Abstract
This exploratory study tries to interpret the results of a test of altruism among almost 200 children from four small-scale societies in Belize, Kenya, Nepal, and American Samoa. Samoan children and, to a lesser extent, Nepalese Newar children were altruistic in a dictator game test. We considered evidence that the four settlements varied according to a collectivistic dimension and that such collectivism may have strongly influenced responses to the test. Not only did test results correspond fully to degree of community collectivism across the four cultures (rank-order correlation coefficient = 1.00, p < .05, N = 4), but Samoan children also scored at the highest level across each age group from 3 to 9 years of age, and the Nepalese Newar participants scored at the second highest level at all ages. We posit that social and material conditions in Samoa and Nepal were likely sources of collectivism and, concomitantly, the strong altruistic tendencies but acknowledge that in exploratory research there will always be issues concerning interpretation.
In a four-culture study undertaken four decades ago, a series of tests was administered to nearly 200 children aged 3 to 9. Almost all the assessments involved cognitive functioning (Gauvain & Munroe, 2009), but one test attempted to tap a different dimension, namely, the children’s tendencies toward altruism. Altruism was measured with a version of the dictator game (Henrich et al., 2005), in which each child solely decided how to split a gift between herself or himself and (fictitious) needy, unknown children. The scores for altruism were high in American Samoa and among Newars of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, and they were relatively low among the Logoli of western Kenya and the Garifuna of southern Belize. This outcome was the only test result that showed similarities between the Samoan and Newar participants. Moreover, sociocultural differences between the Samoan and Newar communities were great: Modernization (a post office, a government-appointed police officer, reading material, and indoor water in the homes) was high among the Samoans and low among the Newars; wage labor was high in Samoa while subsistence work predominated in the Newar village; postmarital residence patterns were ambilocal in Samoa and virilocal in the Newar community. Politically, American Samoa was (and remains) a territorial possession of the United States, whereas the Newar village at that time fit within the monarchical system of Nepal. In education, the Samoans followed an age-graded system (e.g., all the 7-year-olds were second graders), whereas Newar children began schooling at late ages with a modal level of first grade (R. L. Munroe & Munroe, 1990b; R. H. Munroe, Munroe, Shwayder, & Arias, 1997).
In the face of these differences, it might be thought that the high Samoan and Newar altruism scores were an accidental phenomenon or, in any case, an unexplainable one. But in the course of scrutinizing the behavioral-science literature of the past few decades, we detected a strand of research potentially relevant to an understanding of the altruism, and that was the factor of collectivism. As research has shown, in collectivism, the self is perceived as “a part of the collective,” whereas in individualism, there is “a conception of an autonomous individual” (Singelis, Triandis, Shawuk, & Gelfand, 1995, p. 240). People in collectivist societies perceive that they receive more social support, and a better quality of support, than do those in individualist societies (Kim, Triandis, Kagitçibaşi, Choi, & Yoon, 1994; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, 1995). It seemed feasible that in a collectivist society, children might assume that needy other children—as portrayed in the altruism test—would be perceived as part of the in-group, and therefore be “given” more help, with higher scores thus achieved. Many peoples in non-Western communities have been found to “insist on the fundamental relatedness of individuals to each other” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 224; see also Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Knafo-Noam, 2015). What we hope to do here is to establish that in two such communities, but not in the other two, a strong collectivist orientation was prominent.
This research fits under the rubric of an exploratory study, which, as McNutt (quoted in Shell, 2016) has phrased it, looks at “new questions rather than tests an existing hypothesis” (p. 119). The leading figure in the study of collectivism–individualism, Harry C. Triandis, characterized the dimension as a specifically cultural rather than psychological syndrome. Triandis (1993) referred to shared norms, roles, beliefs, and values—elements of “subjective culture” (p. 155) in his terminology—but he did not extend the construct to the psychological domain. 1 That of course is what we have done here with the altruism testing. As McNutt (in Shell, 2016) has also noted, any answers achieved in an exploratory study would be tentative because such findings always need to be reproduced before being accepted.
Collectivist Tendencies in Four Communities
Ta’u, American Samoa
In the Samoan community of Ta’u, the weekly fono, a meeting of chiefs representing each extended family, held deliberations and made decisions that were binding on all households in the village. The fono was empowered to make law and impose sanctions. Discussions ranged from serious issues, such as a family’s possible use of inland village land, to matters like young persons’ breaking of the 9 p.m. village curfew. Another institution, the aumaga, enforced the fono decisions. Formerly a society of unmarried men, it now consisted of untitled males, both married and unmarried. This organization was also responsible for such matters as inspection of members’ plantations and the manning of weekly longboats that delivered goods to the island.
