DySoC News & Announcements

News & Announcements

Seminars

DySoC and NIMBioS host a series of seminars on topics related to social complexity. Seminars are held in Hallam Auditorium at NIMBioS. Most are also live streamed and recorded. Details at http://www.dysoc.org/news .

3:30 p.m. April 16. Garriy Shteynberg (Psychology, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville)

Title: Not by imitation alone: Collective learning as a psychological foundation of human evolutionary success

Abstract: Imitative learning, or learning from others, serves as a cornerstone of cognitive, biological and social science scholarship, as it grounds the continuity, diversity, and innovation inherent to humanity’s cultural repertoire in the social learning capacities of individual humans. In contrast, collective learning, or learning with others, has received scant attention. Here we outline the theoretical and empirical case for the importance of collective learning in human cognition and action. We will posit that collective learning is a social learning capacity that facilitates sophisticated forms of collective cognition, which in turn enable more successful collective action. We (1) discuss the development and nature of collective learning, (2) distinguish collective learning from that of imitative learning, (3) address the implications of learning collectively to forms of collective cognition such as shared deliberation, shared memory, and shared motivation, (4) posit that collective learning contributes to cumulative cultural evolution, (5) argue that collective learning is part and parcel of other social cognitive human capacities such as spontaneous teaching, egalitarianism, and theory of mind, and finally, (6) speculate on the implications of collective learning capacity in a socially networked world.

The talk will be streamed live.

Recent Publications, Grants, Media, Meetings & More

New paper: L. Perry et al. " Collective Action Problem in Heterogeneous Groups with Punishment and Foresight " J. Stat. Phys. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10955-018-2012-2

S. Gavrilets was awarded a 3-year Minerva grant (DOD) on Integrating Structural Theories of Revolution with Evolutionary Models to Predict Societal Resilience and (in)Stability. March 2018.

S. Gavrilets is to talk on Modeling the evolutionary origins and dynamics of social complexity at the conference Models in Population Dynamics, Ecology, and Evolution – MPDEE-18 (Leicester, UK), April 9-13, 2018.

S. Gavrilets is to talk on Closer than brothers: The evolution of extreme cooperation via shared dysphoric experiences at the Social, Decision, and Organizational Sciences program, U. of Maryland, April 23, 2018.

O. Manaev is to talk on Independent Public Opinion Polling vs. Authoritarian State (A case of Belarus) at AAPOR's 73rd Annual Conference in May in Denver, Session: From Russia to Mexico: Election Polls Around the World

May 31-June 2, 2018 Baker Center Global Security Conference on " Peacebuilding in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies" hosted by Krista W. and B. Prins

Related Projects

Find out about DySoC research projects

Related Publications

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