IBSS: The Evolution of Culture and Institutions

这个跨学科的研究项目将为正式制度对文化特征的长期影响提供新的见解。该项目将包括一系列行为实验，旨在研究个人在社会制度结构的历史背景下遵循与偏离既定规则的倾向。该项目将通过提供有关正式法律和制度对个人价值观和信仰的影响的证据，帮助解决有关个人行为和社会演变的基本问题。项目调查结果将增进对内部规范如何对法律和制度形成的外部激励作出反应的认识。正式的法律和制度是排挤还是加强个人的内部规范，对于确定人类如何对政策、法律和制度作出反应具有重要意义。因此，该项目将产生与决策者和其他寻求提高集体社会效率的人有关的见解，同时认识到个人行动的高度可变性。调查人员将进行一系列涉及不同人群的行为实验，其中一些人居住的地区在历史上曾是一个政治实体的一部分，这个政治实体包括行政委员会、官僚机构、以陪审团审判为特色的复杂法院系统、警察部队、军队、税收系统和广泛的公共产品供应。将对邻近地区村庄缺乏这些体制框架的个人进行类似测试。行为实验将测量参与者作弊的倾向，而不是遵循既定的规则。在实验中，参与者将面临在遵守游戏规则并获得更少的钱与作弊并获得更多的钱之间进行权衡。游戏的设计使得单个人的作弊行为既不会被发现，也不会受到惩罚（参与者会知道这一事实），但通过分析更大群体的个人行为，就有可能在统计上发现作弊行为。实验将在刚果民主共和国进行，其中一些实验参与者居住在曾经被称为库巴王国的地区，该王国形成于17世纪初，并在一定程度上持续到20世纪初与欧洲接触。其他参与者来自附近地区，在库巴王国运作期间，这些地区不受与国家有关的机构结构的约束。初步研究发现，那些祖先生活在结构更为正式的制度环境中的人倾向于作弊，而不是遵守规则，这种行为与正式制度会排挤内部规范的观念相一致。该项目将在早期试点研究的基础上，大幅增加样本量，通过从其他村庄和城市抽取个人来解决最近向大城市迁移的问题，在分析中加入详细的历史数据，并扩大所研究的文化特征的范围。虽然该项目侧重于非洲的一个案例，提供了一个坚实的自然实验式的研究设计，但该项目将提供新的见解，可用于检查社会结构与文化特征和个人行为之间的关系，这些关系可以跨越广泛的环境，包括美国的许多地区。本项目由美国国家科学基金会跨学科行为与社会科学研究（IBSS）竞赛资助。

This interdisciplinary research project will provide new insights regarding the long-term impacts that formal institutions have on cultural traits. The project will consist of a series of behavioral experiments designed to examine the tendencies of individuals to follow vs. deviate from established rules within the historical context of societal institutional structure. The project will help address a fundamental question about individual human behavior and the evolution of societies by providing evidence about the impact of formal laws and institutions on the values and beliefs of individuals. Project findings will enhance knowledge of how internal norms respond to external incentives that are shaped by laws and institutions. Whether formal laws and institutions crowd out or reinforce the internal norms of individuals will have significant importance for ascertaining how human beings respond to policies, laws, and institutions. The project therefore will generate insights relevant to policy makers and others seeking to enhance collective societal effectiveness while recognizing the highly variable nature of individual action.The investigators will conduct a set of behavioral experiments involving different sets of individuals, some of whom reside in a region that historically was part of a political entity that included executive councils, a bureaucracy, an elaborate court system that featured trial by jury, a police force, a military, a system of taxation, and extensive public goods provision. Comparable tests will be conducted on individuals from nearby areas whose villages lacked these institutional frameworks. The behavioral experiments will measure the proclivity to participants to cheat rather than follow established rules. In the experiments, participants will face a trade-off between following the rules of the game and receiving less money vs. cheating and receiving more money. The games will be created so that cheating by a single individual can neither be discovered nor sanctioned (and this fact will be known by participants), but by analyzing the actions of larger groups of individuals, it will be possible statistically to detect cheating. The experiments will be conducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where some of the participants in the experiments reside in an area once known as the Kuba Kingdom, which was formed in the early 17th century and persisted to some degree until European contact early in the 20th century. Other participants come from nearby areas that were not subject to state-related institutional structures over the time period when the Kuba Kingdom functioned. Preliminary research identified a tendency for individuals whose ancestors resided in more formally structured institution environment to cheat rather than follow rules, actions consistent with the notion that formal institutions can crowd out internal norms. This project will build on the earlier pilot study by significantly increasing the sample size, addressing issues of recent migration to larger cities by sampling individuals from other villages and cities, adding detailed historical data into the analysis, and expanding the scope of cultural traits being examined. Although focusing on an African case that provides a solid natural experiment-style research design, the project will provide new insights that can be used to examine the relationships between societal structures and the cultural traits and behaviors of individuals across a broad range of settings, including many locales in the United States. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.