There were two women’s organizations in the village. One, the faletua ma tauusi, a society of wives of the matai (village chiefs who comprised the fono) and of the aumaga members, carried out various functions, including inspection of families’ mats (to see whether they had woven enough of each type for gifts on ceremonial occasions) and the running of the village bingos. The other, au uso, was a society of female church members whose activities revolved around the church. (For further details, see R. L. Munroe & Munroe, 1990a.)
There was in Ta’u a single religion recognized and practiced—a Samoan version of the Congregationalist faith. It represented a Christianity that had become “Samoanized”—run by Samoans themselves, with their own church building and a Samoan pastor who was provided a home and daily food supplied by villagers. Sundays were both days of worship and days on which work and other physical exertion were taboo. All able members of the community attended a Sunday morning ceremony, a long and formal service involving hymns, a sermon, and family offerings (R. L. Munroe & Munroe, 1990a).
These institutions typified Samoan culture’s general collectivism, which has been described by several authors. Mead (1928/1961), in Coming of Age in Samoa, asserted that “the Samoan child measures her every act of work or play in terms of her whole community” (p. 167). (Our own research was conducted in the same community in which Mead worked.) Ochs (1988/1993), in a section entitled “Collective Accomplishment: The concept of Taapua’i, ‘Supporter,’” discusses this “very important notion” and notes that “[a]ny accomplishment can . . . be seen as a joint product of both the actors and the supporters” (pp. 199-200). She notes, as an example, that if a driver avoids a collision, the exchange between driver and passenger would be as follows: “Passenger: ‘Well done the steering! . . .’ Driver: ‘Well done the support!’” (Ochs, 1988/1993, p. 199). Gershon (2012) summarizes the Samoan moral outlook: “In a Samoan context . . . one’s sense of morality is created by others’ gazes rather than by a consistent self” (p. 68).
Bosigaon, Kathmandu Valley, Nepal
The Kathmandu Valley has been characterized as observing some of the most sophisticated agricultural practices in the preindustrial world (R. H. Munroe et al., 1997). In the Newar village of Bosigaon in the valley, terraced, irrigated rice fields surrounding the community required reciprocity among all families. The fields were fertile and intensively cultivated during seasonal crop rotation, which included maize and wheat besides the primary crop of rice. The water needs for paddy rice meant that dredging and draining inevitably involved a high level of interhousehold cooperation.
Numerous community-wide festivals—some observed only locally, some in all Newar locales—marked the ceremonial calendar. Also present in the village were guthi, philanthropic institutions that provided services as diverse as funeral activities and public works. In Newar society generally, a person’s “ritual and social life is regulated through these guthi institutions” (Nepali, 1965, p. 191). “[T]hree-tiered sanctions against a defaulting person or household results [sic] in complete social boycott, through the denial of participation in the group events and feasts, and services to be rendered by these respective institutions” (Nepali, 1965, p. 191).
“Vihiga,” Maragoli, Western Kenya
The Logoli “community” of Vihiga was made up of an arbitrarily chosen set of contiguous homes, and these were part of a dispersed settlement pattern among the Bantu-speaking Abaluyia in western Kenya. Women’s work groups (ovufuva), comprised of perhaps 15 friendly neighbors, would till each other’s land in turn (for payment in many cases), but they had become very infrequent by the time of the fieldwork. Male initiation rites, involving same-age cohorts, had become attenuated and sometimes were replaced by a circumcision operation performed in the local clinic (R. L. Munroe & Munroe, 1991). Thus, for the Logoli, there were, historically, a few institutions beyond the family, but these were in the process of fading.
Punta Gorda, Belize
Among the Garifuna of Punta Gorda, Belize, there were no collective institutions. The only activity that could possibly be so designated was an annual government-sponsored Carib Settlement Day, which was observed in all Garifuna communities in Belize. A decadal ceremony honoring a dead relative had once been practiced by the community at large but had not occurred in Punta Gorda for at least three decades. Not only did the immediate family constitute the locus of economic activity, but primary relatives residing in different homes, say a mother and daughter, would often buy and sell to each other (R. L. Munroe & Munroe, 1990a). In this community, which was the southern port of entry in Belize, the Garifuna made up almost two thirds of the town’s members, yet they had almost no influence on governmental decisions and activities, and were lower in socioeconomic status (SES) than were the dominant Creoles.
Mention was made above of the communal church activity of the Samoans (cf. Sosis & Ruffle, 2003). Nothing similar took place in the other three settlements. Among the Bosigaon Newars, individuals worshiped both at home and in one or more of the Hindu and Buddhist temples in the community. Among the Garifuna and the Logoli, multiple church organizations (mostly Christian) were operating, and families were free to choose the one to which they belonged.
