Testing Multiple Approaches for Understanding Adaptive Functions of Cultural Institutions: Towards More Robust and Reliable Social Science

University Of Georgia Research Foundation Inc, Athens GA

Investigators

Abstract

The research supported by this award tests alternative explanations for understanding how culture produces adaptive behaviors. Some social scientists argue that culture contains information that helps people adapt, through mechanisms, such as taboos, dietary rules, and social norms, that guide people to avoid harm and reap benefits. Other theorists hypothesize that the specific information content of a given culture is not necessarily what is important. Instead, just having a shared culture is in itself adaptive because it binds together cohesive groups that can cooperate to solve common problems and in other ways promote survival. A third theory is that culture acts more on the level of the individual by providing psychological benefits that help people undertake difficult tasks and navigate misfortune. The researcher has designed a project to compare the explanatory power of these and other commonly proposed explanations using real world cultural and behavioral data. This research will help us understand the potential costs and benefits of different adaptive strategies. Findings will be of use to planners and policy makers, as well as to social science theorists. In addition, by testing multiple explanations against each other using empirical data, the researcher's innovative approach will provide a model for other researchers who seek to improve the robustness and reliability of social science research. The research will be conducted by anthropologist Dr. Bram Tucker (University of Georgia) in southwestern Madagascar. Dr. Tucker has chosen this research site because it has one of the most unpredictable climates in the world, which means that local cultural institutions are likely to be strongly adapted to subsistence risk. The extremeness of this situation also will heighten adaptive stresses and responses, making them easier to identify and study than they would be in most environments in the United States. A team of American and Malagasy researchers will collect data on causal models and social norms through vignette elicitations, extended laddering (to get at causation chains), interviews with adults and children, economic inventories, cultural consensus analyses, psychosocial stress questionnaires, and focus groups. A survey of a representative sample of adults will discover whether individuals or groups with a greater knowledge of, and commitment to, particular cultural norms and causal theories have better subsistence outcomes. A survey of children will reveal at what ages children first learn adaptive cultural knowledge. The researcher will use the data to test ten different functionalist, mechanistic, and social learning hypotheses about culture and adaptation. The research is in the national interest because findings will help to devise programs for Americans who are living in stressed environments.