Paper short abstract:

Since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, people worldwide started to support Ukrainians in various ways. What mechanisms enable humans to cross genetic, geographical, and cultural boundaries and promote extra-group prosociality? Data from 16 countries shows: social ties and religious beliefs.

Paper long abstract:

In reaction to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, individuals around the world started to express their support and involvement in helping Ukrainians in various ways, such as making monetary donations for humanitarian as well as defensive purposes, volunteering in migration crises, and attending pro-Ukraine happenings. The influx of help towards more or less distant Ukrainians thus serves as a prime example of human ultra-prosociality manifesting in support of anonymous genetically unrelated strangers. However, it is unclear what distances –genetic, geographical, or cultural– can limit the reach of help and, conversely, what mechanisms can enable humans to cross these boundaries and promote extra-group prosociality. Considering the previous findings that the belief in moralizing gods contributes to cooperation across group boundaries, we tested whether the religious beliefs, specifically the moralizing gods beliefs, may help overcome the distances toward the Ukrainian population and consequently promote extra-group prosociality. Under the conditions of a natural experiment, we collected data from 3051 participants from 16 countries via an online survey about their involvement in the three forms of extra-group prosociality towards Ukrainians: monetary donations, volunteering, and attending pro-Ukraine happenings. Subsequently, we measured the relatedness coefficients, reciprocal relations with Ukrainian friends, cultural and geographical distance from Ukraine, and religious and moralizing gods beliefs. The results show that the help decreased with increasing cultural and geographical distances. However, the social ties to the Ukrainians increased all three forms of extra-group prosociality and even helped to overcome the distances. Furthermore, having religious beliefs mitigated the decrease in the size of monetary donations in connection to the increasing distances or even reversed the decreasing trend into a positive effect, thus enabling the crossing of geographical and cultural boundaries.