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，尤其是在大型和复杂的团队中。然而，在我们对支撑领导力的个人层面过程和领导力的群体层面后果的理解上，存在经验和理论上的差距。个体领导者的认知如何转化为现实世界中协调一致的群体行动？这个项目建议用黑猩猩作为人类领导模式的新模型，以更好地理解我们自己的领导模式的进化起源。我们将通过对生活在保护区的半自由放养的黑猩猩和生活在野外的黑猩猩进行配对研究来弥合个体和群体层面现象之间的差距，在那里我们可以对认知进行详细的评估，在那里我们可以观察自然环境下复杂的群体行为。通过匹配这两种情况下的数据集，我们将能够看到个人认知过程如何转化为群体行为。虽然人类被认为是唯一能够通过威望和合作而不是纯粹的身体控制来建立领导地位的人，但黑猩猩是我们最亲近的近亲，它们在个体获得和保持群体地位的方式上也表现出差异。因此，该项目将阐明人类领导力的进化起源，并为研究野外认知的进化认知科学设定新的议程。从小学到研究生院的培训、教育和外展将在国内和国外的整个项目中整合。作为这个提议的一部分，我们将为儿童开发一个领导力模块，用动物模型来展示不同形式的领导力。我们将在美国的当地学校和博物馆以及乌干达的16所小学开展外展活动，以实施这一模块。美国的本科生和高中生将通过实习和课程获得实践研究经验。两名博士后研究员和一名研究生将在项目过程中进一步获得国际研究经验。这种研究和教育的综合方法将培养新一代的进化认知科学家，并向公众传播灵长类动物的研究。这个项目有三个具体目标。第一个目标是在多种行为背景下识别自然社会群体中的个体领导者（那些具有超大影响力的领导者），包括统治地位、群体运动的发起、资源获取、群体内调解和群体间攻击。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档案。在该保护区，将对5个社会群体的100多只黑猩猩进行认知分析（包括社会认知、合作和执行功能）；气质;行为（攻击性和隶属关系）和生理（荷尔蒙和体型）来预测领导力。在野外，将利用一个包含150只野生黑猩猩30年数据的纵向数据库，对它们的气质、行为和生理进行类似的评估。这些数据将被用来验证这样一个假设，即黑猩猩的领导能力有不同的途径，基于恐吓和合作的策略是最重要的，但知识和动机是某些形式的领导能力的基础。最后的目标是通过考察领导成功的几个短期和长期指标，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，来了解领导风格的变化如何影响集体行动的结果。该项目将通过利用两个自然种群的优势，在认知、行为和生理方面架起个人层面和群体层面的桥梁。该项目将以前所未有的规模在不同地点匹配实验和观察技术，并将黑猩猩发展成为人类领导能力的新模式。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.