The DOI matches its Crossref record; 44 of the 45 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Impartial Institutions, Pathogen Stress and the Expanding Social Network
Abstract
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.
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“The cues of belief and belonging from adoption of these religious belief systems ride on the signalling systems utilised in ritual displays to convey information about a potential interaction partner without the benefit of direct connection through kinship or interpersonal contact and reputation (McNamara and Henrich 2017a; Hruschka et al. 2014).”
From Cultural Evolution of Religion, Spirituality and Ritual: Impacts On Human Cooperation (2024) · cites this paper as Hruschka et al. 2014
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Metadata
- Authors
- Hruschka, D., Efferson, C., Jiang, T., Falletta-Cowden, A., Sigurdsson, S., McNamara, R., Sands, M., Munira, S., Slingerland, E., & Henrich, J.
- Affiliations
- Arizona State University (US)
- University of Zurich (CH)
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Field Museum of Natural History (US)
- Yale New Haven Hospital (US)
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Hruschka, Daniel
- ORCID
- Venue
- Human Nature
- Published
- 2014-10-07
- Volume
- 25
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 567-579
- ISSN
- 1045-6767 (ISSN-L)
- 1936-4776
- OpenAlex
- W1967450864
- Cited by
- 123
- References
- 45
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 3
- FWCI
- 32.54
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Human Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- IRIS (submittedVersion)
- SERVAL (Université de Lausanne) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Cultural Differences and Values
- Keywords
- impartiality, in-group favoritism, social institutions, government quality, food security, social networks, cross-cultural variation
- MeSH terms
- Cross-Cultural Comparison, Government, Humans, Residence Characteristics, Social Support, Stress, Physiological, Social Networking
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