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Symposium on
Altruism in Cross-Cultural Perspective
34th Annual Conference of the Society for Cross-Cultural Research
Hilton of
February 24-26, 2005
Symposium Chair: Douglas Vakoch, SETI Institute
Aptekar, Lewis laptekar@email.sjsu.edu,
TO GIVE OR NOT TO GIVE: CULTURAL DETERMINANTS IN THE VALUE OF GIVING TO OTHERS IN GREAT NEED. VIEWS FROM AN ETHIOPIAN REFUGEE CAMP.
During a two year ethnographic study in an Ethiopian refugee camp, Kaliti, the author carried around in his pocket enough money literally to pay for the medicine or food that would keep death at bay for the people he came to see nearly every day for two years. In the process, he unexpectedly embarked on an odyssey into a moral universe that led him to grapple constantly with his own actions--or non-actions. The author examines how cultural values alter the value of giving to others, as well as the value to mental health of giving to others.
Arkhipova, Alexandra, a_alexandra@mail.ru,
Artem Kozmin, akozm@mail.ru,
The Kind and Unkind Girls: one of the most popular of oral altruistic stories
In 1958 W.E. Roberts have created his famous book about "The Kind and Unkind Girls" fairy tale. This story is about two girls one of whom is kind while the other is evil. Kind girl helps animals when she goes to other (magical) world. After that, animals help her, when she finds herself in a demon's house. This story is found in all parts of the world. Roberts provided a full description of all tale variants in the world. The report will demonstrate connections between elements of plot structure and social organization, religion systems etc. of bearers of this story.
Boehm, Christopher, cboehm1@msn.com,
FOUR EXPLANATIONS OF ALTRUISTIC BEHAVIOR.
Altruistic behavior puzzles us because genetic advantages are given away to genetic competitors. Four models can explain such behavior. First, helping close kin is helping yourself genetically. Second, group selection theory is receiving new consideration these days. Third, "pleiotropic extensions of nepotistic donations," have been suggested by Herbert Simon and myself in terms of a piggyback model. Finally, group coercion through social control is a powerful force for extracting phenotypic altruism, selfish genes notwithstanding. These four approaches are discussed in the context of hunter-gatherer band-level cooperation.
Briton,
Jennifer Leaning,
Lynn G.Underwood, Research Integration
Altruism in a Local Morality of Violence
Altruistic and compassionate acts and attitudes in the midst of war are examined through a unique dataset - transcripts of group interviews conducted with people from war-torn countries throughout the world (
Chick, Garry, gchick@psu.edu The
Altruism in Animal Play and Human Ritual
Numerous efforts have been made to explain animal play and human ritual. While there is general consensus on what is and what is not play, there is far less agreement on what motivates play. The same is true for ritual. In this paper, I will examine animal play and ritual associated with the cargo system of highland
Coe, Kathryn kcoe@azcc.arizona.edu,
Altruism: Common origin and cross-cultural commonalities
In this paper, I compare and contrast moral and legal systems. Across cultures, morals are rules that encourage us to treat another person as if they were close kin, even if they are not. Legal systems teach us how to treat those who are not our close kin, but with whom we must interact. While art and religion often have an adversarial relationship, art is often used to teach moral behaviors. Art, however, is seldom used to teach us about legal behavior. I discuss the environments that promote moral systems and laws and the factors that break down moral systems.
Divale, William divalebill@aol.com,
Generalized and Pure Altruism in Individualistic and Collectivistic Societies: Cross-Cultural Tests of Several Hypotheses.
Alice Schlegel highlights two types of altruism: Pure altruism where there is no expectation of any benefit whatsoever to the giver and generalized altruism where the giver also expects to receive some benefit. Cross-Cultural measurements for both types of altruism are made. Schlegel suggests that generalized altruism is more likely to be found in individualistic societies. Gibbons (2005) suggests that urban children will express more altruism, e.g., "concern for helping" than will rural children. Agarwal (1997) suggests that female status and economic importance influences household bargaining power and thus influences altruism. Lee (2003, 2004) suggests that altruistic behavior is related to the Daoistic model of "wateristic" personality and highly regarded by Asian cultures whereas aggressive and competitive behavior is valued by people of European descent. Fehr, Fishbacher and Urs (2002) suggest that humans have a tendency to voluntarily cooperate if treated fairly and reciprocity (generalized altruism) is a powerful device for social control. These and other hypotheses concerning altruism are tested cross-culturally on a sample of 37 societies that overlap the HRAF Probability Sample of 60 cultures and the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample of 186 cultures. Several of these hypotheses are supported.
