The Unique Effect of Kinship on Helping Intentions

The psychological predictors of helping behaviors did not completely account for the effect of kinship on the likelihood of helping. The test of Hypothesis 3 found that kinship had a significant unique contribution to the variance of intentions to help. Batson et al’s (1997) model of the altruistic pathway to helping (see Figure 1) considered kinship to be related to attachment, a psychological influence on the degree of perspective taking. Perspective taking is seen as the predecessor of empathic concern, empathic concern leads to altruistic helping intentions. In this study, the effects of kinship were not mediated by empathic concern, and instead affected helping intentions directly. Cialdini et al’s (1997) model (see Figure 2) included both the direct and mediated effects of relationship closeness, however this construct confounded kinship with social proximity.

There are at least two interpretations of the direct effect of kinship on helping intentions. One possibility is that some of the mental processes related to kin selection are automatically activated, such as a norm for helping family members, analogous to the automatic activation of stereotypes. Given that automatically activated stereotypes can have an evaluative component (Tesser & Martin, 1996), the current result may indicate that automatically activated kin selecting processes have an imperative component. An automatically activated influence would be an efficient adaptation, considering that some situations rescuing actions (e.g., during battles with predators or other humans) would have to be very quick to be successful. Further research should test this hypothesis (c.f. Rudman, Greenwald, Mellott, & Schwartz, 1999).

An alternative explanation is that proximate psychological mediators of kin selecting influences exist, but were not measured in this experiment or discussed in the altruism literature. Considering that the current model explained 86% of the variance in helping intentions, any additional significant predictors are likely to make only marginal contributions to the remaining variance in the likelihood to help.

Further studies are needed illustrate the affective, cognitive, and motivational qualities of kin selecting influences. Sociobiology was developed in part to demonstrate how statistical behavior patterns are compatible with expectations from neo-Darwinian inclusive fitness theory. Evolutionary psychology could be considered a theoretical advancement on this perspective, because it explores the affective, cognitive, and motivational aspects of the evolutionary adaptations that lead to predicted behavior patterns. In this way, evolutionary psychology moves even closer towards the eventual consilience of knowledge (Wilson, 1998), in that it integrates natural science and cognitive social science. Thus, the psychological aspects of adaptations are of great interest to an integrative evolutionary theory.

The Effect of Cognitions Related to Reciprocal Altruism

The results concerning reciprocal altruism are perhaps the study’s most important contribution to the social psychological literature. Tests of Hypothesis 4 found that the respondents’ expectations that the target would make a rescue attempt if positions in the scenario were reversed accounted for 58% of the variance in the likelihood of helping. The effect of this factor was by far the strongest found in the data, accounting for more variance in helping intentions than all other effects combined. Clearly, the influence of reciprocation in social interactions should not be ignored. Neither Batson et al. (1997) nor Cialdini et al. (1997) have mentioned the importance of reciprocity in predicting helping intentions. Reciprocity may usually be considered to be a characteristic of multiple interactions or iterations, and the many of the laboratory studies previously conducted to address the altruism-egoism debate used single iterations with a fabricated target character. Further studies could examine whether reciprocity could be an influence with contrived characters by describing their previous behaviors (e.g., ''Mary is someone who always tries to help someone who is in need''). These studies could determine whether a generalized form of reciprocal altruism would influence helping intentions.

The indication of the effect of reciprocal altruism parallels the results of game theoretical analyses. In computer simulations of prisoner’s dilemma games, for example, Axelrod and Hamilton (1981) found that if tit-for-tat reciprocity invades a system dominated by selfish individualism in sufficient strength, it can successfully overtake the selfish population. This is conditional on reciprocity being directed towards other reciprocators, and because it may take several interactions to differentiate the reciprocators from the individualists, a stable and sizable group of reciprocators is necessary. Thus, reciprocal altruism is an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS). Trivers (1971) cited six conditions that favor the evolution of reciprocity: long life spans, a high degree of mutual dependence, low rate of dispersal, ability to assist conspecifics in combat, and flexible dominance hierarchies. The ability to recognize individuals and remember previous encounters with those individuals would also be prerequisite. Trivers (1985) felt that humans would have met these conditions in our environment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA).

