Women's lives viewed from an evolutionary perspective. II. patterns of helping

Women’s Lives Viewed from an Evolutionary Perspective. II. Patterns of Helping Susan M. Essock-Vitale

and Michael T. McGuire*

Department of PsychiatrylBiobehavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of California at Los Angeles (S.M.E.-V.; M.T.M.) and Psychiatry Service, Sepulveda Veterans Administration Medical Center, Sepulveda, California (M.T.M.)

Three hundred randomly selected, white, middle-class Los Angeles women were interviewed to determine variations in patterns of helping among kin versus nonkin. Specitic predictions arising out of the evolutionary theories of kin selection and reciprocal altruism were supported: helping among friends was more likely to be reciprocal than helping among kin; among kin, closer kin were more likely sources of help than were more distant kin; among kin, helping was an increasing function of the recipient’s expected reproductive potential; and the larger the amount of help given, the more likely it was to come from kin. The data suggest that the effects of variables such as kinship, age, wealth, sex, and expected reproductive potential are small but persistent, and hence potentially of great functional significance when present generation after generation. Subjects reported seeking help from individuals who had been sources of help in the past more often than from individuals who owed them help. Hints of deception or self-deception are present: Subjects reported giving more than they received and paying back more often than they were paid back. Key Words: Helping; Kin selection;

Altruism; Reciprocal altruism; Women; Social networks

INTRODUCTION

In human social networks, tinually

shifting

roles:

individuals have conThey are givers, receiv-

Received March 20. 1984; revised March IS, 1985. Address reprint requests to: Susan M. Essock-Vitale, Ph.D., or Michael T. McGuire, M.D., The Neuropsychiatric Institute, UCLA, 760 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90024. * Because the authors of this article are editors of this Journal, this article was reviewed in the office of the European Editor of E&logy and Sociobiology.

ers, requesters, and refusers. At the same time, individuals are resource-rich or resource-poor, friends, newcomers, close kin, distant cousins, and so on. In this report we ask whether relationships are predictive of patterns of helping. We are interested in identifying patterns of reciprocity, as well as those factors that predict helping and the consequences of being a likely or unlikely helping partner. This study was prompted by questions concerning the possible evolutionary significance of human patterns of helping, and of the different biases that may have undergone natural selection when helping kin versus nonkin. Consistent, differential patterns of helping kin versus nonkin, reciprocators versus nonreciprocators, kin with high versus low expected fecundity, or close versus distant kin could potentially result in the furthering of one’s inclusive fitness (for fuller discussions see, among others, Alexander 1974; Hamilton 1964; Essock-Vitale and McGuire 1980; Trivers 1971; Wilson 1975). Specific, testable predictions follow from the theories of kin selection and reciprocal altruism. Kin selection refers to the natural selection of genes whose combined effect is to increase the fitness of genetic relatives at some cost to the individual actor (Hamilton 1964). Kin selection can occur when, on the average, any loss of individual fitness (that is, one’s genetic representation in future generations via direct descendants) is offset by a sufficient gain in inclusive fitness (i.e., one’s genetic representation in future generations via direct and collateral descendants; Hamilton 1964). This decrement in individual fitness will be offset by a sufficient gain 155

Ethology and Sociobiology 6: 155-173 (1985) 0 Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc., 1985 52 Vanderbilt Ave., New York, New York 10017

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in inclusive fitness for selection to have occurred whenever the ratio of the receiver’s benefit (h) to the giver’s cost (c) exceeds l/r, where r is Wright’s coefficient of relatedness between the giver and receiver (b/c > l/r; Hamilton 1964). When these conditions are met, no reciprocation of assistance need occur for such giving to be adaptive. In contrast to kin selection, reciprocal altruism refers to an exchange of helping that, were it to occur only in one direction, would increase the fitness of the receiving individual while reducing that of the giver. Hence, the likelihood of payback must be present for such helping to be adaptive. In acting to maximize one’s inclusive fitness, whom, among equally close kin, should one help? Specifically, one should help where the marginal value of one’s helping is the greatest: where one’s helping, after being weighted by degree of relatedness, makes the greatest difference in expected reproductive potential. All else being equal, favoring kin with higher reproductive value (so that, for example, for the subjects in this study, children should be helped over parents) would tend to maximize inclusive fitness. Within the same kinship class, favoring those individuals who are more likely to raise offspring (for example, married versus the unmarried sib) would also be a strategy enhancing inclusive Iitness. As has often been pointed out (for example, Altmann 1979; Hamilton 1964), to maximize inclusive fitness a giver must depreciate the benefit to the receiver both by the coefficient of relationship and by the recipient’s reproductive value. In studies of other species, estimating differences in reproductive value is often problematic. With humans, however, one has the advantage of being able to ask about their expectations concerning the reproductive potential of various kin. Hence, one can assess whether subjects act according to their expectations of their kin’s reproductive potential, obviating the need for experimental calibration of the relative reproductive value of various kin. As outlined above, helping between kin and friends can be expected to differ in predictable ways. Kin should be more likely to tolerate a lack of reciprocity because, if help goes unreciprocated, they still derive some inclusive fitness benefit, whereas friends do not. Similarly, kin should be more inclined than friends to give very costly help, since the risk of nonreciprocation is less threatening to kin because of the

S. M. Essock-Vitale

and M. T. McGuire

potential gain in inclusive fitness. Finally, the recipient’s closeness of kinship and expected reproductive potential should exert predictable influences on helping among kin but not friends. If kin selection and reciprocal altruism are evolved components of human social behavior, then the following helping patterns are to be expected: Helping among nonkin is more likely to be reciprocal than helping among kin. Among kin, helping will increase as kinship distance decreases, Among kin, helping will be an increasing function of the recipient’s expected reproductive potential. ’ The greater the help being given, the more likely it is to come from kin. These hypotheses predict the direction of helping behavior or the relative magnitude of difference scores expected for particular comparisons, rather than absolute amounts of help. Such an approach means that these predictions are expected to hold cross-culturally and are not unique to the population studied here. These predictions can be further refined by taking into consideration, for example, the expected reproductive potential of equally close kin, the extent to which kin (for example, sibs) compete with each other for resources, or the relative benefit received by equally close kin from the same assistance. Fortunately, the data base considered here is sufftciently detailed that we are able to go beyond the basic predictions stated above and examine how a number of environmental and social network considerations shift patterns of helping in predictable directions. An extended rationale for the sample and a detailed description of the methods and demographic features of the sample can be found in Part I of this report (Essock-Vitale and McGuire 1985).

METHODS Subjects Participants were 300 white, non-Hispanic, middle-class women, aged 35-45 years, living in greater Los Angeles, California. Only women ’ Note that the function need not be linear. Claiming linear (proportional) increases would be to commit the gambler’s fallacy of distributing bets in proportion of the expected gain (for elaboration, see Altmann 1979).

