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性行为的替代解释。 一些社会科学家认为，文化包含了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。 其他理论家则假设，特定文化的特定信息内容并不一定是重要的。相反，仅仅拥有一种共同的文化本身就是适应性的，因为它将有凝聚力的群体结合在一起，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。第三种理论认为，文化更多地作用于个人层面，它提供了心理上的好处，帮助人们承担困难的任务，度过不幸。研究人员设计了一个项目，使用真实的世界文化和行为数据来比较这些和其他通常提出的解释的解释力。 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。研究结果将对规划者和决策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，研究人员的创新方法将为寻求提高社会科学研究的稳健性和可靠性的其他研究人员提供一个模型。该研究将由人类学家Bram Tucker博士（格鲁吉亚大学）在马达加斯加西南部进行。Tucker博士之所以选择这个研究地点，是因为它拥有世界上最不可预测的气候之一，这意味着当地的文化机构很可能强烈地适应生存风险。这种极端的情况也会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研究人员组成的团队将通过小插曲引出、扩展阶梯（以获得因果链）、与成人和儿童的访谈、经济清单、文化共识分析、心理社会压力问卷和焦点小组来收集有关因果模型和社会规范的数据。对具有代表性的成年人样本进行调查，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有更好的生存结果。对儿童的调查将揭示儿童在什么年龄开始学习适应性文化知识。研究者将使用这些数据来检验十种不同的关于文化和适应的功能主义、机械主义和社会学习假设。 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制定计划。

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.