Draguns, Juris, Jgd1@psu.edu,
Altruism in its psychological, social, and cultural context
Is altruism a state, trait, value, or a combination of all of these? To answer this question, altruistic acts will be explored on the basis of psychological and sociological research and biographical accounts. Paradoxes of altruistic behavior will also be addressed, e.g., inconsistencies across time and situations. Two alternative conceptions of altruism will be considered: (1) altruism as a sociobiologically adaptive human characteristic that for a variety of reasons is frequently suppressed; and (2) altruism as an often difficult and “unnatural”choice that is often in conflict with more fundamental psychobiological for survival, welfare, and tension reduction.
Ember, Melvin Melvin.Ember@Yale.edu, Human Relations Area Files
Carol R. Ember, Carol.Ember@Yale.edu, Human Relations Area Files
CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH ON ALTRUISM: SOME SUGGESTIONS.
As yet, there is little or no systematic cross-cultural research on altruism. This paper discusses some issues that future research might consider. These issues range from efforts to discover what may be universal behavior in some domains, to possible dimensions of cross-cultural variation. If we could discover the conditions that predict the variation, and if we could create or maximize the particular conditions that generate altruism, the world (universe?) might become a more civil place.
Gibbons, Judith gibbonsjl@slu.edu,
ALTRUISM AMONG GUATEMALAN ADOLESCENTS: RELATION TO GENDER, COMMUNITY, AND EDUCATION.
Guatemalan adolescents (73 11-15 year olds from urban and rural communities) participated in a project in which they described their lives through photographs and short descriptions of the photographs’ significance. Their written descriptions were coded for the mention of helping others and other indicators. Urban adolescents and boys mentioned helping others more than did rural adolescents and girls. The number of years of education (independent of age and indicators of cognitive development) was associated with comments about helping. These findings reiterate the need for considering the social context of the lives of adolescents in understanding their views toward altruism.
Henrich, Joseph, jhenric@emory.edu,
Peter Richardson
THE COEVOLUTIONARY ORIGINS OF HUMAN ALTRUISM
Culture-gene coevolutionary models suggest that human altruism will differ in fundamental ways from that of non-cultural species. At its core, this approach posits an interaction between cultural evolution, driven in part by selection among cultural groups, and genetic evolution operating within groups. The interaction of
these dual processes predicts that altruism should (1) be greater in humans that predicted by purely genetic models, (2) vary substantially across social groups, (3) be readily acquired via cultural learning, and (4) vary across behavioral domains within groups. To address these, we review data from cross-cultural studies, developmental data, and cross-species comparisons.
Huaco, George, georgeh@unm.edu,
ALTRUISM IN MARX AND SOCIOBIOLOGY
From the start of agriculture (11,000 BCE) in
discovered that ethics is an emergent from Darwinian evolution. In 1964 David Hamilton established the biological basis of loyalty to kin. In 1972 Robert Trivers discovered reciprocal altruism, which is restricted to primates with the sole exception of vampire bats. In 1994 David Buss discovered that for thousands of years, women have been selecting mates for kindness and generosity.
K
Korotayev, Andrey V. korotayev@yahoo.com,
GENESIS AND EVOLUTION OF ALTRUISTIC MOTIFS WITHIN DUALISTIC COSMOGONIES: A CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
An interesting case of development of altruistic motifs is observed within dualistic cosmogonies. The spatial distribution of motifs in question together with accompanying motifs (first of all the Earth-Diver ones) and genetic markers suggests South East Asia as the homeland of this mythological complex, which already in the Upper Paleolithic penetrated to South Siberia, from where it spread throughout North Eurasia, reaching around 10000 BC the New World. This in turn suggests an extreme antiquity of this complex and makes it possible to provide a tentative reconstruction of the evolution of altruistic motifs within it.
Koss-Chioino, Joan jdkoss@gwu.edu,
IS ALTRUISM A COMMON INGREDIENT OF HEALING ACROSS CULTURES?
A focus on the essential ingredients of the healer-client relationship reveals a special type of altruism
hypothesized to be a necessary element in healing process in therapeutic encounters across cultures.
