Revisiting Psychological Mechanisms in the Anthropology of Altruism

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.

Learning from failures of protocol in cross-cultural research

“…In contrast, when asked about people outside the community who they did not know, respondents nearly always placed them in the farthest bin. The measures of closeness also showed strong independent associations with helping in the previous year (61).…”

“…In interviews, respondents mentioned that ghonishto friends and relatives feel comfortable around each other; enjoy visiting each other; help each other with chores, loans, and advice; and trust each other enough to talk freely, or "open their minds," to each other about important, sensitive, and secretive matters. The factors described as making people feel less close included envy; regular failures to help when needed; conflicts over lending and borrowing; fights between one's children; and disputes over farmland, livestock, and situations where another's cattle ate one's crops (61). Another potential source of conflict was worry that an envious friend had used supernatural tools (amulets and spells) to cause injury or illness.…”

“…This was puzzling because it contradicted findings from over 50 published studies on social discounting in the United States and among college students in other countries. A number of checks suggested that this puzzling finding could not be solely explained by measurement issues or misunderstanding (51,61). Another possibility was that we had adapted the protocol to such an extent that it would no longer demonstrate social discounting in any population, even US college students.…”

Generalizability is not optional: Insights from a cross-cultural study of social discounting

“…In the U.S., we recruited 40 participants via emails sent to a list of 6000 undergraduates, curated by the Center for Behavior, Institutions, and the Environment. In Bangladesh, we recruited one participant from each of 200 households across four villages in Northwestern Bangladesh (54). In Indonesia, we recruited 44 participants using opportunity sampling from a single rural settlement (nagari) in West Sumatra, near the city of Payakumbuh in the Lima Puluh Kota regency, limiting recruitment to 2 individuals from the same household.…”

Psychological Factors and Mechanism of College Students in the Process of Language Expression

“…At present, there have been many researches on the analysis of psychological factors in linguistics, and especially for English and the minority languages (Gutenstein, 2014), some researchers have been conducted on students' learning thinking and foreign language expression. From this, it's concluded that psychological factors play a major role in language learning and language expression (Sopha & Klöckner, 2011); some college students are not good at organizing language or understanding the structural relationship of language (Feinstein, 2012), which is closely related to the psychological obstacles such as nervousness, anxiety and timidity (Hackman, Munira, Jasmin et al, 2016); the psychological mechanism in the language expression process for college students can significantly influence the process of psychoanalysis, and further their language expression ability (Antiel, Curlin, James et al, 2013). Therefore, the study on the college students' psychological factors and psychological mechanisms in the process of language expression can effectively improve their language ability of expression.…”