Women’s Lives: Patterns

of Helping

were sampled because we were especially interested in helping and kin interactions among women raising children of various ages or raising none at all. All subjects were native born and raised by at least one of their natural parents. Subjects were paid $25.00 plus babysitting expenses, when needed, for their participation. The subjects were contacted by telephone using a modified random-digit dialing procedure to solicit their participation (see Essock-Vitale and McGuire 1985 for further details). When a potential subject meeting the selection criteria was found, the study was described briefly and she was invited to participate in a face-to-face interview of approximately 5 hours’ duration, at a time and location (that is, her home or UCLA) convenient to her.

The Questionnaire

The Social Relationships Questionnaire consisted entirely of questions with brief, easily coded answers. Its development, reliability measures (including the interviewing of local sibs), and content have been considered in detail elsewhere (Essock-Vitale and McGuire 1985). Those portions of the questionnaire particularly relevant to this report are outlined in Table 1.’

RESULTS WITH DISCUSSION ANALYSES

OF SPECIFIC

An Overview of the Helping Data

Considering all helping instances-large or small assistance of any type-who helped subjects the most during the year prior to the interviews? And whom did subjects help most? Table 2 gives the relationship of the one person whom subjects reported as having helped the most during the past year. Data are presented for all subjects combined, for currently married subjects, for subjects with children, and for subjects without children. The general trend seems to be that subjects received the most help from their husbands and friends and gave the most help to their friends, husbands, and children. Within each grouping of subjects (for example, all subjects combined, currently married subjects), friends were cited as the single greatest source of help zComplete copies of the questionnaire $10.00 each.

are available for

157 about as often as they were cited as the greatest receivers of help. Subjects listed a kinsperson as the single greatest helping partner more for help the subject gave than for help the subject received. This difference would be expected because the subjects’ children typically were still young and were more likely to be helped than to help. Indeed, the disparity between help given and received is the greatest for children. Subjects without children appear more likely to have received the most help from friends and to have given the most help to friends. These data suggest that having children elicits help from husbands and kin. Data from other sections of the questionnaire address these topics more directly and are reported below. The data just described required subjects to sum over all large and small instances of help of all types for the year preceding the interview and report who had been the single greatest givers and receivers of help. We also considered who were likely helping partners for specific instances of helping when large amounts of help of particular types were needed. As part of the Help Section of the questionnaire (see Table 1), subjects were asked to recall times when they received the most and next-most help in each of five categories (financial help, emotional support, help with everyday living, help during illness, and help with housing) and when they had given the most and next-most help in each of these categories. These categories were selected because they represent a wide range of helping situations and because, for some of them, help need not depend on the helpers being close by (for example, financial support might come from a check in the mail; emotional support might be given over the telephone or by mail). The 300 subjects could have generated 3000 instances in which they had received and 3000 instances in which they had given assistance. A few subjects reported that they had given or received a particular type of help only once or not at all. Hence the actual number of instances recorded for help to and from the subjects were 2520 and 2651, respectively. The percentages of subjects who said that they had ever given, or had ever received, particular types of help are shown in Table 3. Log-linear analysis of multiway frequency tables (Brown 1981), examining relationships among help type, direction of help, and whether an instance of helping was reported, indicated

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Table 1. An Outline of the Social Relationships

Questionnaire

Introduction (5 min) Kin and in-law identification (6 min) People like relatives (2 min) Residence history (16 min) Location (20 min) Contact (28 min) Friends (14 min) Recreational activities (8 min) Close relatives (17 min)

Collects information about exchanges between S and each of her close kin, plus information on the tinancial resources and number of children supported by each of those kin.

10. Spouse (11 min) 11. In-law help (5 min) 12. Help (34 min)

13. Potential help (15 min) 14.

Current status of helping relationships

15. 16. 17. 18.

Employment and income history (11 min) Health and medical care (11 min) Counseling history (6 min) Relatives’ and spouses’ counseling histories (6 min) Religion (2 min) Physical punishnient (2 min) Word pairs (8 min) Perceived importance (2 min) Major life events (4 min) Sexual history (14 min)

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

on Sections Dealing with Helping

Information Collected

Section 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

with Comments

and M. T. McGuire

(8 min)

that subjects were significantly more likely to report that they had given help than that they had received help (u* = 31.7, df = 1, p < 0.01). Furthermore, the frequency of reporting a helping instance varied with the type of help under consideration (x2 = 736.3, df = 4, p < 0.01; Table 3). There was also a significant interaction between the three factors (x2 = 48.3, df = 4, p < 0.01; Table 3). Briefly, instances of emotional support were the most frequently reported, regardless of the direction of helping. Moreover, help with housing was the least likely to be reported, with subjects being more likely to report

Estimates help from spouse’s kin relative to the age of S’s children by that spouse. Collects information on first and second most important instances of help given and received in each of five categories (financial help, emotional support, help with everyday living, help during illness, help with housing) during S’s adult life. For each instance listed, S states who helped or was helped, who had done most of the helping between herself and that helping partner at the time of the helping instance being recorded, and who, if anyone, refused to help. S’s opinions as to whom she would help and who would help her for each of the five categories of helping listed in the Help Section. Estimrites the current “balance of payments” and the likelihood of future payback between S and her major helping partners (defined as those individuals listed in the Help Section).

that they had given help with housing (86.3%) than that they had received it (70.0%). The differences noted in Table 3 for various types of help or for the direction of help may come from several sources. They may represent bias in reporting by the subjects (that is, either deception or self-deception, with subjects reporting that they helped more than they were helped), they may have arisen because of selfdeception by the subjects (with subjects weighting more heavily help that they gave than help that they received), or they may reflect the demands of the particular time of mid-life at which

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Table 2. The Percentage of Subjects Reporting That a Member of a Category of Relationship to the Subject or Received the Most Help from the Subject During the Past Year”

Relationship Parent Sib Half-sib Grandparent Aunt or uncle Niece or nephew Child Grandchild Other blood kin Husband . Husband’s kin In-law Step or adopted Friend Total All kin

All subjects (N = 300)

Currently married (N = 216)

Most help Most help to s from S

Most help Most help

12.7% 2.3 0 0 0 0

3.7 0 0.3 40.7 2.7 2.3 3i.3 100% 19.0%

11.0% 5.0 0.7 0.7 0 1.0 21.1 0.3 0.7 22.3 2.3 0.3 1.0 33.7 100% 40.4%

to s 10.7% 2.3 0 0 0 0 3.2 0 0.5 56.0 3.2 0.9 0 23.2 100%

16.7%

from S 11.1% 5.1 0.9 0.9 0 1.4 20.4 0.5 0.9 30.1 3.2 0.5 0.9 24. I 100% 41.2%

Subjects with children (N = 265) Most help Most help from S to s 12.8% 2.6 0 0 0 0 4.2 0 0.4 42.6 3.0 1.9 0 32.5 100% 20.0%

11.3% 4.9 0.7 0.7 0 1.1 23.8 0.4 0.4 23.4 2.3 0.4 0.4 30.2 100% 43.3%

Gave the Most Help

Subjects without children (N = 35, 14 currently married) Most help to s 11.4% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 25.7 0 5.7 0 57.2 100% 11.4%

Most help from S 8.5% 5.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 2.9 14.3 2.9 0 5.7 60.0 100% 17.1%

