Some forms of altruism can be easily explained by evolution, but evolution can\u2019t explain why people are sometimes generous to completely anonymous strangers. This new study may have found a solution: it isn\u2019t something inherent to our nature, but rather something that we learn to do.<\/p>\n
You might have seen something of it already \u2013 it\u2019s featured on several news wires. I\u2019m not going to go into detail on the headline results, because you can find them elsewhere (Wired magazine<\/a> has a nice write up, for example).<\/p>\n What interests me most about this study is the link they found to religion. But first, here\u2019s a quick overview of what they did, and the major finding. The heart of the study was a standard battery of economic games designed to test their subject\u2019s understanding of fairness:<\/p>\n Now, the logical thing to do in all these games is to hold on to all your money. You have nothing to gain by sharing (the games are anonymous), and all that happens is that you go home with less. However, what usually happens is that people do share some money (usually not 50%, however!).<\/p>\n They found that contributions were smallest in societies that did not have a market economy (e.g. hunter gatherers). And they found that punishment was lowest in societies formed of small groups.<\/p>\n This potentially resolves the conundrum! What it suggests is that anonymous altruism is not part of our evolutionary make up, but instead is something that we learn from the society around us. The reason big, complex societies can exist is that we drum it into our kids that they must be fair and kind to strangers (against their natural instincts).<\/p>\n So what\u2019s the connection with religion?<\/p>\n Well, they also showed that, in two out of the three games, the anonymous contributions were higher in those groups that had converted from tribal religions (in which gods do not enforce morality) to follow a \u2018world religion\u2019 (in practice, either Christianity or Islam).<\/p>\n On the face of it, this is supports the idea that \u2018world religion\u2019 is a cultural adaptation to allow the formation of complex societies. The invention of and all-seeing, morally concerned god increases the honesty in anonymous transactions, and thus allowing large, integrated communities to develop.<\/p>\n When you look at the history of religions, it\u2019s clear that the development of religious ideas has progressed in tandem with the increasing complexity of society. Robert Wright has written a book<\/a> on the topic, and in the supplementary material the study authors give a nice summary of these ideas.<\/p>\n It all sounds very plausible. However, it\u2019s not quite that simple, for a whole host of reasons.<\/p>\n First is the problem that a \u2018world religion\u2019 may be a consequence, not a cause, of a complex society. A world religion is essentially one that\u2019s popular over large geographic area. However, the exchange of ideas that always goes together with the exchange of goods will inevitably bring about a convergence of beliefs to create a \u2018world religion\u2019.<\/p>\n So you would expect a complex, diverse society to develop some kind of syncretic belief system<\/a> \u2013 a \u2018World Religion\u2019. And that belief system would inevitably encapsulate the social norms of the complex society that created it. People create a god in their image.<\/p>\n Suppose, for example, that countries with more parasites end up with more fractured societies that are naturally less trusting of strangers. After all, strangers could bring with them disease. Surprisingly, studies have found that this is exactly the pattern you see \u2013 people living in high parasite regions are less open to strangers and have more fractured religions (Fincher & Thornhill, 2008)<\/a>. These societies, with their tribal rather than world religions, would naturally be less co-operative in anonymous games.<\/p>\n Perhaps moralising gods moralising gods are not required for complex societies. After all, the Romans and Greeks managed created large, complex societies despite having a pantheon of gods who were not exactly paragons of virtue<\/a>.<\/p>\n And the reality is that, in modern societies at least, non-belief is correlated with less corruption<\/a> and more trust<\/a>. Social norms, rather than god beliefs, seem to be of primary importance.<\/p>\n As support for the hypothesis that \u2018world religions\u2019 promote pro-social behaviour, they quote the work of Shariff & Norenzayan<\/a>. That was a small study which found that, in a similar economic game, subliminal religious primes (i.e. a quick flash of a religious word) were marginally more effective in believers than non-believers.<\/p>\n However, they also showed that non-religious primes were equally effective, and also that without the priming both religious and non-religious were equally pro-social. What\u2019s more, other studies (Randolph-Seng & Nielsen, 2007<\/a>, Ahmed 2009<\/a>) have shown that pro-social effects of religion are all about the situation, rather than the beliefs.<\/p>\n Put these findings together, and what you get is the strong suggestion that the way to encourage pro-social behaviour is to remind people about their cultural training (religious or otherwise). The more you reinforce a social norm of co-operation, the more people will co-operate.<\/p>\n Now, that doesn\u2019t rule out a role of religion in stabilising societies. In fact, I\u2019m inclined to that that there must be a link. But it is fearsomely difficult to prove, and it\u2019s clear that whatever the link is, it\u2019s much more complicated than it appears at first sight.<\/p>\n I\u2019m going to leave you with one other niggling anomaly from the paper. Remember that \u2018world religion\u2019 was associated with more pro-social behaviour in only two out of the three games? Maybe you were wondering which was the one out?<\/p>\n Well, the game that was the \u2018Third Party Punishment\u2019 game. This is the game in which Player 1 should give more money if they fear that Player 3 might spend some cash to punish offers that were too low. It\u2019s a particularly relevant test because third party intervention to enforce the rules is a crucial feature of complex society.<\/p>\n Unlike the other two games, being Christian or Muslim had no effect on Player 1\u2019s offers. What makes this doubly fascinating is that this is the only game in which wealth and income affected Player 1\u2019s decisions.<\/p>\n The authors suspect it might be that the introduction of a \u2018judge\u2019 reduces the intrinsic motivation. In other words, the offers players make depends on what they think the judge will approve of, rather than what they themselves think is fair.<\/p>\n However, I couldn\u2019t help but be reminded of another study<\/a> that looked at punishment behaviour in a similar game. They examined a cross-section of relatively high income countries, and found high levels of co-operative punishment, and low-levels of anti-social punishment, in the least religious societies (Copenhagen and Melbourne).<\/p>\n Conceivably, if you don\u2019t believe that there is a god on hand to enforce the rules, you might just be motivated to do it yourself!<\/p>\n This is a long post, but hang on in there because it\u2019s worth it. There\u2019s a wonderful paper just out in Science that sheds new light on a mystery of human behaviour: why do people sometimes do good deeds even when they gain nothing from it. Some forms of altruism can be easily explained by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_8sY9bx8acNM\/S6VcXx8-7hI\/AAAAAAAAAkg\/L0ZX8kOcfTw\/s320\/Henrich_2010_markets_map.png\")
<\/a>What makes this new study unique is that they\u2019ve put together data from the world over, including the rather marvellous Hadza<\/a> (you can see the locations on the map). Then they compared how much people contributed with what kind of society they lived in.<\/p>\n
\n![\"ResearchBlogging.org\"](\"https:\/\/www.researchblogging.org\/public\/citation_icons\/rb2_large_gray.png\")
<\/a><\/span>Henrich, J., Ensminger, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., Cardenas, J., Gurven, M., Gwako, E., Henrich, N., Lesorogol, C., Marlowe, F., Tracer, D., & Ziker, J. (2010). Markets, Religion, Community Size, and the Evolution of Fairness and Punishment Science, 327<\/span> (5972), 1480-1484 DOI: 10.1126\/science.1182238<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n![\"Creative](\"https:\/\/i.creativecommons.org\/l\/by-sa\/2.0\/uk\/88x31.png\")
<\/a><\/span> This article by Tom Rees<\/b> was first published on Epiphenom<\/a>. It is licensed under Creative Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"