Collective Action

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Cultural evolution and collective action to address global problems

Seven Research Projects and two Applied Working Groups are addressing this theme. Find out more by clicking on the titles:

Cooperation and cumulative culture [Creativity theme, PI Alex Mesoudi]: Information sharing as opposed to information hoarding is needed for cumulative cultural change to address global problems.

Exploratory learning in human adaptation [Creativity theme, PI Helen Taylor]: People learn differently, and this complementary cognition (typical and non-typical) enables collaborative solutions to big problems.

How do people make and change rules? [Creativity theme, PI Sarah Mathew]: We need to re-imagine social institutions to deal with cooperative dilemmas faced globally.

How do we know whether others mean what they communicate? [Globalization theme, PI Alejandro Erut]: Communication is key to cooperation, yet how cultures differ in strategies for assessing the validity of what is communicated (epistemic vigilance) is understudied.

Collective action and interdependence [Applications theme, PI Nichola Raihani]: Does interdependence encourage cooperation at global, as opposed to merely local, scales?

Cultural evolution of conservation practices [Applications theme, PI Thomas Currie]: This project investigates collective action in human-wildlife conflict mitigation strategies.

Traditional Luhya mourning rituals [Applications theme, PI Stephen Asatsa]: This project investigates whether (indigenous mourning) rituals promote societal cohesiveness through enhancing wellbeing and thus prosociality.

Cultural evolution in natural resource management & conservation [PI Richard Berl]: This Applied Working Group tackles questions around the cooperation that is needed for conservation at local and global scales.

Growing an applied science of cultural evolution for a sustainable future [PI Rebecca Koomen]: This Applied Working Group tackles questions around the cooperation that is needed for conservation at local and global scales.