Transcript The Familiarity Hypothesis

Kinship Cues as a Basis for
Cooperation in Groups:
The Familiarity Hypothesis
Mark Van Vugt
University of Southampton
With Mark Schaller & Justin Park, University of British Columbia
"A tribe including many members who, from
possessing in high degree the spirit of
patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and
sympathy, were always ready to aid one another,
and to sacrifice themselves for the common
good, would be victorious over most other tribes,
and this would be natural selection."
-- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871
Social Psychological Research on
Prosocial Behaviour
• Lack of integration
– few cross references between research on, for example,
bystander intervention, volunteering, social dilemmas,
organizational citizenship
• Narrow focus on proximate, psychological processes,
such as:
–
–
–
–
Mood and helping
Empathy
Social identity
Attributions of responsibility
Evolutionary Roots of Cooperation
• Humans are social animals
• Capacity to cooperate – joint activities to
produce mutual benefits
• For much of our history, we lived in small, largely
kin-based tribal groups
• Group life produced many benefits (e.g.,
parental investment, group defense, food
sharing)
• But, it also came with costs (e.g., conflict,
free riders, coordination problems)
• Humans are conditional cooperators
Theories of Cooperation
(1) Kin selection: individuals help their offspring
and other kin because they share genetic
information (inclusive fitness; Hamilton, 1964);
(2) Reciprocal altruism: individuals help if they
can expect something in return (dyad: direct
reciprocity; group: indirect reciprocity);
(3) Group selection: Individuals help others for
the “good of the group” (see Darwin’s quote)
Kinship and Altruism
(Smith et al., 1987)
40
35
30
25
percentage of estate
in will
20
15
10
5
0
spouse
siblings
grandchildren
nonkin
Kinship Cues:
The Familiarity Hypothesis
• Evolutionary pressures pertaining to kin
selection require the emergence of
mechanisms that allow the identification of
kin (Krebs, 1987)
• No evidence for genetic similarity
hypothesis (“green beard” mechanism,
Dawkins, 1976)
• Rely on indirect cues that indicate
familiarity – these cues are fallible
Heuristic Kinship Cues
• Empathy: ability to put oneself in other’s
shoes (Batson, 1987)
• Proximity: decreases psychological
distance and enhances aid giving
(community identification and helping in a
water shortage; Van Vugt, 2001)
• Similarity
Similarity
• Physical appearance (phenotype
matching; Krebs, 1987)
– similarity in facial features
– similarity in race increases helping (Gaertner
& Dovidio, 1977)
Similarity
• Shared norms, values, attitudes:
– some attitudes are heritable (Tesser, 1993)
– attitude similarity increases liking (Byrne,
1971)
– attitude similarity increases empathy (Batson
et al., 1981)
– attitude similarity increases cooperation in
social dilemma (Van Vugt & Hart, 2003)
High empathy increases helping regardless of costs
(Batson et al., 1981)
% of contributors
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
difficult escape
easy escape
high
low
attitude similarity
The Step-level Public Good
Did at least four group members
invest?
No
Yes
________________________________
Did you
Invest? No £2
£2 + £4
(free rider)
Yes
0 (sucker)
£4
_________________________
Members of “similar” groups are more loyal to their group
(Van Vugt, Schaller, & Parks, 2003)
% of exits
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
similar
dissimilar
attitudes
Similarity
• Group membership:
– Ingroup favouritism in resource allocations (Brewer,
1979; Tajfel, 1971; Yamagishi, 1999)
– Group identification increases ingroup cooperation
(De Cremer & Van Vugt, 1999; Kramer & Brewer,
1984)
– Group identification promotes loyalty to group (Van
Vugt & Hart, 2003) – out of genuine concern for group
– Supporters of same team come to each other’s aid
(Platow et al., 1999)
High group identifiers contribute more to a public good
than low group identifiers,
(De Cremer & Van Vugt, EJSP, 1999)
% of contributors
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
high
low
group identification
High group identifiers contribute more regardless of
their social value orientataion
(De Cremer & Van Vugt, 1999)
% of contributors
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
prosocial
proself
high
low
group identification
High group identifiers are more loyal to their
group than low group identifiers,
(Van Vugt & Hart, 2003)
% of exit
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
high
low
group identification
High group identifiers are more loyal regardless of their trust in others
(Van Vugt & Hart, 2003)
% of exit
70
60
50
low trust
high trust
40
30
20
10
0
high
low
group identification
Implications of
Familiarity Hypothesis
•
•
Connects diverse research lines on
social psychology of prosocial behaviour
Generates novel hypotheses about roots
of cooperation
– Smell as similarity cue???
•
Automaticity of prosocial behaviour
– Empathy often leads to “mindless” helping
(Batson et al., 1997)
Further implications
• Culture as mediator and moderator:
– cultural norms promote helping kin
– In Japan perhaps more kin-based cooperation and
less cooperation with strangers (Yamagishi’s work)
• Individual differences in cooperation:
– Prosocial value orientations may include more people
in their empathy circle (De Cremer & Van Vugt, 1999)
• Disentangling kinship from reciprocity:
– investigate the mediators: Trust or empathy?
Practical Implications
• Manipulating kinship labels to create familiarity
– “brothers and sisters” “godfather”
• Adoption:
– proximity cues at odds with similarity cues
• How to promote cooperation in larger groups?
– stressing similarity between helper and receiver
(speak same dialect, Dunbar, 2003; support same
team; Platow et al., 1999)
– Importance of between group friendships (similarity
cues may be in conflict with each other)