Psychotherapy research defines the therapeutic relationship in relational and attitudinal terms. Studies of healing process in popular healing systems across cultures offer an alternative model of a triadic relationship. The healer sacrifices aspects of himself (i.e., endures pain, deprivation, discomfort, lends or loses his soul, etc.) to come into contact with a sacred realm as the principal means to bring about healing in the client- a special type of altruism.
Kozmin, Artem akozm@mail.ru,
Ethical rules in fairy tales: altruistic help
Vladimir Propp described a common plot structure of Russian fairy tales. Propp’s scheme is applicable to fairy tales of many Eurasian peoples. One of components of this plot structure may be described as “The main hero helps an animal or helpless human being”. The fairy tales instruct audience, they give a set of ethical rules. The report have such main goals: 1) to describe types of audience; 2) to describe a distribution of types of unselfish help in tales of different Eurasian peoples; 3) to discover correlations between types of unselfish help and religions, types of social organization.
Lee, Yueh-Ting, leey@mnsu.edu,
TAOIST ALTRUISM AND WATERISTIC PERSONALITY: EAST AND WEST
Cross-cultural research demonstrated that altruism is complicated. From the Taoist perspective, to give or to serve (involving self-sacrifice) is a great pleasure rather than a pain. According to a Taoist model of “wateristic” personality (Lee, 2003, 2004), four essential components are altruism, modesty/humbleness, flexibility and gentleness with perseverance. Our paper will focus on the first two. We will measure them cross-culturally. Participants in
Lynn E. O’Connor,LynnOC@aol.com, Wright Institute
Patrice Crisostomo,
Altruism and empathy-based guilt across five cultures.
In this study we compared European, Asian, Hispanic, African, and Middle Eastern American responses to the Dispositional Altruism Scale, measuring acts of altruism towards family, friends, and strangers, and the Interpersonal Guilt Questionnaire-67, measuring empathy-based guilt. Omnipotent Responsibility Guilt significantly predicted altruism towards family and friends in European, Hispanic and Middle Eastern Americans. Survivor Guilt (fearing that one’s happiness will make others feel inadequate by comparison) significantly predicted acts of altruism towards strangers in Asian and Middle Eastern American cultures. European Americans were significantly lower in altruism towards family than Hispanic, Asian, and Middle Eastern Americans.
Schlegel,
EGO AND ALTRUISM IN KIN-BASED AND INDIVIDUALISTIC SOCIETIES: A DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVE
Evolutionary psychologists have no theory of pure altruism-no expectation of any kind of return now or in the future. I propose that pure altruism requires recursive thinking, which develops around age 7. Pure altruism can be either personal (face to face) or impersonal (like human relief donations). I hypothesize that personal altruism is more likely to be found in kin-based societies, while impersonal altruism is more likely to be found in individualistic societies. This can be tested cross- culturally.
Smith, Sandi smiths@msu.edu,
Application of the Altruistic Behavior Coding Scheme to Cross Cultural Contexts
Smith and Smith claimed that altruistic action “is intended to benefit others beyond simple sociability or duties associated with role.” This definition will need to be reformulated to behavior in communal cultures as they have extended obligation networks, the basis of which are expected helping behaviors offered to others in the network. Therefore, behaviors that would be captured by the coding scheme in an individualistic culture would not necessarily be seen as altruistic in a communal culture as they may be non-voluntary and role-related. This and face-related issues in both types of cultures will be explored in this paper.
Smith, Tom W. smitht@norc.uchicago.edu, National Opinion Research Center/University of
Measuring Altruism Across Social Groups and Countries: Findings from the National Altruism Study
As a module on the 2002 General Social Survey, the first national study of altruism was conducted. It examined: altruistic values, altruistic behaviors, and empathy. This paper first discusses the items used to
measure these areas. Second, it examines the bivariate associations between these scales and other
measures. Third, a series of multivariate models are tested . Finally, drawing on the GSS's 20 years of participation in the International Social Survey Program, cross-national variation in altruism is considered. Limited existing data are used and the conceptual and empirical appropriateness of the scales are considered.
Triandis, Harry C. triandis@uiuc.edu,
Collectivism and Altruistic Behavior
The most widely studied cultural pattern in cross-cultural psychology is individualism-collectivism. Collectivists define the self as an aspect of some ingroup: family, co-religionists, similar political, gender, social class, place of birth, etc. Altruism is especially likely to be observed toward ingroup members. On the other hand, outgroup members are likely to be exploited or even hurt. Among individualists, altruism is less likely to be found toward ingroup members, and exploitation is less likely toward outgroup members.