A distinction should be made between the outcomes of an ESS and the psychological influences leading to those outcomes. Intelligent as they are, humans may not be cognizant of the ultimate functions of their thoughts and behaviors. Trivers (1985) argued that human altruism depends on perceptions of fairness and feelings of moralistic anger, guilt, gratitude and sympathy. These psychological constructs could be examined in future research concerning reciprocal altruism. The current study indicated that the effects of reciprocity were distinct from feelings of oneness and empathy. Trivers (1985) stated that humans evolved a sense of justice to guard against cheating in reciprocal relationships and distinguished two forms of cheating. Gross cheating occurs when the recipient does not reciprocate or reciprocates very little in comparison to the original donor. Subtle cheating occurs when both parties reciprocate, but one consistently less so than the other.

In a prisoner's dilemma paradigm for non-related individuals, an individual would do best by defecting when the other person cooperates. With only one interaction, the evolutionarily stable strategy is to defect. If the benefit for cooperation is greater than the benefit for selfish defection, cooperation will be evolutionarily stable over multiple interactions. Also, cooperation will spread in a population of defectors if the consequences to the altruist are better than if both defected (Reeve, 1998). Tit-for-tat (cooperate on first move, then mirror actions of the other) will be an evolutionarily stable strategy against defection if the probability for future interaction is sufficiently high. In game theory calculations, the probability of future interaction, w, is used to calculate estimated benefits, similar to Hamilton's r used in calculations of genetic benefits from kin selection . Those pursing the tit-for-tat strategies and unconditional altruists will be equally viable in a closed population. In case of a rare defector, tit-for-tat will win out unless there is a significant degree of genetic relationship, rb > c (Reeve, 1998). A population exhibiting this strategy resembles a stable system of reciprocal altruism.

The phenomenon of cheater detection may shed light on the nonsignificant findings for the construct of indebtedness. The obligation targets were expected to feel after being helped did not contribute significantly to the variance in helping intentions. Research on cheater detection reveals that an individual bases her or his cooperative tendency on the prior cooperative history of potential partners (Reeve, 1998). This suggests a review of the past history of interaction resulting in a judgment of the likelihood that the target would perform the helping behavior in the present situation, much like the variable of expectancy for target helping included in this experiment. Results indicate that it was this estimate of the target’s proclivity to help in the current situation that influenced respondents intentions to act, rather than an expectancy of future rewards given by the target after being helped.

It is also possible that the nature of the scenario, where an individual was potentially in a life-threatening situation, was responsible for the lack of influence of indebtedness. Making an attempt to save someone’s life may be an action performed with ''no strings attached.'' Although those with a high-risk lifestyle, such as firefighters, may have opportunities to return life saving assistance, the majority of people will probably not be able to reciprocate with similar actions. Although the targets may be expected to be grateful for the assistance, they may not be expected to return compensation to the donor. Perhaps if the scenario described the respondent donating a tangible resource, such as money or a motorized vehicle, they would expect the respondent to return the favor to them in the future. In addition, reciprocating for requested assistance indicates a social contract between the donor and recipient. The target characters did not solicit the help of respondents, in fact it was not known for certain whether or not they were in a life-threatening situation.

These results establish reciprocity as an important factor in human social interaction. Hypotheses concerning reciprocal altruism were previously tested using mathematical modeling. It is encouraging to know that predictions derived from neo-Darwinian theory were also supported through traditional social psychological methodology. Psychologists researching helping behaviors would be wise to include reciprocity in future models. The effect strength of expectancy on helping encourages further research programs exploring the psychological components and correlates of reciprocal altruism phenomena.

The Effect of Kinship on Expectancy for Target Helping

Results supported the prediction in Hypothesis 5 that expectations for target helping if positions in the scenario were reversed would be higher for sibling targets than for friend targets. This result parallels the finding of a significant effect of kinship on the likelihood of helping, and suggests that people make an accurate prediction of this effect. Thus, a folk understanding of the concept of kin selection is evident, even if people are not aware of the consequences to inclusive fitness. This folk understanding has yet to be integrated into the majority of psychological theories of helping. These findings are part of a complex pattern that will be elaborated on in the next section, the discussion of results concerning Hypothesis 6.

The prediction that a member of one's kin would have a significantly lower obligation or indebtedness, in comparison to a friend, was not supported. This result is a corollary to the nonsignificant effect of indebtedness on the likelihood of helping. These results suggest that for rescue scenarios, the indebtedness of a helped target is not a significant motivator for helping. Although not a significant factor in the results of this experiment, indebtedness may be significantly related to personality characteristics and possibly to cultural norms. These predictions could be addressed in future analyses.

Kinship Moderates the Effect of Expectation on Helping.

