Study shows that economic need and past actions affect whether there is cooperation or antagonism between groups
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig have studied the influence of group identity and economic need on cooperation and conflict in two Colombian communities. Their findings challenge the common belief that people naturally favor in-group members and show that economic need has an influence on intergroup cooperation. These findings emphasize the importance of taking all of these different factors into account when studying relationships in diverse communities.
Researchers examined intergroup relationships in two communities in rural Colombia with Afrocolombian and Indigenous Emberá members.
© Karl Frost
When people do not cooperate or are antagonistic toward each other, scientists and everyday people often turn to a popular explanation: group identity is to blame. Sometimes people point to a supposedly universal "us versus them" psychology in which group members cooperate in competition with other groups. Sometimes diversity, including religious, political, or ethnic diversity, is thought to lead to social discord for this very reason. Is this a reasonable conclusion? How much does group identity structure cooperation and animosity, and does it make a difference if you live somewhere with more or less pronounced differences in inequality across groups?
In a new paper, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and Penn State University in the United States examine intergroup relationships in two communities in rural Colombia with Afrocolombian and Indigenous Emberá members. One community lies on the boundary between large populations of the two groups, while the other is located away from the boundary, where Afrocolombians have a much larger population and the Emberá are seen as a small community living in more difficult economic circumstances. "We showed participants pictures of other people in their community. Participants reported who they were friends with, who they helped, and who helped them," explains Anne Pisor, director of the Human Sociality Lab at Penn State University.
"We gave each person a small amount of money to keep or share with others", says Cody Ross, a group leader in the Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. „They also had the option of spending money to reduce other people's earnings. We looked at how much group identity influenced these economic decisions."
Economic need drives cooperation
Participants did not automatically cooperate with in-group members and show animosity toward out-group members. Instead, they paid attention to need and past behavior.
© Karl Frost
Both Afrocolombian and Emberá participants were more likely to be friends with people of their own ethnic group and to help them, including giving them money in the experiment. However, there was no evidence that reductions were influenced by group identity. Moreover, in the community farthest from the ethnic boundary - the coastal community - Afrocolombians were actually less likely to take money from Emberá individuals than other Afrocolombians. Why did the Emberá receive more, both from in-group members and, away from the ethnic boundary, from out-group members?
In both communities, the Emberá are more economically "in need" than the Afrocolombians. On the ethnic boundary, however, many Afrocolombians perceived their Emberá neighbors as better off because Emberá nearby have higher status. In other words, perceptions of wealth mattered more than actual wealth. On the coast, Afrocolombians accurately perceived the Emberá community as more economically in need. This difference in perceptions of legitimate need influenced behavior in the economic experiment, reducing parochialism at the coastal site. "In short, participants did not automatically cooperate with in-group members and show animosity toward out-group members. Instead, they paid attention to need and past behavior, using ethnic group membership (sometimes inaccurately) as an indicator of who was most in need," summarizes co-author Cody Ross.
Cooperation and antagonism are driven by multiple factors
Popular narratives often discuss in-group care and out-group animosity as part of "human nature." But there is a lot of flexibility in how people behave toward in-groups and out-groups. "It should not surprise us that our perceptions of economic need and past behavior affect whether we will cooperate with or be hostile toward someone else," Pisor says. "People's perceptions of other groups as cooperative or not, or wealthy or not, can affect intergroup dynamics in societies with religious, political, or ethnic diversity. 'Us versus them' is not inevitable, and we should be wary of public discourse that suggests it is."
Consistent with recent research from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and beyond, this paper underscores that group membership is only one thing that can influence cooperative behavior in humans. Researchers should consider multiple explanations for cooperation and animosity, not just group membership, and keep in mind that sometimes we need multiple kinds of data - including what people have done, what they are doing now, and why they say they are doing it - to understand the full story of in-group and out-group dynamics.
