Mental Models of a Mesoamerican Forest Environment and Human Health

中美洲森林环境和人类健康的心理模型

• 批准号: 0424629
• 负责人: Scott Atran
• 金额: $ 12.49万
• 依托单位: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-09-01 至 2007-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0424629&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Mental; Models; Mesoamerican; Forest; Environment

Researchers have shown that different cultural groups, exploiting a common environment, have very different cognitive models of animal-plant-human interactions, and that these mental models are strongly correlated with, and perhaps cause strikingly different environmental behaviors. This research focuses on how different Lowland Maya cultural groups respond across generations to conditions of radical change, including language loss, environmental degradation, spatial displacement and dislocation. The project studies the mental models of the environment, and the values and behaviors associated with environmental and health-related decision making, of Lowland Maya people in the Guatemalan Department of El Peten. The research will document similarities and differences in folk-ecological models, environmental values and behaviors within and across cultures; will examine the flow of information within and across Indian and Ladino (Mestizo) groups; and will determine how relations between cognitive models and their transmission promote or undermine successful solutions to resource dilemmas and related conflicts. The research will study how Lowland Maya notions of illness are embedded and sustained within a vestigial cosmological framework of relationships involving humans, spirits and the surrounding social and material environment; and will contribute to a reliable cross-cultural methodology for understanding folk mental models of illness and behaviors that result from them.Methods include experiments that integrate modeling techniques from anthropology, psychology, sociology and market research including the cultural-consensus model, mental models and social network models. The research is designed to assess within and between-population agreement on knowledge of plants, including principles of classification, on values, and on types of causal reasoning that drive decisions about how to tend the environment and treat human health disorders. The broader impacts of the new knowledge to be created relate to environmental planners and decision makers who deal with "the Tragedy of the Commons" and related social dilemmas pertaining to resource use. This research will also show how environmental and human health are integrally related among Lowland Maya, which will be important for health planners.

研究人员已经表明，不同的文化群体，利用一个共同的环境，有非常不同的动物-植物-人类相互作用的认知模型，这些心理模型是密切相关的，也许会导致显着不同的环境行为。这项研究的重点是不同的低地玛雅文化群体如何应对几代人的根本变化的条件，包括语言的丧失，环境退化，空间流离失所和错位。 该项目研究危地马拉El Peten省的低地玛雅人的环境心理模型以及与环境和健康相关决策相关的价值观和行为。该研究将记录民俗生态模式，环境价值观和行为的异同之处和跨文化;将检查内部和跨印度和拉迪诺（梅斯蒂索）群体的信息流;并将确定如何认知模型及其传输之间的关系促进或破坏资源困境和相关冲突的成功解决方案。这项研究将研究低地玛雅人的疾病观念是如何嵌入并维持在一个涉及人类、精神和周围社会和物质环境的关系的残余宇宙学框架内的;并将有助于一个可靠的跨文化的方法来理解民间心理模型的疾病和行为，从他们的结果。方法包括实验，整合建模技术，从人类学，心理学，社会学和市场研究，包括文化共识模型，心理模型和社会网络模型。该研究旨在评估种群内和种群间对植物知识的一致性，包括分类原则、价值观和因果推理类型，这些因素决定了如何照顾环境和治疗人类健康疾病。将产生的新知识的更广泛影响涉及处理“公地悲剧”和与资源使用有关的社会困境的环境规划者和决策者。这项研究还将表明，环境和人类健康是如何在低地玛雅人之间相互关联的，这对卫生规划者来说很重要。