Abstract
Unlike other primates, humans exhibit extensive inter-group tolerance and frequently build relationships with out-group members. Despite its common occurrence, little is known about the conditions leading to out-group relationship building in humans. What are the social and ecological factors promoting valuation of out-group members as potential social partners? Do they differ from those promoting valuation of in-group members? We propose that opportunities for non-local resource access and resource buffering, crucial in the human foraging niche, will increase valuation of out-group strangers. Using survey and experimental data collected among three Bolivian horticultural populations, we find that individuals with fewer non-locally available resources and more information about out-groups demonstrate more generosity toward out-group strangers, but not in-group strangers. The effects are specific to subjective resource access, not objective measures of access, and out-group exposure, not stereotypes. Further, depending on the measure, existing network connections affect both out-group and in-group giving, suggesting that new partnerships from both in-groups and out-groups may bolster one’s networks. Our results illustrate how evolved human psychology is sensitive to the costs and benefits of both out-group and in-group relationships, but underscore that the social and ecological factors favoring new relationships with in-group versus out-group strangers may differ.
Highlights
Humans have a long history of interaction with individuals from different places and cultural backgrounds
These findings suggest that positive valuation of out-group members as potential social partners is governed by an evolved human psychology sensitive to the expected benefits and costs of interaction with others, not unlike the system that governs partner choice and alliance formation with in-group members[12,27]
Little is understood about the social and ecological conditions that favor out-group relationship building in humans, though it is a hallmark feature of human sociality
Summary
Humans have a long history of interaction with individuals from different places and cultural backgrounds. An actor is more likely to value out-group members when her in-group is of low status[24,25], a correlate of poor resource acquisition in situations of resource scarcity[26] Taken together, these findings suggest that positive valuation of out-group members as potential social partners is governed by an evolved human psychology sensitive to the expected benefits and costs of interaction with others, not unlike the system that governs partner choice and alliance formation with in-group members[12,27]. In-group relationships provide crucial buffers to shortfalls caused by illness and food production failure in isolated small-scale populations[33,37]. We explore the relative roles of social support, as well as past experience with out-groups and stereotypes about their resource access, in modulating out-group and in-group valuation
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