The Social Significance of Spirituality: New Perspectives on the Compassion-Altruism Relationship

In the current research we tested a comprehensive model of spirituality, religiosity, compassion, and altruism, investigating the independent effects of spirituality and religiosity on compassion and altruism. We hypothesized that, even though spirituality and religiosity are closely related, spirituality and religiosity would have different and unique associations with compassion and altruism. In Study 1 and 2 we documented that more spiritual individuals experience and show greater compassion. The link between religiosity and compassion was no longer significant after controlling for the impact of spirituality. Compassion has the capacity to motivate people to transcend selfish motives and act altruistically towards strangers. Therefore, we reasoned that spirituality (but not religiosity) would predict altruistic behavior and that compassion would help explain this link. Indeed, in Studies 3, 4, and 5 we found that more spiritual individuals behaved more altruistically in economic choice and decision-making tasks, and that the tendency of spiritual individuals to feel greater compassion mediated the spirituality-to-altruism relationship. In contrast, more religious participants did not consistently feel more compassion nor behave more altruistically. Moreover, in Studies 3 and 4 we found that the broader traits of Agreeableness, Openness, and Extraversion did not help explain why more spiritual individuals behaved more altruistically. Our findings argue that spirituality—above and beyond religiosity—is uniquely associated with greater compassion and enhanced altruism towards strangers.Keywords: altruism, behavioral economics, religion, spirituality, compassio

Structural power and the evolution of collective fairness in social networks

From work contracts and group buying platforms to political coalitions and international climate and economical summits, often individuals assemble in groups that must collectively reach decisions that may favor each part unequally. Here we quantify to which extent our network ties promote the evolution of collective fairness in group interactions, modeled by means of Multiplayer Ultimatum Games (MUG). We show that a single topological feature of social networks-which we call structural power-has a profound impact on the tendency of individuals to take decisions that favor each part equally. Increased fair outcomes are attained whenever structural power is high, such that the networks that tie individuals allow them to meet the same partners in different groups, thus providing the opportunity to strongly influence each other. On the other hand, the absence of such close peer-influence relationships dismisses any positive effect created by the network. Interestingly, we show that increasing the structural power of a network leads to the appearance of well-defined modules-as found in human social networks that often exhibit community structure-providing an interaction environment that maximizes collective fairness.This research was supported by Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT) through grants SFRH/BD/94736/2013, PTDC/EEI-SII/5081/2014, PTDC/MAT/STA/3358/2014 and by multi-annual funding of CBMA and INESC-ID (under the projects UID/BIA/04050/2013 and UID/CEC/50021/2013) provided by FCT. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Socioeconomic mobility and talent utilization of workers from poorer backgrounds: The overlooked importance of within-organization dynamics

Socioeconomic mobility, or the ability of individuals to improve their socioeconomic standing through merit-based contributions, is a fundamental ideal of modern societies. The key focus of societal efforts to ensure socioeconomic mobility has been on the provision of educational opportunities. We review evidence that even with the same education and job opportunities, being born into a poorer family undermines socioeconomic mobility due to processes occurring within organizations. The burden of poorer background might, ceteris paribus, be economically comparable to the gender gap. We argue that in the societal and scientific effort to promote socioeconomic mobility, the key context in which mobility is supposed to happen—organizations—as well as the key part of the life of people striving toward socioeconomic advancement—that as working adults—have been overlooked. We integrate the organizational literature pointing to key within-organizational processes impacting objective (socioeconomic) success with research, some emergent in organizational sciences and some disciplinary, on when, why, and how people from poorer backgrounds behave or are treated by others in the relevant situations. Integrating these literatures generates a novel and useful framework for identifying issues people born into poorer families face as employees, systematizes extant evidence and makes it more accessible to organizational scientists, and allows us to lay the agenda for future organizational scholarshi