Project description
Understanding group dynamics in crisis
Human collectives often struggle to adapt to complex challenges like climate change and economic instability. While we have the ability to change our thinking and social connections, many groups seem unable to find effective solutions. This stagnation can lead to missed opportunities and increased conflict. Currently, there is no solid framework to understand how cognitive and social processes work together to enable or prevent collective adaptation. The ERC-funded CollAdapt project aims to create a new scientific paradigm by combining research on cognition and social networks. Through computational modelling and various empirical studies, CollAdapt will investigate how beliefs and social learning influence collective problem-solving. This approach hopes to reveal why some groups get stuck and how they can move forward.
Objective
Human collectives adapt their cognitive strategies and social networks flexibly in response to multiple changing problems. For example, we as scientists continuously revise our teams and the way we integrate information, depending on the topics we study. As citizens, we participate in diverse collectives that use different strategies to address challenges ranging from economic development to climate change. This ability for collective adaptation contributed to our species’ spectacular success, but sometimes our collectives seem stuck and unable to adapt to the problems they face. We currently do not have a solid scientific paradigm for studying collective adaptation, and its cognitive and social aspects have been studied largely independently in different disciplines. I will develop such a paradigm by building computational models to integrate research on cognition and sociality, and by collecting diverse empirical data on the interaction of cognitive and social processes, including group experiments, natural language processing of large textual corpora, and longitudinal surveys. This will allow me to investigate (i) the interplay of social learning strategies, networks, and problems that collectives face, (ii) the formation and persistence of people’s beliefs about what the important problems are, and (iii) the effect on collective adaptation of individual differences in these beliefs. I am well positioned for this task because of my experience in building computational models grounded in theories and data on human cognition and sociality, and the support from the Complexity Science Hub Vienna that has been designed for this kind of research. This project will enable us to understand why collectives can be stuck in deadlocks about important problems and why they sometimes appear incapable of finding seemingly obvious solutions, ultimately helping us to avoid undesirable societal trajectories such as those leading to extremism and violence.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-ADG
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1030 WIEN
Austria
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