Impersonal Prosociality

Characteristics

"Impersonal prosociality is supported by a certain mindset:

Moral universalism and moral absolutism. Rules are followed and enforced more willingly if framed in universal and absolute terms, as opposed to the situational and relativistic rule-framing of kinship networks.

Moralized perception of non-kin. Help is more willingly provided to non-kin as long as they belong to the community of rule-followers. Continual rule-breaking leads to expulsion from the community. Insiders are thus separated from outsiders by a line dividing “the morally worthy” from “the morally worthless.”

Guilt activation. Rule-breaking is punished more through internal activation of guilt than through external activation of shame. Guilt is the distress felt by a rule-breaker even when the rule-breaking is witnessed by no one else. Conversely, shame causes distress only when the rule-breaking is witnessed by someone else (Benedict, 1946).

Broader range of targets for affective empathy. Affective empathy is extended from the mother-child relationship to all social relationships. Through this involuntary transfer of another person’s feelings to oneself, rule-breaking is experienced as harm not only to the victim but also to oneself. Some researchers have argued that affective empathy and guilt are two overlapping aspects of the same mental mechanism."

(https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/the-white-man-has-no-friends)

Discussion

Alexander Beiner:

" London and Paris are very WEIRD places. This acronym, which stands for ‘Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic’ was coined by Joe Henrich and a team of researchers who began asking whether psychology research, often conducted on Western undergraduates, was truly indicative of human psychology or just people in the West. The latter turned out to be true. In fact WEIRD people are global outliers. As Henrich explains in his book The WEIRDest People in the World:

“WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. We focus on ourselves — our attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations — over our relationships and social roles. We aim to be “ourselves” across contexts and see inconsistencies in others as hypocrisy rather than flexibility. Like everyone else, we are inclined to go along with our peers and authority figures; but, we are less willing to conform to others when this conflicts with our own beliefs, observations, and preferences. We see ourselves as unique beings, not as nodes in a social network that stretches out through space and back in time.”

One of the key insights of Henrich’s research is that, perhaps counterintuitively, WEIRD people tend to be more trusting and generous toward strangers than non-WEIRD people, something known as impersonal prosociality. In more collectivist societies, social trust is bound up in kin-networks; complex webs of relatedness and obligation. People outside that network aren’t subject to the same rules or consequences, and so dealing with them is potentially riskier.

Henrich links the evolution of impersonal prosociality to a number of historical factors, perhaps most importantly the Catholic church outlawing cousin marriage.

Along with historical developments like the growth of cities, this drove people to leave where they were born and seek out new opportunities away from home. Henrich explains:

“As life was increasingly defined dealing with nonrelations or strangers, people came to prefer impartial rules and impersonal laws that applied to those in their groups or communities (their cities, guilds, monasteries, etc.) independent of social relationships, tribal identity, or social class.”

While WEIRD people are uncharacteristically focused on themselves and their own success, they are also more generous to strangers, and more willing to engage with those with different views and values. As a result, WEIRD countries like the UK or the US are culturally more accepting of immigrants than many other countries; this is partly why cities like London and Paris are more multicultural than Tokyo or Shanghai.

Impersonal prosociality is made possible because of another WEIRD cultural adaptation. Instead of relying on networks of trust within our in-group, we outsourced our trust to large institutions."

(https://beiner.substack.com/p/the-mythic-rebellion-why-the-far)