Testing Multiple Approaches for Understanding Adaptive Functions of Cultural Institutions: Towards More Robust and Reliable Social Science

该奖项支持的研究测试了理解文化如何产生适应行为的替代解释。一些社会科学家认为，文化包含帮助人们适应的信息，通过禁忌、饮食规则和社会规范等机制，引导人们避免伤害并获得好处。其他理论家假设，特定文化的具体信息内容不一定是重要的。相反，仅仅拥有一种共享的文化本身就是一种适应性，因为它将具有凝聚力的群体联系在一起，这些群体可以合作解决共同的问题，并以其他方式促进生存。第三种理论是，文化更多地作用于个人层面，提供心理上的好处，帮助人们承担困难的任务和应对不幸。研究人员设计了一个项目，利用现实世界的文化和行为数据，比较这些解释和其他常见解释的解释能力。这项研究将帮助我们了解不同适应策略的潜在成本和收益。这些发现将对规划者和政策制定者以及社会科学理论家有用。此外，通过使用经验数据对多种解释进行相互验证，这位研究人员的创新方法将为其他试图提高社会科学研究的稳健性和可靠性的研究人员提供一个模型。这项研究将由马达加斯加西南部的人类学家布拉姆·塔克博士(佐治亚大学)进行。塔克之所以选择这个研究地点，是因为它的气候是世界上最不可预测的，这意味着当地的文化机构很可能对生存风险有很强的适应能力。这种情况的极端也将增加适应性压力和反应，使它们比在美国的大多数环境中更容易识别和研究。一个由美国和马达加斯加的研究人员组成的团队将通过小插曲启发、延伸阶梯(以了解因果链)、对成年人和儿童的采访、经济清单、文化共识分析、心理社会压力问卷和焦点小组，收集关于因果模型和社会规范的数据。对具有代表性的成年人样本的调查将发现，对特定文化规范和因果理论有更多了解和承诺的个人或群体是否会有更好的生存结果。一项对儿童的调查将揭示儿童在多大年龄开始学习适应性文化知识。研究人员将使用这些数据来测试关于文化和适应的十种不同的功能主义、机械主义和社会学习假说。这项研究符合国家利益，因为研究结果将有助于为生活在压力环境中的美国人设计计划。

The research supported by this award tests alternative explanations for understanding how culture produces adaptive behaviors. Some social scientists argue that culture contains information that helps people adapt, through mechanisms, such as taboos, dietary rules, and social norms, that guide people to avoid harm and reap benefits. Other theorists hypothesize that the specific information content of a given culture is not necessarily what is important. Instead, just having a shared culture is in itself adaptive because it binds together cohesive groups that can cooperate to solve common problems and in other ways promote survival. A third theory is that culture acts more on the level of the individual by providing psychological benefits that help people undertake difficult tasks and navigate misfortune. The researcher has designed a project to compare the explanatory power of these and other commonly proposed explanations using real world cultural and behavioral data. This research will help us understand the potential costs and benefits of different adaptive strategies. Findings will be of use to planners and policy makers, as well as to social science theorists. In addition, by testing multiple explanations against each other using empirical data, the researcher's innovative approach will provide a model for other researchers who seek to improve the robustness and reliability of social science research.The research will be conducted by anthropologist Dr. Bram Tucker (University of Georgia) in southwestern Madagascar. Dr. Tucker has chosen this research site because it has one of the most unpredictable climates in the world, which means that local cultural institutions are likely to be strongly adapted to subsistence risk. The extremeness of this situation also will heighten adaptive stresses and responses, making them easier to identify and study than they would be in most environments in the United States. A team of American and Malagasy researchers will collect data on causal models and social norms through vignette elicitations, extended laddering (to get at causation chains), interviews with adults and children, economic inventories, cultural consensus analyses, psychosocial stress questionnaires, and focus groups. A survey of a representative sample of adults will discover whether individuals or groups with a greater knowledge of, and commitment to, particular cultural norms and causal theories have better subsistence outcomes. A survey of children will reveal at what ages children first learn adaptive cultural knowledge. The researcher will use the data to test ten different functionalist, mechanistic, and social learning hypotheses about culture and adaptation. The research is in the national interest because findings will help to devise programs for Americans who are living in stressed environments.