Lorna Adair, Melissa Campos, Meg Eubanks, Jennifer Lind, & Nina Pannell (2000)

The purpose of the study we conducted this semester was to determine whether the environment in which an individual is raised has an affect on an individual’s level of altruism (helping behavior) and trusting behavior. After reviewing previous literature we hypothesized that individuals who are reared in urban environments will have lower levels of altruistic and trusting behavior.

Our design was a 1 x 2 factorial design, the urban/rural characteristic as the independent variable and trusting/not trusting, and altruistic/non-altruistic as the dependent variable. We recruited 44 participants from the Sweet Briar community between the ages of 18 and 22. The participants read three variations of a prisoner dilemma (a hypothetical situation in which an individual most choose to cooperate or compete with a partner), and participants were then asked if they would be willing to participate in another experiment the following week for a longer period of time in order to test their altruistic tendencies based on whether they said yes or no (the experiment was not actually performed, but the question was used as a measure of the person’s altruistic tendencies). The participants then filled an environment questionnaire which determined whether they were urban or rural. They also filled out a trust questionnaire based off of Rotter’s trust questionnaire.

After analyzing the data, we found that the results showed no statistical significance. However, percentages revealed that the majority of non-trusting, non-altruistic participants were urban and were in favor of our hypothesis.