Abstract
Folk stories featuring prosocial content are ubiquitous across cultures. One explanation for the ubiquity of such stories is that stories teach people about the local socioecology, including norms of prosociality, and stories featuring prosocial content may increase generosity in listeners. We tested this hypothesis in a sample of 185 Hadza hunter-gatherers. We read participants a story in which the main character either swims with another person (control story) or rescues him from drowning (prosocial story). After hearing the story, participants played a dictator game with dried meat sticks and then were given a recall test of facts presented in the story. There was moderate evidence for a small effect of the prosocial story: participants who heard the prosocial story gave an estimated 0.22 [90% HDI: −0.12–0.57] more meat sticks than those who heard the control story. However, the association between generosity and sex, marital status, and region of residence was stronger; men gave more than women, unmarried participants gave more than married participants, and participants living in a region with more exposure to markets gave more than participants living further from markets. There was no evidence that the prosocial story was more easily recalled than the control story. These results provide some support for the hypothesis that prosocial stories can increase prosociality in listeners, though the effect of hearing a single story is small.
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Materials, data, and code are publicly accessible at https://osf.io/rpbmz/.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Endeko Endeko, Deus Haraja, and Victoria Maghalli for their assistance in data collection, Momoya Merus for allowing us to stay at his compound during data collection, and Audax Mabulla for his administrative support in Tanzania. We thank Anne Pisor and Duncan Stibbard-Hawkes for providing thoughtful comments on an earlier draft. And we thank the Hadza for their participation in the research.
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This work was supported by a subgrant through the Moral Beacons Project, funded by the Templeton Religion Trust and Wake Forest University, and the University of Pennsylvania’s MindCORE program.
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KMS designed the study, collected data, conducted the analyses, and drafted the manuscript; IAM collected data and revised the manuscript; CLA designed the study and revised the manuscript.
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Smith, K.M., Mabulla, I.A. & Apicella, C.L. Hearing Prosocial Stories Increases Hadza Hunter-Gatherers’ Generosity in an Economic Game. Hum Nat 34, 103–121 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-023-09444-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-023-09444-4