Ecological Origins of Cross-Societal Variation in Cooperation

Projektinformationen

PUBLICGOOD

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 864519

DOI

10.3030/864519

Projekt abgeschlossen

EK-Unterschriftsdatum 24 Mai 2020

Startdatum 1 September 2020

Enddatum 30 Juni 2026

Finanziert unter

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Gesamtkosten

€ 2 000 000,00

EU-Beitrag

€ 2 000 000,00

Koordiniert durch

STICHTING VU
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - PUBLICGOOD (Ecological Origins of Cross-Societal Variation in Cooperation)

Berichtszeitraum: 2023-09-01 bis 2025-02-28

Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts

Societies that contain widespread cooperation can solve problems of public good provision and resource conservation, yet many societies fail to display the cooperation necessary to solve these problems. A puzzle facing the social sciences is understanding the origin of cross-societal variation in cooperation. Strikingly, multiple disciplines propose the same, not yet established, explanation: ecological conditions, such as subsistence, environmental hazards, and relational mobility, determine how people are interdependent (i.e. how actions affect own and others’ outcomes), and interdependence can be the mechanism through which diverse ecologies shape a culture of cooperation. For example, rice versus wheat production plausibly has led to more versus less dependence on others, which then led to different cultures (e.g. values, beliefs, and norms) that affect strategies of when and how people cooperate. I use a multi-discipline, multi-method approach to answer three questions about whether ecologies indeed create different interdependence, and how this leads to variation in culture and cooperation.

Do ecologies create different kinds of interdependence? I measure the interdependence and cooperation people experience across different ecologies in 10 contemporary small-scale societies, among rice and wheat farmers in China, and in over 200 societies documented in the ethnographic record.

Can interdependence cause differences in culture and cooperation? I use agent-based models and experiments to study how variation in interdependence can cause different norms of cooperation.

Does variation in interdependence relate to culture and cooperation? I apply experience sampling to measure interdependence and cooperation in daily life across 35 societies that vary in culture.

Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far (For the final period please include an overview of the results and their exploitation and dissemination)

We have organized a team of Anthropologists who will collaborate to implement project 1.1.. We have met as a team at a workshop, and we have designed the study to be implemented. We have begun to implement the project at different field sites and have worked with the Anthropologists to make further improvements to the design of the study. It will take at least 1 year to implement the project.

We have hired a research assistant to assist the postdoc hired on the grant to read and annotate ethnographies in the Human Relations Area files for project 1.2. This project is advancing well, and we expect to have results within the next few months.

We are currently planning Project 1.3 in China. This project was delayed due to the pandemic.

I have hired an evolutionary biologist as a postdoc to begin work on project 2.1 – developing models about how variation in interdependence can affect the evolution of cooperation.

I have implemented an experiment with Shuxian Jin for project 2.2. This work has resulted in a paper that was submitted to a journal and granted a revise and resubmit. I expect the paper will be published soon.

I have been planning project 3. This is a cross-societal project that was delayed due to the pandemic. Though I expect we can begin to execute the project within the next year.

As the result of the pandemic, we have spent time writing theory and review papers on the topic of the grant. Kristen Syme and I have completed a paper on how variation in human interdependence has shared differences in cooperation across societies. I have also had a review paper accepted, and currently in press, at Trends in Cognitive Sciences about the important role for how inferences of interdependence shape cooperation.

Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)

The ground-breaking innovation of this project is establishing interdependence as a common mechanism through which diverse features of the ecology shape cross-societal differences in culture and cooperation