Article Review- Jorgina Arballo and Brittany Hicks
Rachlin, H. & Jones, B. A. (2008). Altruism among relatives and non-relatives. Behavioural
Processes, 79(2), 120-123.
The term “altruism” has been defined in a variety of contexts utilizing a range of
terminology. The current study attempted to test the truth of these definitions and factors that
affect human ability to display altruism. In relation to understanding altruism, authors Howard
Rachlin and Bryan A. Jones (2012) provide two accepted definitions through economic and
biological contexts. Economic altruism is defined as “’costly acts that confer economic benefits
on other individuals’ where the costs and benefits are unspecified.” In other words, that one may
take actions that have economic benefits for another person, while simultaneously incurring
economic costs to themselves, however the extent of these costs and benefits are ambiguous. A
biological definition of altruism is “acting to increase another individual’s lifetime number of
offspring at a cost to one’s own survival and reproduction,” or that one would sacrifice their own
life or reproductive ability in order to enhance or prolong another’s (Rachlin & Jones, 2012). In
order to test the validity and relation of these two definitions in human action, researchers
conducted a modified version of their previous study from 2006. In both of these studies, college
students were asked to construct an imaginary list of 100 people who they consider “close” to
them with 1 being the person they consider closest to them and 100 being the person, out of the
100 listed, they would consider to hold the least close relationship. Participants were able to list
immediate, distant, and non-relatives, incorporating a biological variable. Participants were then
asked to consider how much money they would forgo in order to provide a person on their list
$75, thus incorporating an economic variable. For example, a participant might decide to forgo
$45 in order for number 15 on their list to receive $75 and $15 in order for number 60 on their
list to receive $75. In order to predict outcomes for this study, researchers turned to the kinselection theory which states that altruism (of any kind) will be greater with greater genetic
overlap between giver and receiver. Therefore, participants were expected to provide more
money for relatives at greater economic costs to themselves than for non-relatives regardless of
the placement on their list of 100 people closest to them. Results of the study support this
hypothesis and the kin-selection theory. On average, participants gave more money to relatives,
and less to those who were not relatives. In addition, participants ranked more relatives closer to
them than non-relatives. Participants also gave more money to those ranked higher on their list
than those ranked lower, suggesting that social distance affected how much money participants
decided to give. Authors contemplate the reasoning for these results by suggesting that although
you may enjoy being around a friend, you may not feel particularly secure in lending them
money. Despite enjoying your time with them, they may possess qualities that subtract from their
dependability and/or responsibility or other factors that may affect one’s decision to lend money.
Participants might also feel more willed to give more money to family members due to outside
circumstances. These circumstances may be having insight to financial struggles, feeling
indebted to them for previous exchanges, and others. Despite these possible determinants, on
average, participants felt more enticed to give more money to relatives than non-relatives even
when social distance was greater than or equal to non-relatives, supporting Hamilton’s kin
selection theory. We are inherently more likely to perform altruistic acts towards those that have
high genetic relatedness, and those that we consider socially close.