0 Data are presented for all subjects combined, for subjects who are currently married (but excluding those separated from their husbands), for subjects with children, and for subjects without children.

the subjects were interviewed (for example, raising children). These possibilities are not mutually exclusive. Some of the analyses that follow are useful in examining the differential relevance of these various alternatives. Because information from the Help Section of the questionnaire (see Table 1) provided many of the data analyzed in this report, it is useful to consider examples demonstrating the variety of helping instances reported when subjects were asked to describe the largest amounts of help given and received in each of five categories (Table 3). Phrases such as “help during illness” Table 3. Number of Subjects Recalling at Least One Instance of Helping, by Type and Direction of Help”

Percent recalling Help Type Financial help Emotional support Help during illness Help with housing Help with everyday living situations

Help from S 264 299 295 259 293

(88.0) (99.7) (98.3) (86.3) (97.7)

Help to S 263 298 294 210 292

(87.7) (99.3) (98.0) (70.0) (97.3)

a Percentage of total subjects appears in parentheses.

or “emotional support” convey little of the personal impact of the events they represent. The instances listed by the subjects were often vivid examples of the times during which they turned to others or others came to them for help. A sample of helping instances selected from three consecutive, randomly selected questionnaires included: When I needed money to get into the union. When I broke my collarbone the house.

and he took over

Talking to a friend about her marital problems. Picking up a friend’s kids the whole time she was sick. When my father died. When my son was in trouble with the police. She kept the children when my third child was born. When she lost a baby. When her husband left her. When she had a leg amputated. Loaned us money for a house down-payment.

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When my daughter left home. When my husband’s

sister got a divorce.

When a friend had a Down’s baby. I came to get her when her car broke down. When my sister came to live with us.

Assessing the Predictions

The patterns of helping reported by the subjects supported each of the four basic predictions set forth in the introduction. We shall review data pertaining to each of these predictions and then show how the initial conclusions one might come to based on these data must be refined by considering additional variables, such as patterns of prior helping or the expected reproductive potential of equally close kin. Such refinements considerably enhance the explanatory power of the data. Prediction I: Helping among nonkin is more likely to be reciprocal than helping among kin. This prediction received strong support (Fig. I ). Data from the Current Status of Helping Kelationships Section of the questionnaire (Table 1) indicated that subjects typically reported reciprocal helping with approximately 35% of kin, compared with approximately 54% of nonkin (hereafter, for convenience, called “friends”). The relative frequency of reciprocal exchange

and M. T. McGuire

relationships with the subjects’ husbands and their kin was 47%. These means were derived as follows. For each person a subject listed as a helping partner in the Help Section of the questionnaire, she was asked, as of the present, who had done the most helping between herself and that person. Within each relationship class (kin, husband and husband’s kin, friends), the percentage of individuals falling into each of the three “balance-of-payments” categories (subject helped more, each about equally, other helped more) was computed for each subject. These within-subject scores were then averaged across all subjects. This procedure ensured that data from each subject were weighted equally. The finding that subjects reported a greater proportion of reciprocal helping relationships with friends than with kin was quite consistent across subjects, with only 25% of the sample deviating from this pattern. A correlated t-test indicated that the percentage, of reciprocal helping relationships was significantly greater for friends b than for kin [t(287) = 8.45, p < 0.011. Figure I. Reciprocity balance for three classes of relationship: all kin, husband plus husband’s kin, and nonkin (friends). Within each category. for each subject the percentage of individuals falling in each of three helped more, ” =“--S and categories (“S + “-S other helped about equally, “0 + “-other helped more) was computed. These scores were then averaged across subjects and plotted.

Women’s Lives: Patterns

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Prediction 2: Among kin, helping will increase as kinship distance decreases. Figure 2 shows the percentage of kin falling into each of three degrees of relatedness for kin mentioned as helping partners in the Help Section of the questionnaire. (The figure legend specifies the degree of relatedness for various kinship classes.) Within the kin category, therefore, help exchanges were most likely to be with close kin. Note, however, that help exchanges with kin account for only about one-third of all helping exchanges (Figure 2, sum of the three bars). Note also that close and distant kin may differ in their opportunities to help, a factor that is uncontrolled for here. One might guess that many of the nonkin help exchanges involved husbands or husbands’ kin-individuals who may be kin to the subjects’ children and hence whose fortunes and misfortunes may have an impact upon the inclusive litness of the exchange partner. These individuals did account for an additional 16% of all helping instances reported (Table 4). The great majority of the remaining helping exchanges occurred with friends, however, Table 4 presents the frequency with which individuals of different relationships were listed as helping partners. In absolute numbers, an observer’s best guess as to the degree of relatedness of a particular helping PERCENl 40

30

161 partner would be “zero.” One might argue that, for any given subject, the world contains many nonkin but relatively few kin and a relevant question is, “Are kin overrepresented as helping partners?” Although the denominator for the fraction “helping kin/total kin” might be known, the denominator for a similar fraction involving nonkin is unknown, which makes statements about the relative representation of kin and nonkin incalculable for this particular comparison. Yet it is clear that, among kin, closer kin help more despite an individual’s typically having fewer close than distant kin. When examining who were reported as helping partners for times. when large amounts of help were needed, a few surprises appear (Table 4). Of large amounts of help subjects reported giving, only 3.7% went to husbands and 6.5% to children, groups who were often the recipients of the most help overall during the past year (Table 2). In contrast, 53.9% went to friends. This need not imply that subjects spent more time helping friends than their immediate family, Figure 2. Percentage of major helping by closeness of kinship, where r = coefficient of relationship (e.g., r of $ = parents, full sibs, children; r off = half-sibs, grandparents, aunts, uncles, grandchildren, nieces, nephews; r greater than zero but less than t = cousins, children of half-sibs, etc).

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Table 4. Frequency with Which Individuals of Different Relationships to the Subjects Were Reported as Helping Partners, by Direction of Help”

Help Direction Relationship Parent Full sib Half-sib Grandparent Aunt or uncle Niece or nephew Child Other blood kin Husband Husband’s kin In-law (no blood relation to S or husband) Step or adopted individual Other non kin (friends) Total

From S

To S

289 222 29 30 20 32 171 28 99 236 43

(10.9) (8.4) (1.1) (1.1) (0.7) (1.2) (6.5) (1.1) (3.7) (8.9) (1.6)

663 133 2 25 35 3 49 15 251 235 33

(26.3) (5.3) (0.1) (1.0) (1.4) (0.1) (I .9) (0.6) (10.0) (9.3) (1.3)

23

(0.9)

16

(0.6)

1429

(53.9)

1060

(42.1)

2651

(1W

2520

(100)

a Numbers in parentheses give the percentage of total helping instances for that direction of h.-lp.