Anecdotally, we note that on arrival in the Samoan and Newar communities, our many goods—professional and personal—were transported to a dwelling through the efforts of a large cadre of village children. In Samoa, the trip involved carriage of the boxes and bags down a dirt road from an airstrip atop a hill, and in Nepal, it encompassed traveling a mile-long dirt path between a paved road and the village. In Kenya and Belize, although community members were aware of our arrival, there were no such activities.
We have posited that the Samoan and Newar communities were both collectivist, but this appellation applied for different reasons. In the Samoan case, it was the presence of several still-functioning social institutions—the fono, the aumaga, the faletua ma tauusi, the au uso, and the Samoan church—that seemed to exemplify a collectivist orientation. Among the Newars, a subsistence factor, the complex irrigated rice system, required community-wide cooperation and appeared to us to be powerful enough to induce collectivist sentiments. Such sentiments would probably have been augmented by the Newar guthi institution and the important ceremonial calendar. In each instance, one social and one mainly techno-economic, basic institutional structures were identified as the primary mechanisms thought to be at work.
Method
Sample and Testing Procedure
In each community, 48 children—six males and six females at 3, 5, 7, and 9 years of age—were selected for testing. Training and supervision of local experimenters were conducted by the same researcher (Ruth H. Munroe) and were the same at all four sites. Testing was conducted in the child’s native language. All but six of the 192 children took the altruism test (not participating were two Logoli 3-year-olds, two Newar 3-year-olds, and two Newar 5-year-olds). For a detailed description of the general testing procedures, see Gauvain and Munroe (2009).
Measure of Altruism
A total of 20 coins (Belize, Kenya, American Samoa) or 21 coins (Nepal) were placed in front of each child. The amounts in local currencies were 40 cents Belizean (U.S. = 20 cents), 1.5 shillings Kenyan (U.S. = 21 cents), 2 paisa Nepalese (U.S. = 17 cents), and 28 cents American Samoan (U.S. currency used).
The experimenter made the following statement to the child: I would like to give you some money for the good work you did for me. But I would like to ask you something. I know a home where there was a fire. The children in that house lost all of their clothes and their bedding and everything. I wondered if you would like to give some of this money to me so that I could give it to those children.
2
Following this statement, the tester recorded the proportion of money returned to the tester, and that proportion constituted a measure of the child’s degree of altruism. Reliability estimates were unnecessary as the scoring method was objective.
Although a question arises about any assumption of comparability of monetary amounts within and among differing sociocultural communities, this assumption has been made in diverse studies and has yielded interesting and interpretable results, especially in behavioral economics (Decety et al., 2015; Henrich et al., 2005). We followed such an assumption in the present study.
Results
Overall, as shown in Table 1, there was significant consistency between the degree of community collectivism and the level of altruism (rank-order correlation = 1.00, p < .05, N = 4). Looking more closely at these results, we see that American Samoan children were not only at the highest average level, they also scored at that level across all ages. Nepalese children displayed the second highest mean level and also attained that place across all ages, though only trivially so at age 7.
Percentage of Altruism by Ethnic Community and Age.
In a one-way ANOVA, cultural affiliation, gender, and age were considered as possible predictors of altruism scores. As expected, culture was the only predictor, and strongly so, F(3, 185) = 24.17, p < .0001. There were no significant interactions between culture and sex or age. Post hoc Bonferroni comparisons revealed that (a) Samoa was significantly higher on altruism than were each of the other culture groups (at the .002 level or better), (b) Nepalese Newars were significantly higher on altruism than were the Logoli and Garifuna (at the .02 level or better), and (c) the Logoli and Garifuna were not significantly different from each other on altruism scores.
Education and SES
Education was associated with altruism in only one case: For the Garifuna, educational level was positively correlated with altruism, r = .33, n = 48, p = .02, though not for any others, with Logoli, r = .03, n = 46, ns; Newars, r = −.14, n = 44, ns; and Samoans, r = .12, n = 48, ns. For SES, there were no significant associations in any of the communities: Logoli, r = .17, n = 46, ns; Garifuna, r = −.05, n = 47, ns; Newars, r = .15, n = 44, ns; and Samoans, r = .19, n = 48, ns. (Criteria for measuring SES were reported in R. L. Munroe & Munroe, 1984.)
Discussion
As Table 1 indicates, the Samoan and the Newar means were above 50% and were significantly higher than those of the Logoli and the Garifuna. The Samoan children’s average of 77%, however, stands out. We noted in the introduction that several authors have written of Samoan collectivism. Even more strongly, Mageo’s (1998) Theorizing Self in Samoa focuses on the closely related concept of the Samoan “sociocentric” orientation, to which she refers in 10% of the pages in her monograph. (The concept, as typically used in anthropology, is in opposition to the “egocentric” self.) Mageo (1998) posits that a sociocentric self is apposite for Samoans everywhere due to their similar childhood socialization experiences, in which “the dominant sense of self is social” (p. 218). For Samoans, then, according to Mageo (1998), “oneness with group members is obvious and commonsensical . . .” (p. 11). These and other statements about the self are buttressed by rich ethnographic detail. Thus, given a sociocentric disposition—which has been attributed to Polynesian groups in general (Eisenberg et al., 2015; Levy, 1973; Shore, 1982)—it is unsurprising to find a tendency for young Samoan children to behave highly altruistically under the imposed test conditions.
