Altruistic behaviour varies across human populations and this variation is likely to be partly explained by variation in the ecological context of the populations. We hypothesise that area level socio-economic characteristics will determine the levels of altruism found in individuals living in an area and we use a lost letter experiment to measure altruism across 20 neighbourhoods with a wide range of income deprivation scores in London, UK. The results show a strong negative effect of neighbourhood income deprivation on altruistic behaviour, with letters dropped in the poorest neighbourhoods having 91% lower odds of being returned than letters dropped in the wealthiest neighbourhoods. We suggest that measures of altruism are strongly context dependant. © 2012 Holland et al.
CITATION STYLE
Holland, J., Silva, A. S., & Mace, R. (2012). Lost letter measure of variation in altruistic behaviour in 20 neighbourhoods. PLoS ONE, 7(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0043294
Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.