because, as shown in Table 2, subjects may help a family member in small ways that sum to more than the sum of help expended on a friend. Another alternative is that help from husbands or to children is generally expected (for example, taking care of a sick child for an extended period) and perceived as an inherent part of particular roles (parent, spouse) rather than as help. Perhaps only help occurring outside of these roles may be considered help (for example, a husband’s grocery shopping may be perceived as help if the wife typically does the bulk of the grocery shopping, but a husband’s painting a house may not be perceived as help if the husband typically does household repairs). Prediction 3: Among kin, helping will be an increasing function of the recipient’s expected reproductive potential. As Figure 3 and Table 4

suggest, investment tended to flow from older to younger kin: from those who are more likely to have resources to those who are less so. Data for Figure 3 are from the Current Status of Helping Relationships Section of the questionnaire, analyzed as in Figure 1, but broken down by relationship. Hence, for example, subjects were more likely to help their children, nieces, and nephews than the reverse. For kin of approxi-

and M. T. McGuire

mately the same age (for example, full sibs), exchange relationships were most likely to be reciprocal. Insofar as age can be assumed to be a correlate of expected reproductive potential within the age spans considered here, the prediction is upheld. This assumption does seem reasonable for this subject population for the following reasons. The subjects were at or near the end of their reproductive careers; hence their reproductive value is likely to be lower than that of their children, yet higher than their parents. (For subjects with children, the mean age of the youngest and oldest child was 11.8 and 15.9 years, respectively.) The reproductive value of collateral kin (aunts, uncles, full- and half-sibs, nieces, and nephews) can be assumed to be that of the subjects’ kin of the same generation. (For example, the generation of, hence the reproductive value of, aunts and uncles can be assumed to be that of the subjects’ parents.) Table 4 shows, for each relationship, the frequency with which help Rowed to and from the subjects. Generation was defined as 1 for grandparents; 2 for parents, husbands’ parents, and aunts and uncles; 3 for full and half-sibs, husbands and friends; 4 for children, nieces, and nephews (no grandchildren were listed as helping partners in the Help Section). The mean generation for individuals helping the subjects was significantly lower than that of those receiving help from the subjects [means 2.6 and 2.8, respectively, correlated t test, t(298) = 11.8, p < 0.011. Helping partners identified as “other blood kin,” “ step or adopted,” or “in-law not related to S or husband” were omitted from the analysis of generational effects. Together, these individuals accounted for less than 5% of the total of helping partners. We performed a stepwise discriminate analysis (Jennrich and Sampson 1981) on data from the Help Section to ask how well the direction of help (to or from the subject) could be predicted by taking into account one or more of the following factors: the prior direction of help (“balance of payments”), the relationship class of the helping partner (as separated into the following discrete variables: kin, husbands, or husband’s kin, friends), and the generation of the helping partner. The analysis indicated that each predictor variable significantly differentiated between helping directions. The single best predictor of the present direction of help was the prior direction of help between the subject and

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of Helping

OTHER

BLOOD

KIN

CHILDREN

NIECES

AUNTS

+

NEPHEWS

+ UNCLES

@RANDPARENTS

HALF

FULL

SIBS

SIBS

PARENT 55

33

12 S+

c

O+

the helping partner. Subjects tended to receive help from persons who had helped them in the past, more than from persons whom they had helped, and the subjects gave help to persons who had received more help in the past from the subject than they had given to the subject. The next best predictor was Generation, with help from the subject coming from an earlier mean generation than help to the subject. Last was Relationship Class, with the predictive power for friends being greater than for kin. This analysis indicated that help between subjects and kin is typified by help flowing to the subject. In contrast, help with friends is more likely to be perceived as flowing from, rather than to, the subject. Evidently, when subjects were in need of help, they did not look to those who owed them help and call in these debts. Rather, they once again tapped individuals previously identified as “good bets” because they had been sources of help in the past.

Recall,

however,

that the type

Figure 3. Reciprocity by kinship class. Plots are as for Figure 2, except that data are broken down by kinship type.

of kin is very important in predicting the direction from which help is likely to flow (Table 4). When the predictor variables were considered in combination, the analysis selected Prior Direction of Help and Relationship Class as predictor variables, omitting Generation because the predictive power of Generation was largely redundant with that of Prior Direction of Help. Although these variables, both alone and in combination, were significant predictors of the present direction of helping (with the lowest F statistic being 423.0 with df = 3/4773), together they correctly predicted the direction of helping 68.3% of the time (with chance being 50%). Hence, although each of the variables was significantly associated with the direction of help-

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and M. T. McGuire

ing, their ability to predict the present direction of helping was far from total. One might argue that an effect of generation on helping would be expected independent of reproductive value concerns. Help would be expected to flow from older to younger if younger individuals were less capable of helping themselves. An extreme example would be that mothers must help infants more than they do IO-yearold children (who would be likely to have higher reproductive values) because the cost of not helping the infant would be so great. An alternative way of assessing Prediction 3 would be to see whether expected reproductive potential influences helping among kin of the same relationships (for example, sibs); this analysis is part of the section below entitled “Determinants of Helping Among Equally Close Kin.” Prediction 3 can also be addressed by examining the timing of help from husbands’ parents, because help to a subject from her husband’s parents would also be expected to vary with her in-laws’ perceptions of her expected reproductive potential. Data from the In-Law Help Section of the questionnaire were used to assess the hypothesis that a husband’s parents would help a subject only if such help would be expected to benefit the subject’s present or future children by that husband. That is, we predicted that husbands’ parents would help the most when the marginal value of their help was the greatest; that is, when their help would cause the greatest change in the expected reproductive potential of the subject or of her offspring by the son of the helpers in question. Specifically, we predicted that a husband’s parents would help a subject to increase her inclusive fitness by encouraging the subject to begin having children or to ensure the children’s flourishing, and that they would help less when the children were old enough that their survival was likely. Analysis of subjects’ ranking of help from husbands’ parents on a I (no help) to 4 (frequent help) scale indicated that subjects received significantly more help from their husbands’ parents before the children were born and when the children were young (which is here defined as the oldest being less than 13 years old) than when the children were older (when the youngest child was over 13 years old): means of 2.41, 2.47, and 2.02, respectively, Friedman analysis of variance, p < 0.01.

kin. Although the relative amounts of help flowing between subjects and their kin, husbands and husband’s kin, and friends would be likely to vary from culture to culture, the following directional hypothesis would be expected to hold cross-culturally: kin’s contribution to major helping instances will be overrepresented in comparison with their frequency of helping for all helping instances combined. That is, as was found for the sample of white, middle-class, Los Angeles women reported here, the larger the assistance being given, the more likely it came from kin. Figure 4 shows the distribution of major helping instances across three relationship classes (kin, husband and husband’s kin. friends) and the distribution of all other helping instances reported across these same classes. Major helping instances were defined as those three instances of all the instances listed in the Help Section of the questionnaire labeled by the subjects as most important to receive and those three instances where help was most difficult to give. Kin, as well as husbands and husbands’ kin, were more likely to be sources of major assistance than of nonmajor assistance, and the reverse was true for friends. In Figure 4. the three bars depicting major helping instances add to lOO’%, as do the three bars depicting all other helping instances. Although friends were the most likely exchange partners (with the absolute height of the “Friends” bars being the greatest), friends were less likely to be involved in major than in other help exchanges. In contrast, kin and husbands’ kin were more likely to be involved in major than in other help exchanges (in Figure 4, the solid bars are significantly higher than open bars for kin and husbands and husbands’ kin, but the reverse is true for friends; xz = 47.5, 2 df, p < 0.01). This effect was independent of the direction of help (to or from the subject; log-linear model of multiway frequency tables, Brown 1981). Hence, for very large amounts of help, individuals may minimize the risk of loss due to nonreciprocation by using kin as resources for such help. Put another way, kin may be relatively willing to risk giving very large amounts of assistance, because only for kin might any resulting gain in inclusive fitness help counteract any loss due to lack of reciprocity.

