CAREER: Social Closeness, Helping, and Neglect: Examining the Roots of Favoritism in Rural Bangladesh

Daniel Hruschka博士(亚利桑那州立大学)将进行研究，以促进对合作和偏袒的文化根源的了解。在过去的十年里，一项新的研究揭示了感知的社会亲密度是如何从根本上改变人们帮助某些人和忽视其他人的意愿的。目前的发现主要基于工业化国家，提出了一些关键问题，即文化背景如何改变社会亲密度与决策的相关性。本研究将运用访谈、观察和调查的方法在当地背景下对社会亲密度的概念进行基础研究，并使用创新的实验工具来测量社会行为，本研究将提出三个主要问题：(1)在不同的宗教和社会经济背景下，人们如何区分社会亲密度和非亲密性他人？(2)宗教和经济因素如何改变社会亲密度对帮助和分享意愿的影响？(3)社会亲密度影响帮助和分享的最接近的心理机制是什么？为了回答这些问题，该项目将比较孟加拉国迪纳杰布尔的四个农村社区，这些社区在宗教背景和经济不确定性方面存在差异。该项目将有助于一些政策领域，这些领域取决于人们如何解决帮助朋友和家人与公平对待更广泛公众之间的矛盾，包括偏袒和腐败、民事治理和慈善捐赠等问题。这个多学科项目将在研究设计、采样、观察技术、访谈构建、数据收集、行为实验以及定性和定量数据分析方面培训本科生和研究生。中学课程将通过圣达菲研究所的创新方案传播，该方案旨在让青年参与实验室活动和研究紧迫社会问题的社会科学方法。该项目还将在孟加拉国Dinajpur的Lamb综合卫生与发展项目建设研究和培训能力。

Dr. Daniel Hruschka (Arizona State University) will undertake research to advance understanding of the cultural roots of cooperation and favoritism. In the last decade, new research has revealed how perceived social closeness fundamentally transforms people's willingness to help certain people and to neglect others. Based largely in industrialized countries, current findings raise key questions about how cultural context changes the relevance of social closeness for decision-making. Using interview, observational and survey methods to ground concepts of social closeness in local context and innovative experimental tools to measure social behavior, the study will ask three main questions: (1) How do people discriminate between socially close and non-close others in different religious and socioeconomic contexts? (2) How do religious and economic factors change the effect of social closeness on the willingness to help and to share? (3) What are the proximate psychological mechanisms by which social closeness influences helping and sharing? To answer these questions, the project will compare four rural communities in Dinajpur, Bangladesh that differ in terms of religious background and economic uncertainty. This project will contribute to a number of policy areas that depend on how people resolve dilemmas between helping friends and family and being fair to a broader public, including issues of favoritism and corruption, civil governance, and charitable giving. The multidisciplinary project will train undergraduate and graduate students in study design, sampling, observational techniques, interview construction, data collection, behavioral experiments, and qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Middle school curricula will be disseminated through innovative programs at the Santa Fe Institute designed to engage youth in laboratory activities and social scientific approaches to studying pressing social issues. The project will also build research and training capacity at LAMB Project for Integrated Health and Development in Dinajpur, Bangladesh.