Science briefing: Kindness and social forces

[Demeter]

Source: Financial Times

Kindness down to social forces

Evolutionary biology alone cannot explain why people in modern societies are frequently kind and helpful to strangers, even though they derive no personal benefit and may even suffer for their altruism. A large study shows that, as communities grow larger, social forces such as religion and market systems become more important in controlling co-operative behaviour.

The research, published in the journal Science, looked at the behaviour of people in 15 societies, from New Guinea to North America, when playing three well-known economic games (called Ultimatum, Dictator and Third-Party Punishment).

According to the results, people in small, traditional societies that are not involved in world religions and do not have organised market systems are much less concerned with fairness than their counterparts who are part of the global economy and are influenced by religion. They are less likely to “play fair” in the games and also less likely to punish other players who cheat in the game.

“Our results contradict previous theories that humans learned to treat strangers fairly by transferring behaviour and norms developed in their actions and attitudes toward family and kin,” said Joe Henrich of the University of British Columbia, the study leader. “Small-scale communities have local norms governing all kinds of interactions, but they often don’t have default social norms of dealing with strangers or anonymous others in monetary transactions.”

Read more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d382d65a-32dd-11df-bf5f-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss

[4saken]

1. ...

Whoever wrote this article seems to be trying to inject their bias into the research.

[Toots]

2. "Social Justice"....everybody run for the hills as fast as you can

:sarcasm:

[Rozlee]

3. Whilst being chased by a machete wielding crowd led by Glenn Beck

Social justice/religion + market forces = . Wow. Altruism on steroids!


Even more :sarcasm:

[Rozlee]

5. Is that altruism defined by Auswitz and the Crusades and the market forces by Lehman Brothers,

Shitty Bank and Skank of America? In that case, religion and market forces really do define altruism. For Attila the Hun.

[AlbertCat]

4. don’t have default social norms of dealing with strangers or anonymous others...

... in monetary transactions."

So.... they don't bail their failed banks out? (but they would if they were Christian! The heathens!)

[enlightenment]

6. Hmm.

A little suspect to determine motivation based on a game - how someone behaves in a situation that has no real-life consequences is often very different from how they would behave in reality.

Dr. Henrichs is a professor of psychology and economics - here's a link to the study concept:

Really long URL, so I used tinyurl to shorten:

http://tinyurl.com/yjof42a
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yjof42a


Personally, I see a few too many flaws in the protocol.