Elsevier

Evolution and Human Behavior

Volume 39, Issue 5, September 2018, Pages 529-537
Evolution and Human Behavior

Friends without benefits: When we react negatively to helpful and generous friends

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.05.004Get rights and content

Abstract

Being able to identify reliable friends and allies is key to surviving and thriving in the social world. Many cooperative accounts of friendship argue that people select friends based on how helpful and generous they are. While people certainly like helpful and generous others, here we explore a context in which people might respond negatively to a friend being prosocial: When one's friend is more helpful or generous toward another friend. We argue that such preferential prosociality prompts negative reactions, even when the alternative is a friend being less prosocial overall, because giving preferentially to another friend may be viewed as a threat of potential displacement of one's own friendship. In four studies (N = 702), we predict and find that people respond negatively to a friend who was more helpful (Studies 1–2) and generous (Studies 3–4), preferring instead that a friend be less helpful and generous overall. Importantly, this preferential prosociality was viewed as particularly negative when the recipient was another friend and was seen as much less negative when the recipient was a relative (Study 1 and 4) or a romantic partner (Study 2). We discuss the implications of these results for cooperation and alliance-based accounts of friendship.

Section snippets

Study 1

In Study 1, we investigated people's reaction to a friend helping someone or not. Participants read vignettes in which their friend does not help them and then has a subsequent opportunity to help someone else in similar circumstances. We varied whether the friend helped the other person or not and who else requested help (friend or parent). Cooperative accounts based on indirect reciprocity (e.g., Nowak & Sigmund, 1998) suggest that people track benefits delivered to them and third parties and

Study 2

We have suggested that people respond more negatively toward preferential help for a friend rather than parent because a parent fills a very different role than a friend. Of course, a parent and friend differ in many ways: one is biologically related to one's parents, does not choose one's parents, and cannot easily leave one's parents. Therefore, in Study 2 we explore a comparison role closer to a friend: a romantic partner. Just like friends, romantic partners (in most cultures) are not

Study 3

So far, we have demonstrated that people are more upset at a friend for not helping them when their friend subsequently helps another friend. We suggest this reveals friendship jealousy in line with the alliance account. However, the most striking evidence in favor of this account and against cooperative accounts of friendship would be to find a case where people respond negatively to a highly generous friend who gives them relatively less than someone else. Our previous results speak against

Study 4

Studies 1–3 provide support for the notion that people respond particularly negatively to a friend being preferentially prosocial to another friend and argue that this occurs because people are worried about being displaced by another friend, but not a parent or significant other. However, our results thus far could also be accounted for by cooperation theories based on person-specific generosity rooted in WTRs (Delton & Robertson, 2016), which would explain our observed effects in a different

General discussion

In four studies, we find support for the alliance hypothesis; people responded negatively to a friend who preferentially helps or is generous toward someone else, particularly when that other person was another friend. We find that people respond much less negatively to a friend helping a relative or romantic partner (Studies 1, 2, and 4) because a friend is less worried about being displaced by a relative or romantic partner. We argue and provide evidence that these results are better

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