Rereading The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (2020) by Joseph Henrich I found a highly interesting part in the appendix of the book:
In the questionnaire, the other participants have responded to a series of scenarios. In each scenario, the main character faces a dilemma in which they can either split their time to help both a friend and a stranger equally or put all their time into helping only the friend. The questionnaire then asks respondents who they liked more, the egalitarian who splits her time between the friend and the stranger, or the loyal friend, who only helped her friend. One of your potential partners always preferred the egalitarian helper. The other always liked the loyal friend. Now, the question is, who do you want to work with? Did your family move residences while you were a child? Among WEIRD college students, those who had never moved residences preferred the person who always picked the loyal friend over the egalitarian helper 90 percent of the time. If they’d moved once in their lives, the percentage dropped to 75 percent. When participants had moved two or three times while growing up, their preference for the person who always picked the “loyal friend” dropped even further, down to 62 percent of the time. Those who had moved as a child also said that they “liked” both the egalitarian helper and the person who always picked the egalitarian helper more.
Basically what this comes down to is if you prefer a friend who is loyal over one who is universally fair. This may seem a minor detail in human relationships but has very wide implications. Anybody familiar with the work of Jonathan Haidt will be reminded of Haidt’s moral foundations, in which conservatives value in-group loyalty highly and liberals value fairness highest.
Now, it’s easily possible that people who relocate often in their lives become more liberal, however, it’s even more likely that they were liberals to begin with. What makes me think so? There are lots of reasons for that. Conservatives are more patriotic and attached to their local communities. In fact, I have argued that conservatism stems evolutionarily from farming.
Farmers couldn’t relocate easily having heavily invested in building villages, granaries, irrigation systems, and of course all the work that went into farming itself. Due to their lack of mobility farmers were threatened much more frequently than nomadic peoples by disasters, raiding and diseases (purity). Farming, especially irrigation farming also required hierarchical and authoritarian organisation. If their subsistence mode was farming, their survival mode was defensive and their relationships and alliances required a long-term perspective (loyalty). In a nutshell, farmers didn’t need friends who were fair to everyone, especially not outside their community, but they needed friends who were loyal and conforming. Outside kinship relations their reciprocity was what anthropologists call “balanced reciprocity”, i.e. I do you a favour if you do me a favour.
Mobile hunter-gatherers do not know this kind of balanced reciprocity and have generalised reciprocity. They give to those who are in need and not those who have shared with them. Also, hunter-gatherers discourage alliances that are common among food producers and can in their extreme form manifest themselves as clannishness. Not only do hunter-gatherers move all the time, but they also change their groups (bands) frequently in a fission-fusion process. Anyone who is unhappy can leave the band at any time and join a different one. This system prevents the band from growing too big and avoids the concomitant potential for conflict.
The above four evolutionary temperaments are compatible with Solomon Schwartz’s theory of basic human values:
Farmers value security, rules, conformity and loyalty due to the social selective pressures mentioned above. Hunter-gatherers, on the other hand, value individualism (self-choice), fairness (universal justice) and universal care. We have come full circle with Haidt’s moral foundations.
Now, these two types of sociality are to a large extent incompatible. If you seek loyalty you will become distrustful of people who make friends with your foes and if you value universal fairness you will become distrustful of people who do not treat outgroup members in an egalitarian way.
My personal experience is that friendships form much more easily within each type, i.e forager types find it easier to become friends with other forager types and farmer-herder types form friendships more easily with other farmer-herder types. These two types of sociality represent a kind of psychological border. Homophily is a well-known principle for the basis of friendships. Having the same hobbies, age, etc. can all be strong attractors for friendships. My guess is that the kind of sociality is one of the most decisive factors in homophily.
Idealised types of social networks for foragers, pastoralists and farmers
These differences in social networking can be seen throughout history. The Indian caste system with its varnas (“colours” originally based on the differences in skin colour of farmers, pastoralists and foragers, hierarchical) and jati (segmentary lineages). As Jo Henrich discovered, the West became WEIRD (western educated industrialised rich and democratic) by undermining the tight kinship relations of food producers and infusing a huge dose of hunter-gatherer egalitarianism. In the process, Western people became more like hunter-gatherers by relying more on universal fairness and less on in-group loyalty.
Other factors for homophily are often dependent on the type of sociality: people with a farmer mindset are more likely to like local and traditional music, whereas they may dislike world music and music expressing non-conformity (e.g. punk). The same may be true for their language, with farmer types having a strong preference for the familiar local dialect/accent and forager types having a preference for a more neutral language as well as having a greater interest in foreign languages. Similarly, farmer types will be less likely to enjoy satire (anti-authoritarian), which forager types might just love.
Friendships are often formed starting from kindergarten age. Children who don’t manage to make any friends are most likely introverted forager types who split off from their peers and retreat socially (fission). This is exactly what we see in neurodiverse children (ASD, ADHD, gifted). I have argued that most neurodiverse children have hunter-gatherer minds.
If this doesn’t sound realistic, consider the case of my highly extroverted daughter who wants to be friends with everyone (fusion). Exactly this fact gets her into trouble again and again and she has difficulties maintaining friendships. If you are programmed to have friendly relations with everybody (less in-group social), you will end up having fewer friends, especially in a society where farmer and herder types are the vast majority of people. Again, we can see this in children with ADHD who are often extraverted and crave for friendships, but fail to make many or any at all.
For more check out my book Mapping Human Nature: Foragers, Farmers and Pastoralists
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QP6QSJM
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