Impartial Institutions, Pathogen Stress and the Expanding Social Network

Détails

ID Serval
serval:BIB_65D220E38E24
Type
Article: article d'un périodique ou d'un magazine.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Titre
Impartial Institutions, Pathogen Stress and the Expanding Social Network
Périodique
Human Nature
Auteur⸱e⸱s
Hruschka D., Efferson C., Jiang T., Falletta-Cowden A., Sigurdsson S., McNamara R., Sands M., Munira S., Slingerland E., Henrich J.
ISSN
1045-6767
1936-4776
Statut éditorial
Publié
Date de publication
12/2014
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
25
Numéro
4
Pages
567-579
Langue
anglais
Résumé
Anthropologists have documented substantial cross-society variation in people’s willingness to treat strangers with impartial, universal norms versus favoring members of their local community. Researchers have proposed several adaptive accounts for these differences. One variant of the pathogen stress hypothesis predicts that people will be more likely to favor local in-group members when they are under greater infectious disease threat. The material security hypothesis instead proposes that institutions that permit people to meet their basic needs through impartial interactions with strangers reinforce a tendency toward impartiality, whereas people lacking such institutions must rely on local community members to meet their basic needs. Some studies have examined these hypotheses using self-reported preferences, but not with behavioral measures. We conducted behavioral experiments in eight diverse societies that measure individuals’ willingness to favor in-group members by ignoring an impartial rule. Consistent with the material security hypothesis, members of societies enjoying better-quality government services and food security show a stronger preference for following an impartial rule over investing in their local in-group. Our data show no support for the pathogen stress hypothesis as applied to favoring in-groups and instead suggest that favoring in-group members more closely reflects a general adaptive fit with social institutions that have arisen in each society.
Pubmed
Web of science
Création de la notice
14/02/2019 7:49
Dernière modification de la notice
20/08/2019 14:21
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