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This paper describes a research project integrating social psychological and evolutionary theory relevant to altruistic helping. Social psychologists have studied the subjective experiences and motivations leading to helping behaviors. This research has identified mental experiences, such as empathic concern and perceived self-other overlap, influencing intentions for helping (see Batson et al., 1997; Cialdini et al., 1997). Evolutionary theorists have examined tendencies to exhibit adaptive behaviors predicted by inclusive fitness theory, predominantly with the non-human animals. Evolutionary theory currently recognizes two pathways for altruistic behaviors, kin selection and reciprocal altruism. The theory of kin selection predicts that the likelihood of an individual performing a costly behavior to enhance the survival and reproduction of a target will correlate with the closeness of the genetic relationship to the target individual (Hamilton, 1964a). The theory of reciprocal altruism predicts that altruistic behaviors will be a function of beliefs about the recipient’s likelihood of reciprocating (Trivers, 1971). This manuscript will review the current state of the field of social psychology with regard to altruistic helping, elaborate on relevant evolutionary theory, provide examples of previous psychological experiments using an evolutionary approach to understanding helping phenomena, and examine the support for hypotheses constructed from an integration of evolutionary and social psychological theories.
The study contained within this manuscript investigates the impact of influences stemming from evolutionary adaptations on the psychological predecessors of altruistic helping. One possible factor that may influence these mental experiences is the target's genetic relatedness, which has been found to influence helping. Based on the principles of kin selection, it is hypothesized that a kin target in an adverse situation will provoke higher mean levels of self-other-overlap and empathic concern than a friend target, which in turn are expected to increase the likelihood of helping. Kinship may also produce an increase in the likelihood of helping that is not mediated by these previously established predictors of helping. In addition to kin selection, the impact of beliefs related to reciprocal altruism will also be examined. Based on reciprocal altruism theory, it is predicted that expectations for assistance by the target character if roles were reversed will correlate positively with the likelihood of helping.
Although reciprocity is an important factor in the likelihood of helping for both friends and kin, kin also benefit from kin selecting influences. There may be an interaction of the influences of kin selection and reciprocal altruism in human cognition, where a lower threshold of reciprocity is required for helping behaviors directed towards kin than towards friends. Based on this hypothesized interaction, the perception that the assisted individual becomes indebted to the donor is predicted to be lower for kin targets than for friend targets. At the same time, one may have higher expectations for one’s sibling to provide critical assistance than for one’s friend to provide such assistance. Consideration of the discriminatory benefit of kin selection also leads to the prediction that kinship will moderate the impact of reciprocity estimates. The perception of reciprocity will have a greater influence in considerations of helping for friends than for siblings. On the other hand, levels of empathic concern and oneness may have a greater impact for siblings than for friends.
These hypotheses were tested in a social psychological research paradigm, combining instruments found in the literature with ones generated for this experiment. Previous researchers have established measures of constructs hypothesized to influence helping behaviors, such as oneness, empathy, sadness and aversive arousal. This experiment introduced measures of cognitions related to reciprocal altruism and helping, along with refinements of the measures for the aforementioned psychological constructs. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis supported the validity of items measuring the hypothesized constructs in this study. This result enabled the computation of index scores for each construct and the path modeling of measured variables derived from these index scores. Detailed results of the path analysis are presented, and conclusions based on tests of the hypothetical framework are discussed.