An experiment on individual 'parochial altruism' revealing no connection between individual 'altruism' and individual 'parochialism'.

Charles R Seger,Shaun P Hargreaves Heap,Kei Tsutsui,Philip J Corr

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01261

Abstract

Is parochial altruism an attribute of individual behavior? This is the question we address with an experiment. We examine whether the individual pro-sociality that is revealed in the public goods and trust games when interacting with fellow group members helps predict individual parochialism, as measured by the in-group bias (i.e., the difference in these games in pro-sociality when interacting with own group members as compared with members of another group). We find that it is not. An examination of the Big-5 personality predictors of each behavior reinforces this result: they are different. In short, knowing how pro-social individuals are with respect to fellow group members does not help predict their parochialism.

Highlights

Is parochial altruism an attribute of individual behavior? It is well known from experiments that there is an in-group bias in pro-sociality at a population level
We examine whether the individual pro-sociality that is revealed in two person public goods (PG) and trust (T) games when interacting with fellow group members helps predict individual parochialism
The no-group treatment provides the baseline from which to judge the effect of group membership and the respective contributions of in-group love and out-group hate to the in-group bias

Summary

Introduction

It is well known from experiments that there is an in-group bias in pro-sociality at a population level. What is not known is whether the individual variation in the level of pro-sociality (the ‘altruism’) is connected to the individual variation of the in-group bias (the ‘parochialism’). Are those individuals who are most pro-social to insiders the individuals who are most ‘parochial’ in their pro-sociality? The question is important because both the social identity and the evolutionary accounts of the emergence of ‘altruism’ would seem to predict such an individual association with ‘parochialism’

Methods

Results

Conclusion