scholarly journals Preferences for group dominance track and mediate the effects of macro-level social inequality and violence across societies

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (21) ◽  
pp. 5407-5412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas R. Kunst ◽  
Ronald Fischer ◽  
Jim Sidanius ◽  
Lotte Thomsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Structural Inequality ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Societal Norms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Group Hierarchy ◽  
Societal Inequality ◽  
Aggregate Population

Whether and how societal structures shape individual psychology is a foundational question of the social sciences. Combining insights from evolutionary biology, economy, and the political and psychological sciences, we identify a central psychological process that functions to sustain group-based hierarchies in human societies. In study 1, we demonstrate that macrolevel structural inequality, impaired population outcomes, socio-political instability, and the risk of violence are reflected in the endorsement of group hegemony at the aggregate population level across 27 countries (n = 41,824): The greater the national inequality, the greater is the endorsement of between-group hierarchy within the population. Using multilevel analyses in study 2, we demonstrate that these psychological group-dominance motives mediate the effects of macrolevel functioning on individual-level attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, across 30 US states (n = 4,613), macrolevel inequality and violence were associated with greater individual-level support of group hegemony. Crucially, this individual-level support, rather than cultural-societal norms, was in turn uniquely associated with greater racism, sexism, welfare opposition, and even willingness to enforce group hegemony violently by participating in ethnic persecution of subordinate out-groups. These findings suggest that societal inequality is reflected in people’s minds as dominance motives that underpin ideologies and actions that ultimately sustain group-based hierarchy.

scholarly journals Cultural selection shapes network structure

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (8) ◽  
pp. eaaw0609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Smolla ◽  
Erol Akçay
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Network Structure ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Level Structure ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Skill Sets ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Dense Networks ◽  
The Social

Cultural evolution relies on the social transmission of cultural traits along a population’s social network. Research indicates that network structure affects information spread and thus the capacity for cumulative culture. However, how network structure itself is driven by population-culture co-evolution remains largely unclear. We use a simple model to investigate how populations negotiate the trade-off between acquiring new skills and getting better at existing skills and how this trade-off shapes social networks. We find unexpected eco-evolutionary feedbacks from culture onto social networks and vice versa. We show that selecting for skill generalists results in sparse networks with diverse skill sets, whereas selecting for skill specialists results in dense networks and a population that specializes on the same few skills on which everyone is an expert. Our model advances our understanding of the complex feedbacks in cultural evolution and demonstrates how individual-level behavior can lead to the emergence of population-level structure.

The Evolution of Evolutionary Theory

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Bateson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
200Th Anniversary ◽  
The Social ◽  
Philosophy And Religion

Charles Darwin has had an extraordinary impact on many aspects of human affairs apart from revolutionizing biology. On the 200th anniversary of his birth, the Cambridge Darwin Festival in July 2009 celebrated these contributions to the humanities, philosophy and religion and the approach to medicine, economics and the social sciences. He is a man to revere. It is no discredit to him that the science of evolutionary biology should continue to evolve. In this article I shall consider some of the ways in which this has happened since his day.

scholarly journals Understanding self and others: from origins to disorders

2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1686) ◽  
pp. 20150066
Author(s):  
Caroline Catmur ◽  
Emily S. Cross ◽  
Harriet Over
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Social World ◽  
Action Perception ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Intergroup Interaction ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Behaviours

In order to interpret and engage with the social world, individuals must understand how they relate to others. Self–other understanding forms the backbone of social cognition and is a central concept explored by research into basic processes such as action perception and empathy, as well as research on more sophisticated social behaviours such as cooperation and intergroup interaction. This theme issue integrates the latest research into self–other understanding from evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience and psychiatry. By gathering perspectives from a diverse range of disciplines, the contributions showcase ways in which research in these areas both informs and is informed by approaches spanning the biological and social sciences, thus deepening our understanding of how we relate to others in a social world.

ANALYZING THE AGENT-BASED MODEL AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

2003 ◽  
Vol 06 (03) ◽  
pp. 331-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
YUTAKA I. LEON SUEMATSU ◽  
KEIKI TAKADAMA ◽  
NORBERTO E. NAWA ◽  
KATSUNORI SHIMOHARA ◽  
OSAMU KATAI
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Internal Structure ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Agent Based Model ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual

Agent-based models (ABMs) have been attracting the attention of researchers in the social sciences, becoming a prominent paradigm in the study of complex social systems. Although a great number of models have been proposed for studying a variety of social phenomena, no general agent design methodology is available. Moreover, it is difficult to validate the accuracy of these models. For this reason, we believe that some guidelines for ABMs design must be devised; therefore, this paper is a first attempt to analyze the levels of ABMs, identify and classify several aspects that should be considered when designing ABMs. Through our analysis, the following implications have been found: (1) there are two levels in designing ABMs: the individual level, related to the design of the agents' internal structure, and the collective level, which concerns the design of the agent society or macro-dynamics of the model; and (2) the mechanisms of these levels strongly affect the outcomes of the models.

