Hamilton’s rule predicts anticipated social support in humans

Maxwell N. Burton-Chellew and Robin I.M. Dunbar

Behavioral Ecology, 2015, vol. 26, issue 1, 130-137

Abstract: Hamilton’s rule predicts that individuals should be more likely to altruistically help closer kin and this theory is well supported from zoological studies of nonhumans. In contrast, there is a paucity of relevant human data. This is largely due to the difficulties of either experimentally testing relatives or of collecting data on genuinely costly cooperation. We test Hamilton’s rule in humans by seeing if the availability of help in times of crises is predicted by the degree of genetic relatedness. In social network research, the pool of people that one can go to for support during times of crisis is termed the support network. By definition, the members of a support network provide various benefits in times of need, and larger support networks have been shown to be important for general health. As this level of support bears costs for the providers and has clear benefits for the receivers, it therefore allows us to test Hamilton’s rule. We use an Internet sample to analyze the composition of 540 people’s support networks. We had people rank their support network members in order of who would be most likely to help and found that relatives were more likely to be ranked in primary positions and that the degree of relatedness correlated with rank.

Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/aru165 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:beheco:v:26:y:2015:i:1:p:130-137.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Behavioral Ecology is currently edited by Louise Barrett

More articles in Behavioral Ecology from International Society for Behavioral Ecology Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().