Research Context
Many pressing global problems – climate change, mass extinctions, global pandemics, social inequality, etc.- stem directly from how humans think and behave. Science-based solutions are often available, but their implementation demands major changes in behaviour and the opinions, beliefs, and decisions that underlie it. Solving global problems thus requires fundamental advances in our scientific understanding of the specific cognitive competences and biases that drive decisions, and of ways to understand and change maladaptive and/or irrational behaviour.
A key insight is that human minds are ‘adaptive’ in two distinct senses: adapted by evolution to solve species-typical problems, and adapted by culture and social learning to rapidly accumulate knowledge and foster innovative solutions. Fully understanding our minds thus requires a transdisciplinary union between biology, psychology and cultural sciences/humanities, where cognition and cultural evolution play leading roles.
Research Objectives
We aim to employ the fundamental insights gained from comparative cognition research, particularly the deep biological roots of human thinking and emotions, to better understand how to solve these pressing global problems. Our research will explore the psychology and biology of key cognitive mechanisms, and map the limits and potential of social cognition and cooperativity that underlie the promise of positive change.
Furthermore, a central goal is to elucidate the dynamics of social and collective cognition, and of cultural evolution and change. In particular we will target relatively neglected domains of ‘aesthetic’ cultural evolution, including language, politics and the arts, where human subjective preferences play a core selective role. We hypothesize that these components of human culture, being most variable, are also more malleable and potentially crucial in driving cultural change.
Approach/Methods
Our core claim is that the fundamental progress needed to shape human cognition into sustainable forms – achieving ‘sustainable minds’ – is possible only by using comparative and developmental research to understand cognition in its evolved biological context. We use a multi-pronged approach to understanding cognitive mechanisms, integrating questions about ‘what’ (what are our cognitive abilities and biases?), ‘how’ (how do the biological mechanisms underlying them function?), ‘why’ (why did these evolve?) and ‘when’ (when do they develop? when are they useful and when maladaptive?).
We use a highly diverse set of empirical approaches, shared across multiple disciplines. Settings include both lab and field studies in animals and humans, and methods include eye-tracking, hormone and gene-expression analysis, psychophysiology, motion tracking, brain imaging, and computational modelling. Our methodologies are applied to both humans and a diverse range of nonhuman animal species including birds, primates and domesticated mammals.
Originality/Innovation
The approach to cognitive science developed in Vienna is unique worldwide in tightly integrating a biological and evolutionary approach to the evolutionary, developmental and cultural determinants of cognition. Vienna is an international hotspot for cognitive biology, integrating animal cognition research into comparative psychobiological research, in multiple projects spanning humans and animals across the University of Vienna and the University of Veterinary Medicine of Vienna. The recent move of the Central European University to Vienna adds an outstandingly strong centre of research in cognitive development and social cognition, and one of the largest infant cognition labs in the world. The marriage of developmental and comparative research proposed in our cluster will be unique internationally.
Our approach includes research in art, music and language, incorporating the humanities into joint interdisciplinary research. We have pioneered shared teaching and mentoring platforms, and developed strong citizen science/public outreach programs that incorporate biology education, conservation and environmental psychology. Thus, our cluster offers a synergistic consortium of internationally visible strengths in social cognition, cognitive development, and cognitive biology, combined with an extraordinary breadth ranging from biology through psychology to the humanities.
This exceptional combination – depth of expertise plus breadth of perspectives – will yield unique synergies and genuinely novel insights into the nature and nurture of human cognition. The resulting progress in understanding cognition will be crucial to foster the transition to sustainable minds – a transition desperately needed to ensure a healthy, stable, and prosperous future for our species and our planet.
Adaptive Minds 