Solidarity, Welfare, and Prosocial Behaviour – Core Vocabulary

Conceptual Foundations of Solidarity

• Working Definition (Thome, 1999)
  • Solidarity = behaviour that is helpful, supportive, cooperative, grounded in a felt obligation or value-based commitment.
  • In everyday language: willingness to support others with no immediate reward.
• Key Properties
  • Politically useful, context-dependent, lacks a single clear definition.
  • Positive bond between fates: one’s well-being positively affects another’s.
• Everyday Examples
  • Donating to charities (Red Cross)
  • Empathy for a grieving friend
  • Volunteering, accepting refugees, paying taxes, joining labour strikes
• Feelings vs. Acts
  • May occur independently.
  • Course focus = acts: contributing more than received, creating public goods, reducing inequality, benefiting others.
• Disciplinary Lenses
  • Sociology → mutual well-being interdependence.
  • Economics → individual incurs cost to benefit others.
• Distinction from Social Cohesion
  • A cohesive football team need not be solidary.

Five Analytical Dimensions of Acts of Solidarity

• 1. Reciprocity
  • Two-sided (uncertain future return): health insurance, helping family.
  • One-sided (no expected return): donations, progressive taxes.
• 2. Organisation
  • Informal / “warm”: sympathy-based (family, neighbours).
  • Formal / “cold”: institutional (social benefits, insurance).
• 3. Voluntariness
  • Voluntary: free choice (charity, some private insurance).
  • Compulsory: state-mandated (taxes, legal childcare).
• 4. Scope
  • Local → national → global. Larger scope usually formal; solidarity always excludes some.
  • Formal solidarity tends to peak at the national level.
• 5. Form of Transfer
  • Money (taxes, cash aid).
  • Goods/in-kind (organ, food, wheelchairs).
  • Time (care, volunteering).
  • In-kind grants donors more control; harder to “abuse” than cash.

Measuring Solidarity

• Compulsory National Indicators (≈ 2003)
  • Social protection % GDP: Sweden 31\%, USA 16\%, Korea 6\%.
  • Benefit generosity (per non-working person): Austria tops.
  • Corrected (net) spending lowers figures for high-tax countries.
• Supranational Indicators
  • Official Development Aid (ODA % GDP): Scandinavia & Netherlands >0.75\%.
  • Asylum numbers & recognition: Austria/Sweden high; Japan/Korea low.
• Voluntary Indicators
  • Private social expenditure: US 10\%, NL 7.7\%.
  • Volunteering rates: US 64.7\% > Sweden > NL.
  • Charitable giving: US 1.9\% GDP, Canada next.
• Correlations
  • Positive within compulsory metrics; within voluntary; between supranational & voluntary.
  • Slight negative (substitution) between compulsory national and voluntary forms.
• Trend (1980s–2000s)
  • General increase in all solidarity forms except asylum recognition (Dutch outlier early on).

Welfare State as Institutionalised Solidarity

• Definition
  • State-organised system of income/in-kind transfers; contributions ≠ benefits.
  • Two main outputs: social benefits (cash, rebates) & social services (education, healthcare).
• Historical Drivers
  • Elite self-interest: reduce crime, disease, rebellion (de Swaan).
  • Worker self-interest: mutual aid societies, risk pooling; state stepped in to universalise.
  • Post-WWII moral expansion (Beveridge Report “abolition of want”).
• Classic Models (Esping-Andersen)
  • Liberal (Anglo-Saxon): one-sided, residual, cheap, high poverty.
  • Conservative (Central Europe): two-sided, insider–outsider divide.
  • Social-democratic (Scandinavia): mixed, universal, costly, low inequality.
• Nine-Cell Scheme (Scope × Reciprocity)
  • Local community care → supranational risk pooling.
• Sustainability Issues
  • Liberal: erosion via diversity.
  • Conservative: adverse selection.
  • Social-democratic: must balance one- & two-sided solidarity.
• Hybrid Future
  • Combine local identity (community spirit) with supranational risk-pooling (economic stability)—aligns with Alesina & Spolaore’s optimal nation-size theory.

Preferences, Redistribution & Social Welfare Functions

• Public Attitudes
  • Europe: poverty = bad luck → pro-redistribution.
  • US: poverty = laziness → less support (Alesina & Glaeser).
  • Children (3–6 yrs) prefer equality; adults prefer “fair inequality”.
• Generosity Utility Models
  • Altruistic: u(x,y)=x+\gamma y.
  • Inequity aversion: u(x,y)=x-\beta |y-x|.
  • 20–30 % show \gamma,\beta\approx0.5 in lab.
• Social Welfare Functions
  • Rawlsian: maximise \min{u_i}.
  • Utilitarian: maximise \sum u_i.
  • Egalitarian (example): \text{SWFE}=2\min{ui}-\max{ui}.
  • Illustration with four options (Amy/Benjamin utilities) shows different rankings across functions.

Paternalism, Nudges & Crowding-Out

• Paternalistic Tools: limits, mandates, fines (e.g., mandatory insurance).
  • Pareto efficiency ≠ fairness; many efficient yet unequal allocations.
• Behavioural Insights / Nudges
  • Alter choice architecture without removing freedom (opt-out organ donation, placement of fruit).
  • UK BIT: defaults, personalisation, peer effects, timing.
  • Crowding-out evidence: fines for late daycare pick-ups ↑ lateness (Gneezy & Rustichini); paid nuclear-waste compensation ↓ acceptance (Frey & Oberholzer-Gee).

