Jared Wadley -- University of Michigan
Nov. 25, 2024
Are you willing to go to war for your country? Do you support the death penalty? Do you feel connected to and trust people in your community? The answers to these questions are all connected to whether you live around family, say researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Irvine.
They analyzed six studies about how living in an environment with many or few relatives psychologically impacted participants in the United States, the Philippines and Ghana. The work is published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
"These effects arise because living in areas with lots of relatives, or just feeling like lots of relatives are around, shifts the importance people place on supporting others (and ensuring they are not hurt)," said Joshua Ackerman, U-M professor of psychology.
People and populations that live in ecologies with more family relatives, or who imagine themselves to be living in such ecologies, engage in more extreme pro-group behavior, such as being willing to go to war for their country, he says.
People also feel more connected to others around them and are more punishing of antisocial behaviors—such as supporting the death penalty for murder. For the latter, according to Ackerman, this serves as a prevention measure to reduce the risk of harm to family members or to punish those who harm one's family.
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