We conducted an experiment in rural North India that shows persistently that publicly revealing individuals’ social identity has significant effects on individuals’ behavior even when that information is unrelated to rewards. These results are of interest because they suggest the possibility that if there is a belief system that stigmatizes members of a particular social group and if individual...

The tribe Epiponini comprehends the swarm-founding Neotropical wasps, with several species endemic to Brazil, which are extremely important in studies of social evolution of wasps. The Epiponini diverge in several ways from the definitions of high eusociality, since caste syndromes range from species without morphological caste differentiation to those with complete caste dimorphism, and all sp...

Abstract The following article seeks to establish caste groups in India as Weberian status groups. Dumont and Weber’s understanding of caste, while partially correct this area, sought uniquely Indian, through their orientalist leanings. Brahmin was seen by most orientalists being an exclusive group ascetic priests who headed Hindu society. By attempting demonstrate the political economic factor...

Empire has manifested in many forms, such as the impact of neo imperialism and neo colonialism in the economic sector as well as the dynamics between developing and developed societies, it has also had far reaching effects on the shaping of organizations in other ways. Empire, imperialism and colonialism (Hardt & Negri ,2000) have had a historical impact on the development of several societies ...

Reproductive skew theory has not heretofore formally addressed one of the most important questions in evolutionary biology: How can whole-life sterile castes evolve? We construct a transactional skew model investigating under what conditions a subordinate in a multimember group is favored to develop into a morphologically specialized worker caste. Our model demonstrates that, contrary to former...

Different patterns of division of labor can affect the expected longevity of social insects workers. It has been earlier suggested that when tasks performed inside and outside colony are equally risky then the expected longevity of workers in colonies with caste polyethism is greater than that in colonies without polyethism. To verify these predictions I used a model assuming two sets of tasks,...

We investigated whether the physical castes of the dimorphic ant Pheidole pallidula (Nylander) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), are involved in determining within-nest activities and how their social investment in everyday tasks is influenced by large changes in the colony's caste ratio. Although the large-headed majors are morphologically distinct from minors, they are similar in size, exhibit simil...

The question of how reproductives and sterile workers differentiate within eusocial groups has long been a core issue in sociobiology because it requires the loss of individual direct fitness in favor of indirect or group-level fitness gains. The evolution of social behavior requires that differentiation between workers and female reproductives be environmentally determined, because genetically...

Becker's theory of taste-based discrimination predicts that relative employment of the discriminated social group will improve if there is a decrease in the level of prejudice for the marginally discriminating employer. In this paper we experimentally test this prediction offered by Garry Becker in his seminal work on taste based discrimination, in the context of caste in India, with management...