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It Makes a Village: Allomaternal Care and Prosociality

Author

Listed:
  • Alessandra Cassar

    (University of San Francisco, Chapman University and CEGA)

  • Alejandrina Cristia

    (Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University)

  • Pauline Grosjean

    (Department of Economics, UNSW and CEPR)

  • Sarah Walker

    (Department of Economics, UNSW)

Abstract

A recent hypothesis suggests that an impetus for human cooperation could have emerged from the needs of mothers to elicit and sustain help from others, i.e. allomaternal care, for the purpose of bringing offspring to maturity. We design a novel economic experiment to elucidate the relationship between allomaternal care and cooperative behavior among a random sample of 820 adults and 200 children in the Solomon Islands. Our results show that allomaternal care, especially by non-kin, nurtures adult reciprocity and altruism, and impersonal prosociality among mothers. We also document socio-cognitive benefits to children from child care by non-kin, based on daylong vocalizations analyzed using a multilingually-trained neural network. Further analysis utilizing cross-cultural ethnographic data shows a positive relationship between allomaternal care and societal orientation toward trust. Altogether, our findings suggest an important role for allomaternal care - especially by non-kin - in supporting societal cooperation. Classification JEL: I15, O15, Z13

Suggested Citation

  • Alessandra Cassar & Alejandrina Cristia & Pauline Grosjean & Sarah Walker, 2022. "It Makes a Village: Allomaternal Care and Prosociality," Discussion Papers 2022-06, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    • Handle: RePEc:swe:wpaper:2022-06
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    File URL: http://research.economics.unsw.edu.au/RePEc/papers/2022-06.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Allomaternal care; Altruism; Child vocalizations; Dictator game; Reciprocity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

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