Social status and prosociality: A cross-cultural study in four selected countries

社会地位和亲社会性：在四个选定国家进行的跨文化研究

• 批准号: 324311331
• 负责人: Privatdozent Dr. Andreas Tutic
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Department of Sociology
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-31 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/324311331?language=en
• 关键词: Social; status; prosociality; cross; cultural

Since 2010 the question if and to what extent status groups differ regarding prosocial behavior has received increasing attention in the social sciences. However, past research failed in establishing stylized empirical facts as to whether high-status actors act more or less prosocial than low-status actors.Hence, this project primarily aims at providing reliable empirical evidence on the relationship between social status and prosociality. To achieve this, the project combines representative surveys with experimental methods. Three variants of dictator games will be integrated in surveys allowing to directly measure three important forms of prosociality, i.e. altruism, direct reciprocity, and indirect reciprocity, on an incentivized, behavioral level. Since SES and subjective social status will be measured in the surveys, this allows to explore the empirical relationship between social status and prosociality on a large-scale level.The second goal of the proposed study is to test conflicting theoretical models regarding the explanation of prosociality. Economic approaches regarding social preferences, various sociological theories such as status expectancy theory, exchange theory, and interaction ritual theory as well as diverse social-psychological concepts regarding empathy, social identity, and in-group bias provide a variety of predictions regarding the interplay of social status and prosociality. Measuring the theoretically suggested determinants of prosociality in surveys and comparing the predictions to the behavioral measure of prosociality obtained via the integrated experiments allows putting these theories to a comparative empirical test.Third, the project will explore if and to what extent the observed relationship between social status and prosociality depends on cultural differences. The mixed evidence from previous studies might to a considerable degree be explained by the fact that data stems from different populations carrying divergent cultural traits. Since both attitudes towards social hierarchy, status, and power as well as patterns of prosocial behavior vary drastically among cultural environments, it is highly likely the cultural traits also affect the relationship between social status and prosociality. To empirically examine the role of culture on the status-prosociality nexus, the proposed research project will conduct surveys with integrated experiments in four countries, i.e., Germany, Sweden, Poland, and the US. These four countries were selected on the basis of Hofstede's work on cultural dimensions. More specifically, Sweden, Poland, and the US are very similar on two of the three most relevant Hofstede dimensions of culture, i.e., power distance, individualism, and masculinity, and differ drastically with respect to the third. Hence, this selection of countries allows separating the effects of these three cultural dimensions.

自2010年以来，社会地位群体在亲社会行为方面是否存在差异以及在多大程度上存在差异的问题越来越受到社会科学的关注。然而，过去的研究未能建立程式化的经验事实，即高地位的行为者是否比低地位的行为者更亲社会。因此，本项目主要旨在为社会地位与亲社会性之间的关系提供可靠的实证证据。为了实现这一目标，该项目将代表性调查与实验方法相结合。独裁者游戏的三种变体将被整合到调查中，允许直接测量亲社会的三种重要形式，即利他主义、直接互惠和间接互惠，在激励的行为层面上。由于SES和主观社会地位将在调查中测量，这使得可以在大尺度上探索社会地位与亲社会之间的实证关系。本研究的第二个目标是检验关于解释亲社会性的相互矛盾的理论模型。关于社会偏好的经济学方法，各种社会学理论，如地位期望理论、交换理论和互动仪式理论，以及关于共情、社会认同和群体内偏见的各种社会心理学概念，提供了关于社会地位和亲社会性相互作用的各种预测。在调查中测量理论建议的亲社会决定因素，并将预测与通过综合实验获得的亲社会行为测量进行比较，可以将这些理论用于比较实证检验。第三，该项目将探讨观察到的社会地位和亲社会性之间的关系是否以及在多大程度上取决于文化差异。以前的研究中混杂的证据在很大程度上可以用这样一个事实来解释，即数据来自具有不同文化特征的不同人群。由于对社会等级、地位和权力的态度以及亲社会行为的模式在不同的文化环境中都有很大的不同，因此很可能文化特征也会影响社会地位和亲社会之间的关系。为了实证研究文化在地位-亲社会关系中的作用，本研究计划在德国、瑞典、波兰和美国四个国家进行综合实验调查。这四个国家是根据Hofstede在文化维度上的工作选择的。更具体地说，瑞典、波兰和美国在Hofstede文化的三个最相关的维度中有两个非常相似，即权力距离、个人主义和男子气概，而在第三个维度上差异很大。因此，这个国家的选择允许分离这三个文化维度的影响。