Kinship moderated the effect of expectancy for the target to help if positions were reversed. The level of expectancy made a greater impact for friend targets than for kin targets, as proposed in Hypothesis 6. Thus, although respondents saw siblings as more likely to help, the expectation of reciprocity was less important for siblings than for friends in intentions to help. This result parallels the behavioral data collected by Essock-Vitale and McGuire (1985), who found that helping among friends was more likely to be reciprocated than helping among kin, although closer kin were more likely sources of help than were more distant kin, and the larger the amount of help given, the more likely it was to come from kin.

Because kin benefit from the influences of kin selection, the threshold of expectancy for reciprocity to induce helping is lower. One might construct a formula that combines kin selection and reciprocity to predict when costly helping is likely; c < (br + wf), where c = the cost of helping, b = the benefits to the recipient(s), r = the sum total genetic relatedness of the recipient(s), w = the probability of reciprocation, f = the benefit from future reciprocation. As the formula indicates, if there is a genetic relationship to the targets, the probability of future reciprocation and/or the size of the benefit from future reciprocation may be lower in comparison to when non-kin are the targets in need.

The combination of influences from kin selection and reciprocal altruism has been discussed in the evolutionary literature (e.g, Reeve, 1998). Behavioral studies have found that in situations of cooperative behavior exchange, brothers tolerate an imbalance of reciprocity that would be considered exploitive and unacceptable in a regular friendship (Hames, 1988). This study provides evidence that cognitions or non-conscious processes are able to combine kin selecting influences and evaluations of the tendency for reciprocity to provide estimates of helping intentions. Evidence for this complex calculation should not be surprising, considering other human feats such as successfully capturing projectiles, which requires sophisticated estimates combining velocity, wind resistance (drag), and the force of gravity. Apparently, sophisticated mathematical calculations can also be generalized into the domain of social relations. Yet again, the results encourage psychologists to integrate evolutionary adaptations into predictions of helping intentions and indicate that the pattern of influences differs based on kinship.

The factor of indebtedness was once more not significantly involved in the results. Respondents did not expect less indebtedness for siblings to reciprocate than for friends. This may indicate the lack of a relationship between kinship and indebtedness, or that the relationship is very weak and the research design was not sufficiently powerful to detect it. The effect size, d, for this loading was .04, and statistical power, 1 - b, was less than .17. If this effect size accurately represents reality, a sample size of 9800 participants would be needed to reach statistical power of .80 for this analysis. This strongly suggests that even if a statistically significant effect were to be found with a very large dataset, the effect would be insignificant from practical perspective. It is apparent that the psychological representation of the term for the probability of reciprocation in the equation previously described is related to the expectation for target helping in the current situation, rather than the expected feelings of indebtedness the target would have after being helped. The cognition of expectation most likely results from a review of the previous social interactions with the target. This is how psychological representations related to reciprocal altruism are depicted in the evolutionary literature (e.g., Reeve, 1998).

Kinship Moderates the Impact of Oneness on Helping

The prediction that the previously established psychological predictors of helping would have a greater influence for kin than for friends was partially supported. Higher levels of oneness had a positive impact on helping for sibling targets and a negative impact on helping for friend targets, when other sources of influence were accounted for. This result contrasts with Cialdini et al.’s (1997) hypothesis, which predicts that levels of oneness would be positively correlated with helping intentions. Cialdini et al.’s (1997) did find this result, however they did not examine the interaction between relationship closeness and oneness or perform separate analyses for kin and non-kin targets. The finding that oneness was inversely related to helping intentions for friend targets was puzzling, and replications of this result should be attempted with future research. It is possible that variance shared between oneness, expectancy, and/or empathy significantly predicted helping intentions. When these variables were statistically held constant, in effect partialling out shared variance, the unique effect of oneness did not match the previous contribution.

This finding indicates that oneness is involved in cognitive processes promoting kin selection, but not through simple mediation. Although respondents felt less oneness with siblings than with friends, the degree of overlap they experienced with siblings did influence how likely they were to help. Surprisingly, there was no effect of kinship on the degree of influence that empathic concern had on the likelihood of helping. This suggests that empathy is the penultimate stage in a selfless path to helping behaviors. Although other factors may influence the levels of empathy experienced, the level of empathy appears to be a direct and non-moderated influence on the likelihood of helping. This supports Batson et al.’s (1997) hypothesis that levels of empathy are the proximate mediator of altruistic helping intentions.