Daniel is the first student at the Doctoral program in Social Complexity Sciences to be awarded such funds. With ANID funding, the Ph.D candidate will explore how women interact in a dyadic context based on factors such as motherhood and relationship status.

Daniel Torrico Bazoberry, Ph.D. student in Social Complexity Sciences, was awarded funds in the most recent contest for complementary benefits of the National Research and Development Agency (ANID for its initials in Spanish) for his doctoral project entitled “Women’s prosocial behavior in solitary and group contexts: an evolutionary and functional perspective based on sex composition, maternity and relationship state” associated with the CICS’ Animal and Human Behavior Laboratory.

“Prosocial behavior is defined as voluntary actions that benefit others and includes behaviors such as helping, sharing, or cooperating. Despite its importance, prosocial behavior has been extensively studied in men, but it has rarely been focused on women, and even less so from a functional evolutionary perspective”, explains Daniel Torrico. “In this project, under an evolutionary theoretical framework, we will study prosocial behavior using experimental economics methodologies, specifically through public goods games and the trust game,” he adds.

With this work the student seeks to contribute to the knowledge of the prosocial behavior of women from an interdisciplinary perspective that encompasses biology, psychology and economics.

“With the results of this project we hope to be able to generate a strong and solid understanding of the effects of biological conditions such as motherhood on the prosocial behavior of our species and particularly in the Chilean population, which would allow us to have a base knowledge to be able to generate further studies and/or appropriate public policies that allow us to understand the role of parenthood in our society, something that is particularly important given the relationship between parenthood and the development of human capital that has been described in developed countries”, says Daniel.

With ANID funding, Torrico will be able to implement his study in a virtual laboratory that will allow data to be collected online, which would increase the scope of his current sampling, the participation and diversity of the sample, by allowing data from participants outside of Santiago.

“Given the difficulty of ensuring the face-to-face participation of women with children, since many times they cancel us the same day of participation due to inconveniences with their children (e.g., illnesses), we will be able to take the data virtually, without depending on the difficulty of moving to the current laboratory, allowing women with children to better organize themselves and participate in the study. In addition, by doing it from the comfort of their home, they will be able to participate by having their children close by so as not to neglect their attention or have to find someone to take care of them”, highlights the student.

Daniel already has the data collected about the prosocial behavior of women in group contexts, the result of the first part of his doctoral thesis. However, given that women tend to interact dyadically, they will carry out a second study to measure cooperation in this context and evaluate if they manage to better capture the behavior, also considering how biological factors such as motherhood can affect this behavior.