EAGER: Scaling-up Cooperation across Cultural Groups

Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe NM

Investigators

Abstract

Coordinated inter-group cooperation is essential for resolving many major social and environmental issues. From managing fisheries to controlling disease epidemics, solving big problems requires collective action. However, promoting large-scale cooperation among distinct groups such as nations can be difficult. One reason may lie in our basic nature as human beings. If, as some evolutionary theorists believe, we evolved to cooperate with members of our own small groups and compete against members of other groups, then cooperation across national and cultural group boundaries is uniquely challenging. Past research has focused on within-group cooperative interactions. Now the question is whether the mechanisms known to promote within-group cooperation can also promote cooperation among groups with different cultural backgrounds and traditions. Answering this question is complicated by the fact that scaling up from one level of organization to another generally produces new and unpredictable properties. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct research that specifically addresses inter-group cooperation. In the research supported by this award, post-doctoral scholars Dr. Caitlin A. Stern (Santa Fe Institute) and Dr. Jessica L. Barker (University of Arizona) will do exactly that. They will investigate experimentally whether mechanisms, such as reputation and the potential for punishment, that are known to promote within-group cooperation can also promote cooperation between groups. The research will be carried out among the Tlingit tribes of Southeast Alaska. The Tlingit operate fisheries both independently and inter-dependently with other tribes, representing a microcosm of the interactions among distinct cultural groups that must be understood in order to solve trans-boundary collective action issues. In collaboration with Native Alaskan organizations, the researchers will conduct empirical studies (experimental "games" within and between groups, as well as cultural surveys) in Juneau and Haines, Alaska. The researchers will also construct mathematical models of how different factors might affect cooperative behavior, which can be tested against the empirical data. Together, the empirical and theoretical components of this study will illuminate how cultural heterogeneities influence the maintenance of cooperation, and will advance our understanding of the global cooperation necessary to solve large-scale, multi-group collective action issues.