Kinship Cues as a Basis for Cooperation in Groups: The Familiarity Hypothesis

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Kinship Cues as a Basis for Cooperation in
Groups The Familiarity Hypothesis

• Mark Van Vugt
• University of Southampton
• With Mark Schaller Justin Park, University of
  British Columbia

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• "A tribe including many members who, from
  possessing in high degree the spirit of
  patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and
  sympathy, were always ready to aid one another,
  and to sacrifice themselves for the common good,
  would be victorious over most other tribes, and
  this would be natural selection."
• -- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871

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Social Psychological Research on Prosocial
Behaviour

• Lack of integration
• few cross references between research on, for
  example, bystander intervention, volunteering,
  social dilemmas, organizational citizenship
• Narrow focus on proximate, psychological
  processes, such as
• Mood and helping
• Empathy
• Social identity
• Attributions of responsibility

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Evolutionary Roots of Cooperation

• Humans are social animals
• Capacity to cooperate joint activities to
  produce mutual benefits
• For much of our history, we lived in small,
  largely kin-based tribal groups
• Group life produced many benefits (e.g., parental
  investment, group defense, food sharing)
• But, it also came with costs (e.g., conflict,
• free riders, coordination problems)
• Humans are conditional cooperators

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Theories of Cooperation

• (1) Kin selection individuals help their
  offspring and other kin because they share
  genetic information (inclusive fitness Hamilton,
  1964)
• (2) Reciprocal altruism individuals help if
  they can expect something in return (dyad direct
  reciprocity group indirect reciprocity)
• (3) Group selection Individuals help others for
  the good of the group (see Darwins quote)

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Kinship and Altruism (Smith et al., 1987)
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Kinship Cues The Familiarity Hypothesis

• Evolutionary pressures pertaining to kin
  selection require the emergence of mechanisms
  that allow the identification of kin (Krebs,
  1987)
• No evidence for genetic similarity hypothesis
  (green beard mechanism, Dawkins, 1976)
• Rely on indirect cues that indicate familiarity
  these cues are fallible

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Heuristic Kinship Cues

• Empathy ability to put oneself in others shoes
  (Batson, 1987)
• Proximity decreases psychological distance and
  enhances aid giving (community identification and
  helping in a water shortage Van Vugt, 2001)
• Similarity

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Similarity

• Physical appearance (phenotype matching Krebs,
  1987)
• similarity in facial features
• similarity in race increases helping (Gaertner
  Dovidio, 1977)

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Similarity

• Shared norms, values, attitudes
• some attitudes are heritable (Tesser, 1993)
• attitude similarity increases liking (Byrne,
  1971)
• attitude similarity increases empathy (Batson et
  al., 1981)
• attitude similarity increases cooperation in
  social dilemma (Van Vugt Hart, 2003)

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High empathy increases helping regardless of
costs (Batson et al., 1981) of contributors
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The Step-level Public Good

• Did at least four group members invest?
• No Yes
• ________________________________
• Did you
• Invest? No 2 2 4
• (free rider)
• Yes 0 (sucker) 4
• _________________________

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Members of similar groups are more loyal to
their group (Van Vugt, Schaller, Parks,
2003) of exits
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Similarity

• Group membership
• Ingroup favouritism in resource allocations
  (Brewer, 1979 Tajfel, 1971 Yamagishi, 1999)
• Group identification increases ingroup
  cooperation (De Cremer Van Vugt, 1999 Kramer
  Brewer, 1984)
• Group identification promotes loyalty to group
  (Van Vugt Hart, 2003) out of genuine concern
  for group
• Supporters of same team come to each others aid
  (Platow et al., 1999)

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High group identifiers contribute more to a
public good than low group identifiers, (De
Cremer Van Vugt, EJSP, 1999) of contributors
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High group identifiers contribute more
regardless of their social value orientataion
(De Cremer Van Vugt, 1999) of contributors
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High group identifiers are more loyal to their
group than low group identifiers, (Van Vugt
Hart, 2003) of exit
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High group identifiers are more loyal
regardless of their trust in others (Van Vugt
Hart, 2003) of exit
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Implications of Familiarity Hypothesis

• Connects diverse research lines on social
  psychology of prosocial behaviour
• Generates novel hypotheses about roots of
  cooperation
• Smell as similarity cue???
• Automaticity of prosocial behaviour
• Empathy often leads to mindless helping
• (Batson et al., 1997)

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Further implications

• Culture as mediator and moderator
• cultural norms promote helping kin
• In Japan perhaps more kin-based cooperation and
  less cooperation with strangers (Yamagishis
  work)
• Individual differences in cooperation
• Prosocial value orientations may include more
  people in their empathy circle (De Cremer Van
  Vugt, 1999)
• Disentangling kinship from reciprocity
• investigate the mediators Trust or empathy?

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Practical Implications

• Manipulating kinship labels to create familiarity
• brothers and sisters godfather
• Adoption
• proximity cues at odds with similarity cues
• How to promote cooperation in larger groups?
• stressing similarity between helper and receiver
  (speak same dialect, Dunbar, 2003 support same
  team Platow et al., 1999)
• Importance of between group friendships
  (similarity cues may be in conflict with each
  other)

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