Doctoral Dissertation Research: The impact of shifts in social network structure on cooperative behavior

长期以来，社会科学家一直对一个人的社会关系如何影响他们的行为感兴趣，但他们通常只分析单一的社会网络，比如友谊网络。然而，这个项目提出，只看一个社会网络而不是一个人的整个社会互动限制了我们对合作行为的理解，甚至可能给我们错误的答案。这个项目训练一名研究生进行严谨的、基于经验的科学实地考察，从多个领域探索社交网络数据。该项目将通过向从事确定有效国际发展模式的组织、官员和科学家广泛传播研究结果，增进科学理解。通过开发以人类变化驱动因素为重点的模块的外展活动，该项目还将把研究成果纳入K-12和大学一级的科学教学中。在Monique Borgerhoff Mulder博士的指导下，Curtis Atkisson将调查个人的合作行为是如何受到他们所有的社会互动以及他们所在的社区的影响的。该项目提出，个人不同社交网络之间的重叠程度将预测他们的合作行为——无论是对熟人还是对陌生人。该项目进一步提出，跨社区的社交网络整合也将解释合作行为。这将有助于解释经常报道的结果，即个人的社区是其合作行为的主要决定因素。这些结果具有很大的潜力，可以帮助我们理解随着社会变化而发生的合作行为的变化，并更好地促进我们自己社区的合作。该研究人员将在圭亚那土著地区的一组社区中调查这些想法，这些社区的社会网络重叠程度预计会有所不同。关于合作和决策的人类学研究通常是在这种小规模的社会中进行的，这些社会由于其相对的同质性和历史上的孤立性，往往更有效地控制所查询的变量。通过调查、经济游戏和详细的访谈，科学家们将把人类学的方法论整体主义运用到对多种社会网络、它们的重叠和合作的分析中。这个项目引人注目的一个方面是，它汇集了人类学的多个不同领域，作为科学探究和社会理论的严谨性深度整合的一个例子。

Social scientists have long been interested in how a person's social relationships impact their behavior, but they have typically only analyzed single social networks, like a friendship network. This project proposes, however, that looking at a single social network instead of the entirety of someone's social interactions limits our understanding of cooperative behavior, and may even give us the wrong answer. This project, which trains a graduate student in conducting rigorous, empirically grounded scientific fieldwork, explores social network data from multiple domains. The project would enhance scientific understanding by broadly disseminating findings to organizations, officials, and scientists engaged in identifying effective models for international development. Through outreach activities that develop modules focused on the drivers of human change, the project would also integrate the research findings into the teaching of science at the K-12 and university level.Curtis Atkisson, under the supervision of Dr. Monique Borgerhoff Mulder will investigate how an individual's cooperative behavior is impacted by all of their social interactions as well as the community they are in. The project proposes that the amount of overlap between an individual's different social networks will predict their cooperative behavior - both towards people they know and strangers. The project further proposes that the integration of social networks across a community will also account for cooperative behavior. This will help explain the often reported result that an individual's community is a primary determinant of their cooperative behavior. These results have great potential to help us understand changes in cooperative behaviors as societies change, and better foster cooperation in our own communities. The researcher will investigate these ideas in a set of communities that are expected to differ in the overlap of their social networks in an indigenous area of Guyana. Anthropological studies of cooperation and decision-making are typically situated in such small-scale societies, which because of their relatively homogeneity and historic insularity, tend to more effectively control for the variables being queried. U surveys, economic games, and detailed interviews, the scientists will bring the methodological holism of anthropology to bear on the analysis of multiple social networks, their overlap, and cooperation. One of the compelling aspects of this project is that it brings together multiple distinct areas of anthropology, serving as an example for the deep integration of the rigor of scientific inquiry and social theory.