Intuitive Participation in Aggressive Intergroup Conflict: Evidence of Weak Versus Strong Parochial Altruism

Frontiers in Psychology

Robert Böhm¹ 

关键词: intergroup conflict;    parochial altruism;    dual systems decision making;    team games;    ego depletion;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01535

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Humans are unusually cooperative and prosocial, sharing resources with kin and non-kin others. At the same time, they engage in violent intergroup conflict and discriminate against members of other groups. How can we explain this apparent inconsistency? Building on Darwin (1871), it has been proposed that self-sacrificing prosociality toward the in-group and hostility toward the out-group may have co-evolved (Choi and Bowles, 2007; García and van den Bergh, 2011). Research on so-called parochial altruism, i.e., the motivation to benefit in-group members at personal cost, while not benefitting or even harming out-group members, recently received much attention in psychology and beyond (for reviews see, De Dreu et al., 2014; Rusch, 2014; Yamagishi and Mifune, 2016). Empirical studies aiming to support the parochial altruism hypothesis yielded mixed results, though. For instance, whereas some studies provided support for the parochial altruism hypothesis (e.g., Bernhard et al., 2006; Abbink et al., 2012), others failed to show a relationship between individual-level prosociality and intergroup discrimination (e.g., Corr et al., 2015). And yet others found that prosocial individuals are less likely to discriminate against out-group members (e.g., Thielmann and Böhm, in press).

【 授权许可】

CC BY