Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Cooperation, Altruism, and Human Warfare

加州大学洛杉矶分校的研究生萨拉·马修将在罗伯特·T·博伊德博士的指导下，对这一重要问题进行研究：为什么人类要在战争中合作，而这意味着为了他们的社会群体而将自己的个人生命置于危险之中？这就是社会科学家所说的“集体行动问题”。对这种合作的四种解释在文献中很突出：人们合作是为了避免惩罚，人们为提高自己作为合作者的声誉而战斗，人们为了向潜在伴侣传递个人品质而战斗，人们打架是为了让亲戚受益。这位研究人员将用在肯尼亚西北部游牧民族图尔卡纳人13个月的田野调查中收集的数据来检验这些相互矛盾的假设。图尔卡纳人进行大规模的牛袭击，这使他们适合进行这项研究。在图尔卡纳地区，将从北图尔卡纳地区的游牧定居点招募访问Lokichoggio镇的牧民，以收集数据。研究人员将采用多种方法，包括：1)对战士进行深入的半结构化访谈，以获得与预测相关的行为数据，并了解突袭的人种学；2)小圈子研究，探索人们对个人在突袭中未能做出贡献的特定情景的反应；以及3)行为经济学实验，以深入了解突袭如何影响自己团队内的合作偏好。这项研究的结果将阐明在国家前战争中如何处理集体行动问题，从而有助于更广泛地理解人类大规模合作的基础。这项研究还将为人类战争的原因提供新的线索。

University of California in Los Angeles graduate student, Sarah Mathew, with the guidance of Dr. Robert T. Boyd, will undertake research on the important question: Why do humans cooperate in war when this means putting their individual lives at risk for the benefit of their social group? This is called the "collective action problem" by social scientists. Four explanations for such cooperation are prominent in the literature: people cooperate to avoid punishment, people fight to enhance their reputations as cooperators, people fight to signal personal qualities to potential mates, and people fight in order to benefit relatives. The researcher will test these competing hypotheses with data to be gathered in 13 months of field work among the Turkana, a nomadic pastoralist people of northwest Kenya. The Turkana practice large-scale cattle raiding, which makes them appropriate for this research. Data will be collected in the Turkana region by recruiting herders who visit the town of Lokichoggio from nomadic settlements in the north Turkana territory. The researcher will employ a mix of methods including, 1) in-depth semi-structured interviews with warriors for behavioral data relating to the predictions, and for an ethnographic understanding of raiding; 2) vignette studies to explore how people respond to specific scenarios where individuals fail to contribute in a raid; and 3) behavioral economic experiments for insight into how raiding affects preferences for cooperation within one's own group. The results of this study will elucidate how the collective action problem is dealt with in pre-state warfare, and will thereby contribute towards understanding the basis of large-scale cooperation in humans, more generally. The research also will shed new light on the causes of human warfare.