Prediction being given,

We wondered with kinship.

4: The larger the amount of help the more likely it is to come from

Who Refused to Help whether refusals to help varied One might assume that refusals

165

Women’s Lives: Patterns of Helping PERCENl

-

MAJOR

i--

OTHER

MAJOR

H + HKIN

KIN-i

might be more likely from friends than from kin, since friends have no potential inclusive fitness influences biasing them toward giving help. However, this would assume that the choice of person asked for help was independent of other Table 5. Whu Helped Following a Refusal to Help, by Relationship

Class

Who refused to help

Who helped

Husband and husband’s Kin kin

Friends

OTHER

Total

Kin

Husband and husband’s kin Friends

Total ’ Frequency. b Row percentage. c Column percentage. d Nine refusals were omitted from this analysis because either the refusal or the assistance came from an individual related to S or her husband only by maniage or through adoption and, therefore, did not tit in one of these relationship classes.

MAJOR k

OTHER

FRIENDS _i

Figure 4. Importance of helping by relationship (see text for further explanation).

class

considerations such as kinship type or size of help, and we have already shown that such interdependencies exist. One does not peruse a pool of potential helpers and ask at random. Indeed, the data on refusers to help indicate that the subjects were very good at determining who were likely sources of help and asking those individuals. Of the 5171 instances where the subjects reported receiving large amounts of help, they reported being refused help by one person before receiving it from another in only 134 (2.6%) of those instances (Table 5). Of those refusals, 41.6% were from kin, 36.8% from husbands or husbands’ kin, and 21.6% from friends. The proportions of help received from those relationship classes were 3 1.2%, 14.4%, and 54.4%, respectively. The conditional probabilities of refusal given that kin, husband or husband’s kin, or friends had been asked for help were 3.4%, 6.4%, and 1.8%, respectively. Hence, husbands and husbands’ kin were overrepresented, and friends were underrepresented as refusers to help (x2 = 72.6, df = 2, p < 0.001). Who helped did not vary as a function of who had refused to help (x2 = 7.49, df = 4, p = 0.11).

S. M. Essock-Vitale

166

These data might indicate that the subjects were particularly good at asking friends only for what they were likely to receive but were more likely to misread the likelihood of getting help from husbands or husbands’ kin. Alternatively, the data might indicate that husbands and husbands’ kin are turned to for help that is more difficult to give, and hence more likely to be refused. What is clear from the overall low refusal rate is that the subjects were very good at identifying likely sources of large amounts of help, irrespective of relationship class, and at getting help from them. Perhaps the refusal rate for smaller, everyday helping requests would be greater (for example, “Can you mail this for me?” ” No, I’m in a hurry.“), and the low refusal rate for large amounts of help may reflect unusual care on the part of the subjects in selecting the recipients of such important requests. We did not attempt to assess refusal rates for small amounts of help, because we assumed that the reliability of retrospective reporting of small amounts of help would be low.

Help as a Function of Lineage

Since paternity is less certain than maternity, one might expect a bias for helping kin related through females (for discussion, see Alexander 1974; Hartung 1981). An analysis of the lineage (mother’s or father’s side) of kin listed in the Help Section of the questionnaire indicated that individuals from the mother’s side (for instance, mother, mother’s sibs) were helping partners significantly more often than were individuals from the father’s side. This finding held both for help the subjects gave to or received from their own kin [correlated t-test, t(298) = 3.95, p < 0.011, and for help given to or received from the subjects’ husbands’ kin, for example, the subjects’ mother-in-laws and father-in-laws [correlated t-test, t(298) = 5.02, p < 0.011. Although these data are consistent with predictions arising from evolutionary theory, they should be interpreted cautiously, since the only information available was whether kinship was through the mother’s or father’s side. Because a father’s sister and a mother’s brother each pass one male and one female link in tracing relationship to the subject, sorting solely on the basis of side may be too crude. Knowing lineage side is the first step, however, and hence the analysis is offered. Fortunately for this analysis, most of the helpers

and M. T. McGuire

Table 6. Percentage of Helping by Each Relationship Class, for Each Type of Help

Relationship class A. Type of Help from S Kin Financial help Emotional support Help during illness Help with housing Help with everyday living Total

38.0 29.1 43.1 30.2 18.5 31.8

H + H Kin” Friends 17.1 9.6 16.2 15.3 7.9 13.0 Relationshin

44.8 60.7 40.8 54.5 73.6 55.3 class

Kin

H + H Kin”

Friends

Financial help Emotional suoDort Help during ikess Help with housing Help with everyday living

63.8 27.3 39.9 41.2 20.9

21.9 22.8 27.5 14.9 9.6

14.3 49.8 32.6 44.0 69.5

Total

37.4

19.7

42.9

B. Type

’ Husband

of Help to S

plus husband’s

kin

for whom lineage was relevant were either the subjects’ parents or the subjects’ husbands’ parents (hence, a known number of links from a subject or her children).

Help as a Function of Type and Direction of Help

The relationship class of the helping partner varied with both the type of help given (financial help, help during illness) and the direction in which the help flowed (Table 6). Furthermore, the relative amounts of helping from kin, from husbands and husbands’ kin, and from friends varied with the direction of help (to or from the subject). These conclusions follow from an analysis of multiway frequency tables and the construction of a log-linear model that indicated significant main effects for Relationship Class (x2 = 880.7, 2 df, p < 0.01) and Help Type (x2 = 108.5, 4 df, p < 0.01) and significant interactions for the three two-way and one possible threeway interaction (Relationship Class x Help Type, Relationship Class x Direction, Help Type x Direction, and Relationship Class X Help Type x Direction; each p < 0.01). The three-way interaction can be summarized as follows. When help is from the subject to someone who is ill (Table 6A), kin are overrepresented and friends are underrepresented as helping

Women’s Lives: Patterns

of Helping

partners when compared with the overall distribution of help from the three relationship classes. The reverse is true for help with everyday living situations, when friends are overrepresented and kin are underrepresented. When help is given ro the subject (Table 6B), kin are overrepresented and friends underrepresented as sources of financial help. In contrast, friends are overrepresented and kin and husbands and husbands’ kin are underrepresented as sources of help with everyday living situations. Some of the asymmetries seen ih Table 6 may have resulted because the subjects were roughly middle-aged. For example, many of the instances of financial help received had to do with parents paying for college, for down pay’ments for cars or houses, or other ways in which parents help their young-adult children fledge. Since few of the subjects’ children had reached young adulthood, the occasions for these large amounts of financial assistance from the subjects to their children had yet to occur.

