Rural agrarian Indians reward self-sacrifice where urban groups do not.

Evidence

In a second study, we asked participants to jointly evaluate two prosocial outcomes (e.g., saving the life of an innocent child). The scenarios were presented side by side as newspaper articles. The only difference was that in one article, the child’s life was saved at a great cost to the actor, whereas the other made no mention of this. Again, rural Indian participants showed a preference for sacrificial acts and thought the actor who suffered was more praiseworthy. The other two groups did not differentiate between the two actors. The urban Indian and American responses are consistent with Baumard et al.’s perspective on mutual cooperation – these groups are willing to give up something but expect some type of social security in return. However, mutualism cannot explain the consistent approval of self-sacrifice observed in rural, agrarian communities in India. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 559

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s reading purpose about Rodrigues’s self-sacrifice in Silence — rural duty-based morality rewarding costly sacrifice mirrors the Japanese repression context. — connects to: Self-sacrifice for the collective is a key form of social capital. — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 104
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends ‘On Sacrifice: The Real Kind, with Corpses’ — public approval of costly self-sacrifice as a moral good in agrarian communities.

Related

• Parochial altruism and self-sacrifice exceed mutualistic fairness models. (similarity 0.79)
• Duty-based moral cultures suppress cost-sensitivity in prosocial decisions. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Self-sacrifice for the collective is a key form of social capital. #expands (0.78) — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 104