Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP17731
Authors: Alessandra Cassar; Alejandrina Cristia; Sarah Walker; Pauline Grosjean
Abstract: We examine a novel hypothesis that roots human prosociality in the need to elicit and sustain help from others for the purpose of raising children, i.e. allomaternal care. We measure the relationship between allomaternal care and cooperative behavior among a sample of 820 adults in the Solomon Islands. Our results show that receiving help with child care nurtures reciprocity and altruism towards those who provide help. Moreover, help from non-relatives predicts impersonal prosociality toward strangers, suggesting an important foundation for the development of impersonal prosociality. As evidence of a mechanism sustaining the prevalence of allomaternal care, we document large socio-cognitive benefits to children from care by non-relatives, based on daylong vocalizations of 200 children analyzed using a multilingually-trained neural network.
Keywords: dictator game; reciprocity; altruism; child vocalizations; allomaternal care
JEL Codes: I15; O15; Z13
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| allomaternal care (J13) | prosociality (D64) |
| help with child care (J13) | altruistic giving (D64) |
| help from non-relatives (I39) | generosity towards strangers (D64) |
| allomaternal care (J13) | communication skills of children (G53) |