Help as a Function of Prior Helping History and Future Expectations When a subject needed help, she tended to rezeive it from people who had previously helped her more than she had helped them. When a subject gave help, she tended to give it to individuals whom she had previously helped more than they had helped her. For each helping instance listed in the Help Section of the questionnaire (Table l), subjects used a S-point scale to estimate who had done most of the helping up until the time of that event [l = almost always subject (S), 2 = more often S, 3 = both equally, 4 = more often the other person, 5 = almost always the other person]. When the means of these balances of payments for “help to” versus “help from” the subject were compared, the mean to the subject was significantly higher than the mean from the subject. This analysis indicates that subjects perceived that they tended to give to individuals who already owed them and received from individuals whom they already owed (means 2.5 versus 3.3, correlated t-test, t(298) = 24.3 p < 0.011. When relationship is taken into account, the influence of the prior direction of help on the present direction of help was significantly greater for kin than for friends. In a 2-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), the main effects of

167 Relationship Class and Direction as well as the Relationship Class x Direction interaction were significant [statistics for the interaction are F(2/ 4886) = 5.04, p < 0.011. Figure 5 illustrates these effects. When asked their expectations concerning future payback of help that subjects or others owed, subjects perceived themselves as more likely than others to repay helping debts. They also perceived themselves as more likely to attain eventually an equal balance of payments with kin than with friends, with husbands and husbands’ kin falling in between, although their current balance-of-payment histories would argue the reverse (Fig. 1). Among kin, children were perceived as the most likely eventually to attain an equal balance of payments with the subjects (ANOVA F(14/1615) = 11.89, p < 0.0001]. These results are from data derived from the Current Status of Helping Relationships Section of the questionnaire. Subjects were asked their current balance of payments with each of their primary helping partners (i.e., each of those individuals mentioned as helping partners in the Help Section). For those not rated as “equal,” subjects were asked to rate the likelihood that one would help the other enough in the future to pay back the help already extended. The likelihood of future payback was examined using log-linear analysis of multiway frequency tables (Brown 1981) considering the variables Relationship Class, Balance Difference (S owed or Other owed), and Likelihood of Future Payback. All three main effects and interactions were significant at the p < 0.05 level. The significant three-way interaction arose as follows: Subjects rated themselves as more likely to pay back debts than to be paid back, and this difference was more extreme for friends than for kin. In other words, a higher-than-expected number of friends as compared with kin were perceived to be very unlikely repayers of helping debts to the subject. Although these “friends” were friends at the time help was extended, perhaps they are no longer considered so. These data suggest that, although the subjects’ helping partners were friends in a huge proportion of helping instances, friends are also potentially riskier helping partners than kin because of the greater likelihood of being left having given unreciprocated assistance to nonkin. Among kin, the subjects perceived their children and full sibs as the most likely to repay help

S. M. Essock-Vitale

168

and M. T. McGuire

PRESENT DIRECTION OF HELP a

more other

d I

3.8 3.6

k

3.4

s

3.2

F Y

equal

K 0

3.0 2.8

%

2.6

e a

2.4

more s

2.2 FROM

S

given to them by the subjects. Half-sibs and nieces and nephews were perceived as least likely to repay [one-way ANOVA F( 14/3156) = 4.70, p < 0.0001, Duncan’s multiple range tests, alpha = 0.051.

Determinants Kin

of Helping Among Equally Close

As outlined above, evolutionary theory would lead us to predict that, among equally close kin, the decision as to whom to help would not be random but would be biased by factors implying differences in the expected reproductive potential of the potential recipients. Although estimating one nonhuman animal’s estimation of the likely eventual reproductive success of its kin is certainly problematic, we were fortunate in that humans readily and reliably answered questions such as “How many children does X help support?” and “How likely is it that X will have another child?” Another factor entering into the calculus of whom to help is, Where does a unit of help do the most good? That is, for a given cost to the giver, where is the benefit to the receiver the greatest? In terms of help with monetary equivalents, it would seem that. other considerations aside, giving X units of resource to a rich relative would be of less benefit than giving X to a poorer one. Hence we wondered whether help would be more likely to flow from richer to poorer, once other factors were controlled. We used information from the Close Relatives Section of the questionnaire to ask whether the following variables were predictive of helping: sex of help-

0

Figure 5. Prior direction of help by direction of current help for each of three relationship classes. H + H’s KIN = husbands and husbands’ kin.

ing partner, subject’s perception of the financial situation of the helping partner (rated on a 1-S scale), number of children supported by the helping partner, age of helping partner’s youngest child, subject’s perception of the likelihood that the helping partner will have additional children (rated on a l-5 scale), and the age of the subject. “Help” was measured in two ways: for help to and from the subject and for each of her known close kin (coefficient of relationship r 2 a). Each subject rated on a l-5 scale how helpful each close relative had been to her and how much she felt she could count on each relative for help. These variables will be referred to as help “To S: Actual” and “To S: Potential.” Similar questions were asked to determine measures for help “From S: Actual” and “From S: Potential” for each of the subjects’ close kin. Canonical correlation analyses (SAS User’s Guide 1979) were used to ask what combination of the predictor variables would maximize the relationship to the variables concerned either with help to or with help from the subject. These analyses were performed separately for each kinship class to remove the effects of different degrees of relatedness or generation. Table 7 summarizes the results of the canonical correlation analyses. We shall discuss each relationship class briefly before describing general trends. Each canonical correlation analysis produced at most one significant canonical var-

Women’s

Lives:

Table 7. Canonical

Patterns

of Helping

Correlations

169

of Close Relatives Data (see text for explanation)

Aunts and uncles

Parents

Sibs

Half-sibs

Nieces and nephews Grandchildren

Children

Help io S

0.74 0.33

0.07 0.95

0.67 0.42

-0.90 1.29

0.12 0.93

-0.97 1.37

S’s age Sex of kin” Financial status Children supported Additional childrenb Youngest child’s age

0.22 0.73 0.58 0.24 - 0.08 0.40

0.10

0.07 - 0.08 0.20 0.90 -0.82 0.59

-0.34 0.32 0.53 0.31 -0.79 -0.14

0.21 -0.70

0.10 0.22 -0.17

-0.04 0.45 0.83 0.05 - 0.04 -0.19

rZ (variance) Significance level

0.11 0.01 429

0.08 0.01 1327

0.12 0.01 522

0.24 0.01 84

0.05 0.01 1123

0.59 0.01 25

0.83 0.24

0.37 0.78

0.37 0.76

0.68 0.43

0.03 0.99

S’s age Sex of kin” Financial status Children supported Additional children* Youngest child’s age

0.19 0.96 0.08 0.10 - 0.06 0.05

0.09 0.60 0.70 0.32 -0.20

- 0.03 0.62 0.60 0.18 -0.41 -0.18

-0.35 -0.16 0.10 0.26 0.92 _ 0.10

-0.49 0.12 0.59 0.03 -0.49 0.16

? (variance) Significance level N

0.09 0.01 430

0.06 0.01 1327

0.08 0.01 522

0.04 0.01 639

0.05 0.01 1125

To S: Actual To S: Potential

N

0.41 0.85

0.57

Help from S

From S: Actual From S: Potential

” Sex of kin: ’ Additional

I =

male,

children:

