Cross-cultural study of kinship premium and social discounting of generosity

Social discounting predicts that one's concern for others decreases with increasing social distance. Cultural dimensions may influence this social behavior. Here, we used a dictator game, in which the participants and real members of their social entourage profited from the partition of the end...

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Published inFrontiers in psychology Vol. 14; p. 1087979
Main Authors Liu, Jiawei, Derrington, Edmund, Bénistant, Julien, Corgnet, Brice, Van der Henst, Jean-Baptiste, Tang, Zixuan, Qu, Chen, Dreher, Jean-Claude
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland Frontiers Media 24.02.2023
Frontiers Media S.A
Subjects
altruism
Chinese
Cognitive science
cultural collectivism
generosity
kinship premium
Psychology
social discounting
generosity
Chinese
kinship premium
social discounting
altruism
cultural collectivism
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Summary:Social discounting predicts that one's concern for others decreases with increasing social distance. Cultural dimensions may influence this social behavior. Here, we used a dictator game, in which the participants and real members of their social entourage profited from the partition of the endowments determined by the participant, to compare how Chinese and French university students shared endowments with people at different social distances. We tested two hypotheses based on the concepts of kinship premium and cultural collectivism. Stronger ties between close family members were expected among Chinese. This may predict a larger "kinship premium," i.e., increased generosity to family members at close social distances, in Chinese relative to French participants. Similarly, because collectivism is thought to be stronger in Asian than western societies, greater generosity at larger social distances might also be expected among Chinese participants. The results showed that Chinese were more generous than French at close social distances but discounted more as social distance increased. This difference between French and Chinese was confined to family members and no significant difference in generosity was observed between French and Chinese for non-family members at any social distance. Our findings evidence a stronger kinship premium among Chinese than French students, and no significant effect of cultural collectivism.
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This article was submitted to Cultural Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
These authors share first authorship
These authors have contributed equally to this work and share last authorship
Edited by: Yung-Jong Shiah, National Kaohsiung Normal University, Taiwan
Reviewed by: Nan Zhu, University of Macau, China; Yuqing Zhou, Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, Germany
ISSN:1664-1078
1664-1078
DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1087979