Another salient characteristic of American Samoa was its relative wealth. Per capita income in American Samoa was far above all others in the sample (Gauvain & Munroe, 2009). It might be argued that Samoan children were unlikely to value one-quarter of a dollar and more likely to give up most of it—as they did—and for that reason would have achieved their high altruism scores. This could be correct, but the Newar children, the second highest in altruism, were part of an economy possessing the lowest per capita income in our sample. Per capita income thus does not aid in understanding the overall findings for altruistic behavior.
The high altruism scores for the Newars were consistent with recent research showing that rice-growing communities in China were more collectivistic than communities in which the primary crop was wheat (Talhelm et al., 2014). Paddy rice demands high levels of interdependence, and in that research, the individuals from rice-growing areas evinced more collectivistic behavior on several measures than did those from wheat-growing counties. The authors also found lower levels of divorce in rice-growing areas, a regularity they attributed to a tendency to preserve relationships. We did not have data on divorce, but in our four communities, it was the two collectivist samples—the Newars and the Samoans—which were characterized by low levels of father absence (R. L. Munroe & Munroe, 1992).
One clear implication of the present outcomes is that the canonical economic axiom of self-interest, at least as formulated in positive game theory, did not hold. 3 Only eight of the 186 participants failed to allocate any money to the so-named “needy” children; the eight were in the Logoli and Garifuna subsamples. Of the 23 participants who elected to give all their money away, 20 were in the Samoan and Newar subsamples. On average, upon hearing the story of need, the participating children gave away slightly more than half (54%) their newly earned money. This general outcome tends to accord with results from previous cross-cultural research (Henrich et al., 2005; Sosis & Ruffle, 2003).
For more than 35 years, we have known of community-level differences in the altruism scores, differences that appeared to be too strong to be due to chance. Eventually, prompted by the evolving literature on collectivism–individualism, we undertook this study, and we hope to have shown the potential value of reexamining field data when the literature poses new questions. Many anthropologists will possess similar sources, and their future contributions in such a vein could prove highly useful. For example, in cultural anthropology, Anthony Wallace (2012, 2013) has shown a way of doing this through recontact with a Tuscarora community after a period of a half-century. His earlier wire recordings of history and legends have enabled efforts to revitalize the almost-extinct Tuscarora language. And in biological anthropology, ancient fossils, excavated many years back, are yielding further information about their genomic structure as new instruments have been developed (Castellano et al., 2014; Gokhman et al., 2014).
As noted, McNutt (in Shell, 2016) has emphasized how exploratory studies need to be reproduced. Excepting for the Samoans, however, there were no implications that the altruism response levels we found would hold outside the specific communities studied: For the many Newars inhabiting the city of Kathmandu, or Logoli children residing with parents in the large urban milieu of Nairobi, or the Garifuna living in an isolated community like Barranco, Belize, we have neither knowledge nor expectations as to what the responses might be in a dictator game such as the one utilized in this study. Nevertheless, both collectivist and individualist societies and communities abound throughout the world, and a variety of dictator game approaches could fruitfully be employed in those places. We also suggest that the conditions posed in the altruism test—wherein the child was told of a fire destroying the belongings of other children—could have created a pressure to which the Samoan and Nepalese participants responded with generosity. A similar mode of inquiry, creating real-seeming strains for participants, could open another and quite different path to the understanding of altruistic behavior.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The cooperation of residents in the four study communities was invaluable. I also thank the following individuals for aid with literature searches or for providing helpful comments on the ideas expressed in this article: Mary Gauvain, Ronald Macaulay, Ann Uttrapatriyakul, and Phil Zuckerman. Michael Donahue, Director of Study Abroad programs at Pitzer College, was present with the research team in Bosigaon, Nepal, and supplied much useful information about the village. Susan Seymour and Claudia Strauss were especially helpful in suggesting the reorientation of an earlier version of this article. Reviewer Michael Burton made several very useful comments, especially concerning the value of attending to the material and social conditions conducive to collectivistic tendencies. The late Ruth H. Munroe was responsible for the formulation, conducting, and supervision of the altruism test.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Fieldwork and data analyses were supported by grants from the National Science Foundation to Robert L. Munroe and Ruth H. Munroe.