Background: Egalitarianism and altruism are two ways in which people may have attitudes that go beyond the narrowly defined selfish preferences. The theoretical constructs of egalitarianism and altruism are different from each other, yet there may be connections between the two. This paper explores the empirical relationship between egalitarianism and altruism, in the context of health.
Methods: We define altruism as individual behaviour that aims to benefit another individual in need; and egalitarianism as a characteristic of a social welfare function, or a meta-level preference. Furthermore, we specify a model that explains the propensity of an individual to be egalitarian in terms of altruism and other background characteristics. Individuals who prefer a hypothetical policy that reduces socioeconomic inequalities in health outcomes over another that does not are regarded 'egalitarian' in the health domain. On the other hand, 'altruism' in the health context is captured by whether or not the same respondents are (or have been) regular blood donors, provided they are medically able to donate. Probit models are specified to estimate the relationship between egalitarianism and altruism, thus defined. A representative sample of the Spanish population was interviewed for the purpose (n = 417 valid cases).
Results: Overall, 75% of respondents are found to be egalitarians, whilst 35% are found to be altruists. We find that, once controlled for background characteristics, there is a statistically significant empirical relationship between egalitarianism and altruism in the health context. On average, the probability of an altruist individual supporting egalitarianism is 10% higher than for a non-altruist person. Regarding the other control variables, those living in high per capita income regions have a lower propensity and those who are politically left wing have a higher propensity to be an egalitarian. We do not find evidence of a relationship between egalitarianism and age, socioeconomic status or religious practices.
Conclusion: Altruist individuals have a higher probability to be egalitarians than would be expected from their observed background characteristics.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-9276-13-13 | DOI Listing |
Sci Rep
December 2024
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Wealth inequality is one of the most profound challenges confronting society today. However, an important issue in addressing inequality lies in formalizing the diversity of individual perspectives regarding what constitutes a fair distribution of resources. We tackle this topic by simulating wealth inequality through the allocation of bonus endowments in both Dictator Game (DG) and Ultimatum Game (UG) settings and capturing distributive decisions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Exp Anal Behav
November 2024
Interdisciplinary Centre for Digital Futures (ICDF) and Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa.
In the dictator game, the evidence that giving is equivalent to taking is mixed. The purpose of this study was to investigate framing effects (giving/taking) on social-discounting rates among young African adults from an informal settlement in South Africa. Employing a within-participant design, these young adults completed a series of incentivized dictator games with an isomorphically equivalent giving and taking frame at each of eight social distances.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Exp Child Psychol
October 2023
Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
Children's inclination to prioritize others' welfare over their own (hyperaltruism) was investigated from a developmental and cross-cultural perspective. The distribution of rewarding or aversive items to self and another child was probed in 3- to 14-year-old children (final sample: N = 158; 87 girls) from urban China (n = 51; M = 9.1 years, SD = 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLoS One
May 2023
Department of Computer Science, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
It has been argued that hunter-gatherers' food-sharing may have provided the basis for a whole range of social interactions, and hence its study may provide important insight into the evolutionary origin of human sociality. Motivated by this observation, we propose a simple network optimization model inspired by a food-sharing dynamic that can recover some empirical patterns found in social networks. We focus on two of the main food-sharing drivers discussed by the anthropological literature: the reduction of individual starvation risk and the care for the group welfare or egalitarian access to food shares, and show that networks optimizing both criteria may exhibit a community structure of highly-cohesive groups around special agents that we call hunters, those who inject food into the system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
September 2022
Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninskiy pr-t, 32a, Moscow, Russia, 199334.
Humans are unique among primates in altruism and sharing limited recourses towards non-kin. Our study revealed the differences in proportions of individuals ready to share limited resources with virtual friend compared to virtual stranger in children and adolescents from seven ethnic groups, represented by four traditional rural African societies from Tanzania with different types of economy and three societies from Russia. The study was conducted between 2015 and 2020, and the data on 2253 individuals (1104 males and 1149 females) were obtained.
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