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Revisiting Psychological Mechanisms in the Anthropology of Altruism

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Abstract

Anthropologists have long been interested in the reasons humans choose to help some individuals and not others. Early research considered psychological mediators, such as feelings of cohesion or closeness, but more recent work, largely in the tradition of human behavioral ecology, shifted attention away from psychological measures to clearer observables, such as past behavior, genetic relatedness, affinal ties, and geographic proximity. In this paper, we assess the value of reintegrating psychological measures—perceived social closeness—into the anthropological study of altruism. Specifically, analyzing social network data from four communities in rural Bangladesh (N = 516), we show that perceived closeness has a strong independent effect on helping, which cannot be accounted for by other factors. These results illustrate the potential value of reintegrating proximate psychological measures into anthropological studies of human cooperation.

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Acknowledgments

DJH acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation grant BCS-1150813, jointly funded by the Programs in Cultural Anthropology, Social Psychology Program and Decision, Risk, and Management Sciences. We thank our participants in Bangladesh. We would also like to thank Paul Hooper, David Nolin, Kim Hill, and students in the Culture Change and Behavior Lab for constructive feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript. Thanks to David Schaefer and David Nolin for technical support in developing the R code for the analysis. This work was approved by the Arizona State University’s Office of Research Integrity and Assurance (IRB# 1201007249). Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Hackman, J., Munira, S., Jasmin, K. et al. Revisiting Psychological Mechanisms in the Anthropology of Altruism. Hum Nat 28, 76–91 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-016-9278-3

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