Towards a unified science of cultural evolution

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 329-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mesoudi ◽  
Andrew Whiten ◽  
Kevin N. Laland
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Good Match ◽  
Social Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
The Social

We suggest that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. This latter claim is tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal subdisciplines of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there is an existing or potential corresponding approach to the study of cultural evolution. Existing approaches within anthropology and archaeology demonstrate a good match with the macroevolutionary methods of systematics, paleobiology, and biogeography, whereas mathematical models derived from population genetics have been successfully developed to study cultural microevolution. Much potential exists for experimental simulations and field studies of cultural microevolution, where there are opportunities to borrow further methods and hypotheses from biology. Potential also exists for the cultural equivalent of molecular genetics in “social cognitive neuroscience,” although many fundamental issues have yet to be resolved. It is argued that studying culture within a unifying evolutionary framework has the potential to integrate a number of separate disciplines within the social sciences.

Dezvoltare personală și feminism: O perspectivă sociologică asupra mișcărilor pentru drepturile femeilor în România neoliberală

Transilvania ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 51-61
Author(s):  
Elena Trifan
Keyword(s):  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Structural Inequality ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual

The article aims to analyze the ways in which personal development is used as a tool to manage social justice issues, domestic violence cases and other forms of structural inequality. In most works in the social sciences, self-help discourse has been criticized for reiterating the individualizing neoliberal discourse that leads to growing social inequalities, along with blaming the most vulnerable for their own fate. However, personal development as a practice has been used by organizations working at community level to address personal issues caused by social inequalities. The analysis aims to present the intertwining of global ideological and political plans at the individual level through non-governmental organizations, their projects and personal development courses. The research consisted in the analysis of the activities and projects of the organizations that are part of the Network for Preventing and Combating Violence against Women (VIF) and the ethnography data of personal development practices in Romania from a previous research.

In Search of the Proper Scientific Approach: Hayek's Views on Biology, Methodology, and the Nature of Economics

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 567-585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Beck
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Important Place ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Complex Phenomena

ArgumentFriedrich August von Hayek (1899–1992) is mainly known for his defense of free-market economics and liberalism. His views on science – more specifically on the methodological differences between the physical sciences on the one hand, and evolutionary biology and the social sciences on the other – are less well known. Yet in order to understand, and properly evaluate Hayek's political position, we must look at the theory of scientific method that underpins it. Hayek believed that a basic misunderstanding of the discipline of economics and the complex phenomena with which it deals produced misconceptions concerning its method and goals, which led in turn to the adoption of dangerous policies. The objective of this article is to trace the development of Hayek's views on the nature of economics as a scientific discipline and to examine his conclusions concerning the scope of economic prediction. In doing so, I will first show that Hayek's interest in the natural sciences (especially biology), as well as his interest in epistemology, were central to his thought, dating back to his formative years. I will then emphasize the important place of historical analysis in Hayek's reflections on methodology and examine the reasons for his strong criticism of positivism and socialism. Finally, in the third and fourth sections that constitute the bulk of this article, I will show how Hayek's understanding of the data and goal of the social sciences (which he distinguished from those of the physical sciences), culminated in an analogy that sought to establish economics and evolutionary biology as exemplary complex sciences. I will challenge Hayek's interpretation of this analogy through a comparison with Darwin's views inThe Origin of Species, and thus open a door to re-evaluating the theoretical foundations of Hayek's political claims.

Longitudinal Surveys

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Sunshine Hillygus ◽  
Steven Snell
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Panel Surveys ◽  
Longitudinal Surveys ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Level Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
Panel Attrition ◽  
Panel Conditioning ◽  
Over Time

Longitudinal or panel surveys, in which the same individuals are interviewed repeatedly over time, are increasingly common in the social sciences. The benefit of such surveys is that they track the same respondents so that researchers can measure individual-level change over time, offering greater causal leverage than cross-sectional surveys. Panel surveys share the challenges of other surveys while also facing several unique issues in design, implementation, and analysis. This chapter considers three such challenges: (1) the tension between continuity and innovation in the questionnaire design; (2) panel attrition, whereby some individuals who complete the first wave of the survey fail to participate in subsequent waves; and (3) specific types of measurement error—panel conditioning and seam bias. It includes an overview of these issues and their implications for data quality and outlines approaches for diagnosing and correcting for these issues in the design and analysis of panel surveys.

scholarly journals What Is Our Research For? Responsibility, Humility and the Production of Knowledge about Burundi

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devon E. A. Curtis
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Structural Inequality ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Opening And Closing

Political space in Burundi underwent a remarkable opening during the Burundian peace process and its immediate aftermath, which led to a rise in social science scholarship in Burundi. This space has increasingly narrowed, particularly since the crisis in 2015, presenting important challenges for social science scholars of Burundi. This changing political environment has consequences for the production of knowledge on Burundi. It is therefore timely to ask what purposes does research on Burundi serve. This article reflects upon different motivations and goals for social science research in Burundi and how these affect the types of research questions that are asked and the formats for knowledge dissemination. It argues that both the opening and closing of the Burundian political landscape bring into sharp relief the need for greater scholarly reflexivity. The article argues that in contexts of structural inequality and increased political control such as Burundi, we need to be particularly attentive to the need for scholarly responsibility and humility, as well as an awareness of the dynamics that have led to calls for the decolonisation of knowledge within the social sciences.

A science of culture: Clarifications and extensions

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 366-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mesoudi ◽  
Andrew Whiten ◽  
Kevin N. Laland
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
The Social

We are encouraged that the majority of commentators endorse our evolutionary framework for studying culture, and several suggest extensions. Here we clarify our position, dwelling on misunderstandings and requests for exposition. We reiterate that using evolutionary biology as a model for unifying the social sciences within a single synthetic framework can stimulate a more progressive and rigorous science of culture.

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