Abstract

Previous ecological research on social dynamics has largely been conducted on human dyads; however, to provide support for Hume's touchstone, ecological psychologists must also investigate the perception-action and collective action capabilities of non-humans. This approach allows us to circumvent possible cognitivist interpretations of complex social phenomena by exploring social dynamics across organisms with a range of abilities. Here, we outline how the integration of ecology and ecological psychology will benefit ecological theory (i.e., by informing large scale human collective coordination) and the way we engineer collaborative human groups. To demonstrate the benefits of this avenue of research, we detail the well-studied communication system of the western honey bee, Apis mellifera, and highlight the context-sensitivity and specificity of their communicative signals. We discuss two collective social phenomena in bees—swarming and task allocation—and how their study can inform human interpersonal dynamics. In order to use insects as a basis for improving human group coordination, we suggest that we must not only identify a suitable insect but also a particular phenomenon that shares the same values along critical dimensions of variability. We end by providing potential real-world implications of this disciplinary cross-pollination.

摘要

先前关于社会动力学的生态研究主要是针对人类的。然而，为了为休ume的试金石提供支持，生态心理学家还必须研究非人类的感知行动和集体行动能力。这种方法使我们能够通过探索具有各种能力的有机体之间的社会动态来规避复杂社会现象的可能的认知主义解释。在这里，我们概述了生态学与生态心理学的融合将如何使生态学理论受益（即通过告知大规模的人类集体协调）以及我们如何设计协作型人类群体。为了证明这一研究途径的益处，我们详细研究了经过深入研究的西方蜜蜂Apis mellifera的通讯系统，并强调其交流信号的背景敏感性和特殊性。我们讨论了蜂群中的两种集体社会现象，即蜂群和任务分配，以及它们的研究如何为人类的人际动态提供信息。为了将昆虫用作改善人类群体协调性的基础，我们建议我们不仅必须确定合适的昆虫，而且还必须确定在变异性的关键维度上具有相同值的特定现象。最后，我们提供该学科交叉授粉的潜在现实世界含义。