An experiment on individual ‘parochial altruism’ revealing no connection between individual ‘altruism’ and individual ‘parochialism’

Hargreaves-Heap, Shaun (2017). An experiment on individual ‘parochial altruism’ revealing no connection between individual ‘altruism’ and individual ‘parochialism’. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852931

This network project brings together economists, psychologists, computer and complexity scientists from three leading centres for behavioural social science at Nottingham, Warwick and UEA. This group will lead a research programme with two broad objectives: to develop and test cross-disciplinary models of human behaviour and behaviour change; to draw out their implications for the formulation and evaluation of public policy. Foundational research will focus on three inter-related themes: understanding individual behaviour and behaviour change; understanding social and interactive behaviour; rethinking the foundations of policy analysis. The project will explore implications of the basic science for policy via a series of applied projects connecting naturally with the three themes. These will include: the determinants of consumer credit behaviour; the formation of social values; strategies for evaluation of policies affecting health and safety. The research will integrate theoretical perspectives from multiple disciplines and utilise a wide range of complementary methodologies including: theoretical modeling of individuals, groups and complex systems; conceptual analysis; lab and field experiments; analysis of large data sets. The Network will promote high quality cross-disciplinary research and serve as a policy forum for understanding behaviour and behaviour change.

Data description (abstract)

Is parochial altruism an attribute of individual behavior? This is the question we address with an experiment. We examine whether the individual pro-sociality that is revealed in the public goods and trust games when interacting with fellow group members helps predict individual parochialism, as measured by the in-group bias (i.e., the difference in these games in pro-sociality when interacting with own group members as compared with members of another group). We find that it is not. An examination of the Big-5 personality predictors of each behavior reinforces this result: they are different. In short, knowing how pro-social individuals are with respect to fellow group members does not help predict their parochialism.

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