Doctoral Dissertation Research: Expanded Group Affiliation, Trust and Prosociality

加州大学圣巴巴拉分校的博士候选人安妮·皮索尔将在迈克尔·格文博士的监督下，研究随着个人战略性地改变他们的群体成员身份，合作意向和对外群体成员的信任如何变化。跨群体的信任与合作对于跨人群的合作至关重要，这是道路和水坝等国际资助的发展项目取得成功所必需的，但以前的研究表明，在文化，种族和语言多样化的社会背景下，这种情感很难实现。此外，一些调查人员发现，随着融入国家社会和经济，对群体外成员的信任和合作会增加，而其他人则发现这种信任和合作会减少。受社会科学研究的启发，该项目将调查小组成员的战略转变是否是将合作和信任与社会经济融合联系起来的工作中缺失的变量。研究人员预测，这不是暴露在外的群体，但个人的这些群体及其成员的价值，改变这些sentiments.This项目将采用民族志知情的采访，经济实验，和参与观察，以探讨这一预测与三个人口的园艺家从玻利维亚低地。之所以选择这些人口，是因为他们在家庭和社区之间的社会经济融合程度不同。玻利维亚是进行这项研究的理想地点，因为它既有民族语言多样性，又正在经历快速的社会经济变革。然而，所使用的方法被设计成可以针对其他情况进行修改。由于该项目的系统方法及其综合性质，其结果将在社会科学和学术界之外引起广泛的兴趣。衡量群体从属关系的范围及其与合作和信任的关系，可以提高国际组织将发展项目与可能采取集体行动的社区相匹配的能力。

UC Santa Barbara doctoral candidate Anne Pisor, supervised by Dr. Michael Gurven, will undertake research on how cooperative intent and trust toward out-group members change as individuals strategically shift their group memberships. Trust and cooperation across groups are critical to cross-population collaboration, required for the success of internationally funded development projects such as roads and dams, yet previous research has demonstrated that such sentiment is difficult to achieve in culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse social contexts. Further, some investigators have found that trust of and cooperation towards out-group members increases with integration to national society and economies, while others have found that it declines. Motivated by research from across the social sciences, this project will investigate whether strategic shifts in group membership are the missing variable in work connecting cooperation and trust to socioeconomic integration. The researchers predict that it is not exposure to out-groups, but an individual's valuation of these groups and their members, that changes these sentiments.This project will employ ethnographically-informed interviews, economic experiments, and participant observation to explore this prediction with three populations of horticulturalists from the Bolivian lowlands. These populations were selected because they differ both across households and across communities in their degree of socioeconomic integration. Bolivia is an ideal place to conduct this research as it is both ethno-linguistically diverse and undergoing rapid socioeconomic change. However, the methods used are designed such that they can be modified for other contexts. Because of the systematic approach of this project and its integrative nature, results will be of broad interest both across the social sciences and outside of academia. Measuring the scope of group affiliation and its relationship to cooperation and trust may improve the ability of international organizations to match development projects to communities where collective action is likely to take place.