WORKSHOP: Workshop on Genes, Cognition and Social Behavior

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

This project organizes a one-day interdisciplinary workshop, to be held at NSF and attended by approximately ten faculty members from around the United States. The purpose of the workshop is to specify concretely how and where research on genetics, cognition, and social behavior will generate transformative scientific practices, scholarly infrastructure, and widely relevant findings of high social value. The workshop will devote special attention to scientific endeavors whose implications speak directly to the Political Science program's areas of interest. Since many scholars, institutions, and foundations are considering or deciding on investments in research on the genetic and cognitive bases of social behavior, a workshop that evaluates such investments is particularly valuable. Workshop participants will be invited to evaluate the contributions to date of such research in their field so as to clarify the kinds of "next steps" in the near term (i.e., five to ten years) that are likely to provide high-value outcomes. By focusing on the near term and meeting to engage in collective deliberation, participants will clarify new paths from present activities to feasible, concrete outcomes for transformative research at the intersection of genetics, cognition, and social behavior. The study of preference formation offers one illustration of the ways that new interactions among specialists in the genetic, cognitive, and social behavioral domains could strengthen research. Why do individuals want what they want? As translated to the political world, this question concerns, among other things, citizens' preferences for government spending in a range of policy areas, views of the proper balance between local and national governmental authority, and overarching ideologies. To the extent that individuals' preferences have particular genetic correlates, can we use that information to guide the search for conditions under which particular cognitive operations can, and cannot, lead to changed preferences? A better understanding of the conditional relationships between genetic and cognitive phenomena may clarify, in turn, whether and how ongoing contextual changes such as those induced by technological advances might affect individuals' preferences.