2 = female;

negative

0.05

hence

correlations

positive

correlations

indicate

greater

indicate

perceived

iate (that is, relationship among predictor and helping variables). As a result, interpretation is greatly simplified. Help to the subjecr. In general, subjects reported being more likely to receive help from kin who were wealthy, female, and supporting children of their own. Subjects were most likely to receive help from parents if the parent was the mother, and if the parent was wealthier. Help was also more likely when the parent was still supporting children (perhaps the subject) but no longer had young children. Receiving help from aunts and uncles was associated with wealthy females (aunts) who were unlikely to have additional children. Among sibs, help was also most likely to come from females (sisters). Halfsibs were quite different: help was most likely to come from individuals (of either sex) who were still supporting children, who were likely to have more children, but whose youngest child was relatively old (note that this category has a relatively small sample size; Table 7). Help from nieces and nephews was associated with the sub-

preference

likelihood

for females.

of the close

kin having

additional

children.

ject being relatively young, the helper being female (a niece), wealthier, supporting children (that is, an older niece or nephew), and likely to have more children. Subjects believed that grandchildren would be most likely to help them if the helper was a male who was relatively less likely to have children and if the subject was relatively old (note, however, the small sample size). No significant associations were found between predictor variables and helping variables for help to the subject from grandparents or children. Help from the subject. In general, subjects reported being most likely to give help to kin who were wealthy, female, supporting children, and likely to have more children. Among parents, subjects tended to help their mothers, with variables other than sex being irrelevant. For the category “aunts and uncles,” subjects were most likely to help wealthier aunts who were unlikely to have additional children. Subjects were most likely to help sibs who were wealthier sisters and who were relatively likely to have ad-

170

ditional children. Among their own offspring, subjects were most likely to help children who were already supporting children or whom they perceived as relatively likely to have children. Nieces and nephews were most likely to receive help if they were wealthier and likely to have children and if the subject was relatively young. No significant associations were found for help from the subjects to grandparents, half-sibs, or grandchildren. Predictive Power of the Canonical Correlations. Although significant associations were

generally found between the predictor and helping variables, the associations formed were often weak. The largest percentage of total variance (r*) accounted for was 0.59% (help from grandparents), but most of the associations accounted for less than 10% of the total variance (Table 6). The unaccounted variance is unlikely to be attributable to poor scaling on the part of the subjects since each of the variables reported here had high test-retest reliability (range for rs was 0.6-0.9). Hence, although each of the predictor variables may influence helping from kin, the total bias from these variables appears to be small. Although these variables may be of little value in predicting discrete instances of behavior on an individual basis, the effect of 10% bias over time could be enormous. Hence, although individual actions cannot be predicted, one can use these variables to predict what, over the long term, individuals are likely to do. Childless subjects. Childless subjects might be expected to give more help to their nieces and nephews than would subjects with children, that is childless subjects would serve as “helpers at the nest” for their sibs. Indeed, this was the case [t = 8.21, df = 1130,~ < O.OOOl].Childless subjects also received more help from their nieces and nephews than did subjects with children (t = 5.86, df = 1130, p < O.OOOl), suggesting that the helping relationships between aunts and their nieces were more important when the aunts did not have children of their own.

GENERAL DISCUSSION The data presented here support the predictive power of evolutionary theory in examining human patterns of helping. For example, helping among friends is more likely to be reciprocal than helping among kin; among kin, helping is

S.

M. Essock-Vitale

and M. T. McGuire

more likely to come from close kin; among kin, helping is an increasing function of the recipient’s expected reproductive potential; and the larger the amount of help being given, the more likely it is to come from kin. The use of variables presumed to be of evolutionary significance according to the theories of kin selection or reciprocal altruism (for example, degree of relatedness, number of children supported, expected likelihood of payback) frequently yielded statistically significant predictive power of modest magnitude. But life is complex. To us, having four variables account for 10% of the variance with respect to deciding who helps whom does speak to the potency of these variables. Without doubt, both devotees and critics of sociobiology can use the same portions of these data as ammunition. In specific situations, the predictive power of the variables discussed here is undoubtedly typically less than that of specific culturally transmitted variables. For example, knowing whether the kindergarten teacher is present is probably a far better predictor of whether two 5-year-old children will share a toy than is knowing the coefficient of relatedness between the two children. Cultural variables may be potent predictors of specific situations, with their optimal values determined by the culture at hand. In contrast, the strength of an evolutionary approach to viewing human social behavior is that the biases such an approach predicts are expected to be present across cultures and across generations within a culture. Although the predictive power of variables highlighted by an evolutionary approach may be small in specific situations, their generality may give them great influence across time. Clearly, in any attempt to encompass all aspects of the origins of human social behavior, cultural and evolutionary approaches must both be considered. Although aspects of cultural transmission and their possible interactions with Mendelian selection were not a topic of this article, they are considered in detail elsewhere (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981; Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1982; Richerson and Boyd 1978). One of the most useful aspects of including an evolutionary approach in research efforts aimed at elucidating biases in human social behavior is that such an approach may be useful in predicting exceptions to culturally derived rules. Thus, if a culture’s inheritance pattern dic-

Women’s Lives: Patterns of Helping tates that parents help first-born sons more than subsequent sons, evolutionary biology would predict that this pattern be more likely to be violated when the first son is unlikely to reproduce in comparison with subsequent sons than when the first son produces a large family. We must ask whether the results presented here could be accounted for solely on the basis of the cultural transmission rules such as “Help members of your nuclear family more than others.” We think not. Although such cultural values might predict specific findings, they would not predict when to expect exceptions to these rules, for example, when distant kin should be favored over closer kin. In contrast, the data presented here would suggest that individuals tend to act to maximize their inclusive fitness, which would predict helping a more distant person in preference to a closer one if the effect of helping on the expected reproductive potential of the more distant kin were sufficiently great. Leaving aside the issue of the importance of these data as measured by their predictive power, these data do document several themes quite clearly. First, these subjects had enormous helping resources and they appeared to judge quite accurately who would give them what. When the subjects needed large amounts of help they were rarely refused. This finding indicates that subjects had known personal resources whom they could tap and that they were rarely mistaken in their assessment of who would have both the willingness and the resources to help. In general, friends were very important as helping partners. Usually help to and from friends was much more common than help among kin. This difference in relative amount of helping from these two groups would be expected to vary from culture to culture. Perhaps the usage of friends was so high because of a relative scarcity of kin. However, the types of helping reported often could occur over great distance (for example, financial help being a check in the mail, emotional support via the telephone) so the lack of kin in immediate proximity cannot alone account for the differences seen. Alternative interpretations must examine situations in which friends might be preferred to kin as helping partners, for example, situations in which the importance of having reciprocal exchange relationships with individuals with particular characteristics was high (Wasser 1981). One possibi!ity is that subjects may have ben-

