NCS-FO: Collaborative Research: The evolutionary origins of leadership in chimpanzees: from individual minds to collective action

领导力对于有效合作至关重要，特别是在大型和复杂的团体中。然而，在我们对支撑领导力的个人层面的过程以及领导力在群体层面的后果的理解上，存在着经验和理论上的差距。在现实世界中，个体领导者的认知如何转化为协调一致的集体行动？该项目建议使用黑猩猩作为一种新的类人领导模式，以更好地理解我们自己的领导模式的进化起源。我们将通过与生活在保护区的半自由放养黑猩猩和生活在野外的黑猩猩进行配对研究，弥合个人和群体层面的现象之间的差距。在保护区，我们可以对认知进行详细评估，而在野外，我们可以在自然环境中观察复杂的群体行为。通过匹配这两个背景下的数据集，我们将能够看到个人认知过程如何转化为群体行动。虽然人类被认为是唯一能够通过威望和合作建立领导力的人，而不仅仅是纯粹的身体控制，但黑猩猩是我们现存的近亲，在个人获得和维持群体地位方面也表现出不同。因此，这个项目将阐明人类领导力的进化起源，并在进化认知科学中为野外认知研究设定一个新的议程。培训、教育和从小学到研究生院的外展将贯穿于国内外的整个项目。作为这项提议的一部分，我们将为儿童开发一个领导力模块，使用动物模型来展示不同形式的领导力。我们将通过在美国当地学校和博物馆以及乌干达的16所小学开展外联活动来实施这一单元。美国的本科生和高中生将通过实习和课程学习获得实践研究经验。两名博士后研究人员和一名研究生将在该项目过程中进一步获得国际研究经验。这种研究和教育相结合的方法将培养新一代进化认知科学家，并向公众传播灵长类研究。该项目有三个具体目标。第一个目标是确定自然社会群体中的个人领导人(那些具有超大影响力的人)，包括支配地位、发起群体运动、获取资源、群体内调解和群体间攻击等多种行为背景。第二个目标是通过描述领导者在这些背景下的认知、行为和生理机制的个体差异来创建领导力概况。在保护区，来自5个社会群体的100多只黑猩猩将接受认知(包括社会认知、合作和执行功能)、气质、行为(攻击性和从属关系)和生理(荷尔蒙和身体大小)的测试，以预测领导力。在野外现场，将利用一个拥有150只野生黑猩猩30年数据的纵向数据库，对性情、行为和生理进行类似的评估。这些数据将被用来检验这一假设，即黑猩猩有不同的领导方式，基于恐吓和合作的策略是最重要的，但知识和动机锚定了某些形式的领导。最终目的是通过考察几个衡量领导成功的短期和长期指标，了解领导风格的差异如何塑造集体行动的结果，包括团队凝聚力、获得的奖励，以及只有在野外才能研究的生殖成功等生物学结果。该项目将通过利用两个自然黑猩猩种群的优势，在认知、行为和生理方面架起个体水平和群体水平的桥梁。该项目将以前所未有的规模匹配不同地点的实验和观察技术，并将黑猩猩作为人类领导的新模式。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Leadership is crucial for effective cooperation, especially in large and complex groups. Yet there is an empirical and theoretical gap in our understanding of the individual-level processes underpinning leadership and the group-level consequences of leadership. How does the cognition of individual leaders translate into coordinated group action in the real world? This project proposes using chimpanzees as a new model of human-like leadership to better understand the evolutionary origins of our own leadership patterns. We will bridge the gap between individual- and group-level phenomena by conducting matched research with semi-free ranging chimpanzees living in a sanctuary where we can do detailed assessments of cognition, and with chimpanzees living in the wild where we can look at complex group behavior in a natural setting. By matching datasets across these two contexts, we will be able to see how individual cognitive process translate into group action. While humans are thought to be uniquely able to establish leadership through prestige and collaboration instead of just pure physical domination, chimpanzees are our closest living relative, also show variation in how individuals obtain and maintain status in their groups. This project will therefore illuminate the evolutionary origins of human leadership, and also set a new agenda in evolutionary cognitive science for studying cognition in the wild. Training, education, and outreach from elementary school through to graduate school will be integrated throughout the project both domestically and abroad. As part of this proposal, we will develop a leadership module for children, using animal models to demonstrate different forms of leadership. We will implement this module through outreach at local schools and museums in the US and in 16 primary schools in Uganda. Undergraduates and high school students in the US will gain hand-on research experience through internships and in coursework. Two postdoctoral researchers and a graduate student will further gain international research experiences in the course of the project. This integrated approach to research and education will train a new generation of evolutionary cognitive scientists and disseminate primate research to the public.This project has three specific aims. The first aim is to identify individual leaders (those with outsized influence) in natural social groups across multiple contexts of behavior including dominance rank, initiation of group movements, resource acquisition, within-group mediation and inter-group aggression. The second aim is to create leadership profiles by characterizing individual variation in the cognitive, behavioral, and physiological mechanisms of leaders across these contexts. At the sanctuary, 100+ chimpanzees across 5 social groups will be assayed for cognition (including social cognition, cooperation, and executive function); temperament; behavior (aggression and affiliation), and physiology (hormones and body size) to predict leadership. At the field site, similar assessments will be made of temperament, behavior, and physiology, drawing on a longitudinal database with 30 years of data on 150 wild chimpanzees. These data will be used to test the hypothesis that there are distinct pathways to leadership in chimpanzees, with intimidation-based and cooperative strategies being the most important, but knowledge and motivation anchoring some forms of leadership. The final aim is to understand how variation in leadership styles shapes the outcomes of collective action by examining several short-and long-term metrics of leadership success, including group cohesion, rewards received, and biological outcomes like reproductive success that can only be studied in the wild. This project will bridge individual-level and group-level perspectives on cognition, behavior, and physiology by leveraging the strengths of two natural populations of chimpanzees. The project will match experimental and observational techniques across sites on a scale never previously done, and will develop chimpanzees as a new model for human leadership.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.