Department of Economics, National Bureau of Economic Research, Harvard University, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue, 4th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Proc Biol Sci. 2013 May 8;280(1762):20130606. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2013.0606. Print 2013 Jul 7.
People often cooperate with members of their own group, and discriminate against members of other groups. Previous research establishes that cultural groups can form endogenously, and that these groups demonstrate in-group favouritism. Given the presence of cultural groups, the previous literature argues that cultural evolution selects for groups that exhibit parochial altruism. The source of initial variation in these traits, however, remains uninformed. We show here that a group's economic production environment may substantially influence parochial tendencies, with groups formed around more cooperative production (CP) displaying less parochialism than groups formed around more independent production (IP) processes. Participants randomized into CP and IP production tasks formed cultural groups, and subsequently played hidden-action trust games with in-group and out-group trustees. We found CP to be associated with significantly greater sharing and exchanging behaviours than IP. In trust games, significant parochial altruism (in-group favouritism combined with out-group discrimination) was displayed by members of IP groups. By contrast, members of CP groups did not engage in either in-group favouritism or out-group discrimination. Further, we found the absence of out-group discrimination in CP to persist even following 'betrayal'. Finally, belief data suggest that members of CP are not more intrinsically generous than IP members, but rather more likely to believe that out-group trustees will positively reciprocate. Our results have important implications for anyone interested in building cooperative teams, and shed new light on connections between culture and cooperation.
人们经常与自己群体的成员合作，并歧视其他群体的成员。先前的研究表明文化群体可以内生出，并且这些群体表现出内群体偏好。鉴于文化群体的存在，先前的文献认为文化进化选择了表现出狭隘利他主义的群体。然而，这些特征的初始变异来源仍不清楚。我们在这里表明，一个群体的经济生产环境可能会极大地影响狭隘倾向，与围绕更合作的生产（CP）形成的群体相比，围绕更独立的生产（IP）过程形成的群体表现出较少的狭隘主义。被随机分配到 CP 和 IP 生产任务中的参与者形成了文化群体，并随后与内群体和外群体的受信人玩隐藏行动信任游戏。我们发现 CP 与显著更多的共享和交换行为相关联。在信任游戏中，IP 群体的成员表现出明显的狭隘利他主义（内群体偏好与外群体歧视相结合）。相比之下，CP 群体的成员既不参与内群体偏好，也不参与外群体歧视。此外，我们发现 CP 中不存在外群体歧视甚至在“背叛”之后也仍然存在。最后，信仰数据表明 CP 成员并不比 IP 成员更本质上慷慨，而是更有可能相信外群体受信人会积极回报。我们的结果对任何有兴趣建立合作团队的人都具有重要意义，并为文化与合作之间的联系提供了新的视角。