171 efited particularly from having other women with children as exchange partners, and such individuals may be more readily found among the large pool of nonkin than among the more limited pool of kin. Another general trend, best illustrated in Table 7, is that the subjects preferentially gave help to and sought help from other females. We cannot say whether individuals prefer same-sex helping partners or female helping partners, since all of the subjects were women. Females would be expected to be preferred helping partners if the likelihood of prolonged friendship with females is greater, that is, if their associate quality is greater (see, for example, Wasser 1982). Although helping does not preclude competition among the same individuals (Hrdy 1981), it does emphasize the large extent to which these women helped other women. The diversity of the helping instances listed at the beginning of the Results section illustrates why it was necessary to let the subjects make the judgments as to which were the most important instances of helping and who had done more helping. Clearly researchers cannot know how many units of emotional support are equivalent to how many instances of help with housing; yet this calculus was performed easily and reliably by the subjects. Furthermore, when asked the balance of payments between the subject and her primary helping partners, only the subject could determine, for example, whether enough small units of help had been received to “pay off a large helping instance. Put another way, if only the transfer of $5 bills were observed, then $5 debts repaid by five $1 bills would go unrecorded. In studies of other species, experimenters are often unable to equate different types of assistance, and yet reciprocity of helping might be achieved by exchanging different forms of assistance; in any study of helping, it seems important not to assume that exchanges in kind are the only route to reimbursement. Looking only at grooming, or only at food exchanges, may yield incorrect estimates of the amount and direction of unreciprocated helping. Hints of self-deception run through the data. For example, the subjects report giving more than they receive, and paying back more often than they are paid back. Subjects may benefit from presenting themselves as more promising helping partners than they are by believing that

172 this is so. An alternative interpretation, however, is that data from men might supply the converse to these data. Men, for example, might report receiving more than they give. More likely, we believe, is the alternative that helping is not a zero-sum game-the benefit to the receiver may be more or less than the cost to the giver. Subjects were optimistic that their children eventually would repay the assistance given them. It would be interesting to see whether mothers’ expectations typically come to fruition or whether self-deception is the rule during the years when the demands of childbearing are the greatest. The anthropological literature is replete with examples of the manipulatory power of gifts (for a summary see Essock-Vitale and McGuire 1980). Yet the data presented here do not support the idea that one gives in order to establish credits that can be cashed in at a later time. To the contrary, the subjects studied here reported that help was most likely to come from someone they already “owed.” Nor was this simply a matter of getting from parents and giving to children, for this trend held among unrelated individuals as well. People sought help from individuals who had been sources of help previously. Evidently, if someone had been a source of help in the past, the person was more, rather than less, likely to be a source of help again, even if the prior helping debt went unreciprocated. What might an individual gain from being on the giving end of such an exchange relationship? Studies where the actions and perceptions of both parties were monitored would be useful, for they would reveal any differences in perceptions of the relative value of what was being exchanged. That the subjects were more inclined to give to, and to receive from, wealthier relatives also suggests- that helping may occur in part to increase the likelihood of future gains. The subjects did not tend to receive from richer relatives and give to poorer ones. Rather, they were more inclined to help those who would be likely to have resources to invest in the subject (Table 7). Perhaps an analogy of this behavior would be, “I’ll listen to you when you’re upset and then you give me the down payment for a house.” This might be deception or self-deception. By whatever route, the rule appears to be, “Make others think that you are doing unto them as you

S. M. Essock-Vitale

and M. T. McGuire

would like them to do unto you.” Considered in isolation, this preference for helping and receiving help from wealthier relatives suggests that subjects are acting to increase their individual, as opposed to their inclusive, fitness. Perhaps making an ally of a wealthier relative by helping that relative in preference to poorer ones is a common insurance policy. Considered in a broader framework, preferring wealthier exchange partners may be one example of preferentially associating with individuals possessing qualities that make them desirable exchange partners, and these qualities may be sufficiently beneficial that they overshadow helping biases introduced by kinship (for discussions of the importance of associate quality in the evolution of social behavior see, for example, Dawkins 1976, Hamilton 1964, and Wasser 1982). In summary, the data presented here demonstrate the explanatory power of an evolutionary perspective in considering patterns of human social behavior. Evolutionary theory is particularly useful in generating predictions concerning biases expected in the exchanges among kin and nonkin. The present data are also sufficient to indicate how dangerously simplistic it is to speak of relationships among “kin” without also examining how these relationships vary as a function of other biologically and culturally relevant factors such as age, wealth, expected reproductive potential, and sex. The data presented here indicate that the effects of these variables are small but persistent. They are. therefore, potentially of great functional significance when considering the success of individuals from an evolutionary perspective.

Funding for this research was generously

provided by the Harry F. Guggenheim Foundation. The computational resources of the UCLA Office of Academic Computing are gratefully acknowledged. We thank Dorothy Cheney, Robert Seyfarth, and Joan Silk for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. We are especially grateful for the many helpful comments provided by Lynn Fairbanks throughout the course of the study.

REFERENCES Alexander, R.D. The evolution of social behavior. Annual Review of Ecology and Spstematics 5: 325383 (1974).

Women’s Lives: Patterns

Altmann, S.A. Altruistic behavior: The fallacy of kin deployment. Animal Behaviour 27: 958-959 (1979). Brown, M. Two-way and multiway frequency tables-measures of association and the log-linear model. In BMPD Statistical Software 1981, W.J. Dixon (ed). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981, pp. 143-206. Cavalli-Sforza, L.L., Feldman, W.M. Cultural Transmission and Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981. Cavalli-Sforza, L.L., Feldman, W.M., Chen, K. H., Dornbusch, S.M. Theory and observation in cultural transmission. Science 218: 19-26 (1982). Dawkins, R. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976. Essock-Vitale, S.M., MC&ire, M.T. Predictions derived from the theories of kin selection and reciprocation assessed by anthropological data. Ethology and Sociobiology I: 233-243 (1980). -. Women’s lives viewed from an evolutionary perspective. I. Sexual histories, reproductive success, and demographic characteristics of a random sample of American women. Erhology and Sociobiology 6: 137-154

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Hamilton, W.D. The genetical theory of social behavior. I and 11. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7: I52 (1964).

Hartung, J. Paternity and inheritance of wealth. Nature 291: 652-654 (1981). Hrdy, S.B. The Woman That Never Evolved. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. Jennrich, R., Sampson, P. Stepwise discriminant analysis. In BMPD Statistical Software 1981, W.J. Dixon (ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981, pp. 143-206. Richerson, P.J., Boyd, R. A dual inheritance model of the evolutionary process. I: Basic postulates and a simple model. Journal of Social Biological Structure 1: 127-134 (1978). SAS User’s Guide, 1979 edition. Raleigh, NC: SAS Institute, 1979. Trivers, R.L. The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology 46: 35-57 (1971). Wasser, S.K. Reciprocity and the trade-off between associate quality and relatedness. American Naturalist 119: 720-731 (1982). Wilson, E.O. Sociolobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1975.