Cooperation in Amak, Nicaragua
I work with the Mayangna to study questions about the social origins of interdependence and cooperation. The Mayangna are an indigenous small-scale society of horticulutarilsts who live in the Bosawas region of northern Nicaragua.
Research projects (2023)
As part of the Ecological Origins of Cross-Societal Variation in Cooperation project, I collected ego-centric network data, measuring kinship, wealth, labor, disasters, morality, perceived interdependence, cooperation, and more.
What determines whom, or what, is seen as human? Replicating findings based on North American samples, we show that even among Mayangna participants with little-to-no exposure to Western culture, perceiving gender was the only social category (e.g., age, ethnicity) that predicted perceiving someone, or something, as human.
What social settings shape fitness interdependence?
Perceptions of interdependence predict cooperation, but where do such perceptions originate? I examined whether relatedness, number of children, shared religion, childhood co-residence; how often people hunt or fish, plant and harvest, share meals, labor share, and experience a disaster with others is associated with perceived shared fate and cooperation.
Amak, Nicaragua (2023)
