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

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在社会科学中受到越来越多的关注。然而，过去的研究未能建立程式化的经验事实，高地位的行动者是否比低地位的行动者更亲社会或更少，因此，本项目主要是为了提供可靠的经验证据，社会地位和亲社会之间的关系。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，以直接测量三种重要形式的亲社会性，即利他主义，直接互惠和间接互惠，在激励的行为水平上。由于调查中将测量SES和主观社会地位，因此可以在大规模水平上探索社会地位与亲社会性之间的实证关系。本研究的第二个目的是检验关于亲社会性解释的相互冲突的理论模型。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，以及关于移情，社会认同和群体内偏见的各种社会心理学概念，提供了各种关于社会地位和亲社会性相互作用的预测。通过测量调查中理论上提出的亲社会性的决定因素，并将预测结果与通过综合实验获得的亲社会性的行为测量结果进行比较，可以对这些理论进行比较实证检验。第三，本项目将探讨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。以前研究中的混合证据在很大程度上可以解释为，数据来自不同的人群，他们具有不同的文化特征。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有很大的差异，因此文化特征很可能也会影响社会地位和亲社会性之间的关系。为了从经验上研究文化在地位-亲社会关系中的作用，拟议的研究项目将在四个国家进行调查和综合实验，即，德国、瑞典、波兰和美国。这四个国家是根据霍夫施泰德关于文化方面的工作选定的。更具体地说，瑞典、波兰和美国在文化的三个最相关的霍夫施泰德维度中的两个维度上非常相似，即，权力距离，个人主义和男性气质，并与第三个方面截然不同。因此，这种国家选择允许分离这三个文化层面的影响。

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.