields related to finance.
Thanks for sharing