Experimental Economics of Generosity

• Donor (Dictator) Game
  • Classic prediction = give 0; reality: 65 % give, 15 % split 50-50.
  • Influences: anonymity (↓ giving), age (older ↑), wealth (richer regions ↑), similarity cues (same painting ↑ if mutual knowledge), “watching eyes” (↑ men’s giving).
• Solidarity Game (Selten & Ockenfels, 1998)
  • 3 players; 2/3 chance win €10, 1/3 win €0.
  • Pre-commit donations x1, x2.
  • Average: x1=€2.46, x2=€1.56.
  • Behavioural types: Egoists 21 %, fixed total sacrifice 52 %, fixed per-loser 16 %.
• Cultural Variation (Ockenfels & Weimann, 1999)
  • West Germans more generous/cooperative than East Germans.
  • Male economists most egoistic; supports selection or indoctrination hypotheses.
• Responsibility Attribution
  • Less help when poverty seen as self-inflicted (Trhal & Radermacher).
• Indirect Reciprocity
  • Helping based on recipients’ reputation (Seinen & Schram, 2006): with public reputation 70 % help vs 22 % without.
  • Strategic: assistance declines in late rounds if reputation stops mattering.

Social-Psychological Theories of Helping

• Evolutionary Bases
  • Kin selection, group selection, reciprocal altruism (Trivers).
  • Empathy partially heritable, observed in primates & infants.
• Empathy–Altruism Hypothesis (Batson)
  • Empathic concern → altruistic motive; personal distress → egoistic.
  • Supported over egoistic alternatives (aversive-arousal, reward, punishment) in ≈30 experiments.
• Negative-State Relief (Schaller & Cialdini)
  • Help to alleviate own negative mood; mood repair interventions eliminate helping.
• Arousal: Cost-Reward Model (Piliavin et al.)
  • Emotional arousal + cost/benefit calculus → direct help, indirect action, escape.

Situational & Identity Determinants of Helping

• Bystander Effect (Latané & Darley)
  • 5-step decision model: notice → interpret → assume responsibility → decide → act.
  • Meta-analysis (Fischer et al., 2011): effect strong in low-danger, absent/reversed in high-danger situations.
• Social Identity
  • In-group favouritism; “we-ness” expands via recategorisation (Common In-group Identity).
  • Levine et al. (2005) soccer fans help own-team victims more; effect disappears when broader “football fan” identity primed.
• Strategic Out-group Helping
  • Driven by guilt, image repair, norm compliance, power maintenance.
  • Help quality: dependency-oriented vs autonomy-oriented.
• Political Solidarity Model (Subašić et al., 2008)
  • Majority aid to minorities requires: recognise injustice, believe change possible, adopt politicised shared identity excluding authority.

Social Norms & Behaviour Change

• Norm Types
  • Descriptive (what is), injunctive (what ought), social responsibility.
  • Pluralistic ignorance & diffusion of responsibility distort perceived norms.
• Norm Interventions
  • Cialdini’s litter/energy studies: adding injunctive cues (😊/😟) prevents boomerang.
• Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen)
  • Intentions derive from attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control (PBC).
  • Meta-analysis: condom use intentions r=0.45 with behaviour.
• Implementation Intentions
  • “If-then” plans bridge intention–behaviour gap; e.g., breast self-exam 64 % vs 14 % control (Orbell et al.).
• Habits
  • Automatic responses to stable cues; can override intentions; disrupted by context change.

Behavioural Interventions & Mapping

• Behaviour Change Tools
  • Antecedent: prompts, education, nudges.
  • Consequence: rewards, penalties, feedback.
  • Combined three-term contingency.
• Intervention Mapping (Eldredge et al.) – Six Steps
  1. Needs assessment & logic model of problem.
  2. Outcomes, performance objectives, matrices of change.
  3. Programme design: theory-based methods → practical strategies.
  4. Production & pre-test materials.
  5. Implementation planning.
  6. Evaluation (effect + process).
• Real-World Trials (BIT)
  • Zurich pension giving: default annual escalations tripled donations long-term.
  • Home Retail Group: auto 3 % escalation sign-up 6 % → 49 %.
  • HMRC e-cards: photo doubled sign-ups.
  • Deutsche Bank: sweets + personalised email → 17 % wage-day donations.
  • Legacy giving: social-norm wording in wills →15.4\% leave gift vs 4.9\% baseline; average gift £6,661.

Key Takeaways

• Solidarity spans one-/two-sided, voluntary/compulsory, informal/formal, local/global, monetary/time/in-kind.
• Welfare states institutionalise solidarity; models differ in cost, inclusiveness, sustainability.
• People tolerate inequality if chance is fair; preferences, norms, and identity shape support for redistribution.
• Generosity is conditional, reputation-sensitive, culturally variable; responsibility judgments matter.
• Helping behaviour hinges on arousal–cost calculus, empathy, social identity, bystander presence, and norms.
• Behavioural economics & psychology inform nudges, norm messaging, and structured intervention mapping for lasting pro-social change.