The project of the Laboratory of Sociobiology and Human Behavioral Ecology received support in the competition for the creation of research and study groups at the National Research University Higher School of Economics

Employees of the Center for Sociocultural Research, together with colleagues from other scientific departments of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, were among the winners in the competition to create research and study groups. The research initiative of the proposed NUG is aimed at deciphering the adaptive foundations of culture from the point of view of human behavioral ecology.

The uniqueness of this project lies in its interdisciplinarity, since it will involve both social and cross-cultural psychologists, as well as specialists in cognitive sciences, along with demographers and sociologists. The new Laboratory of Sociobiology and Human Behavioral Ecology intends to consider human behavior both at the population (inter- and intra-country) and individual (psychological and neurophysiological) levels.
In the first year of work, Albina Gallyamova (research intern at CSKI) will undertake the creation of a new model of cultural orientations, and Elizaveta Komyaginskaya (research intern at CSKI) will focus on creating methods for the psychometric assessment of life history strategies. In turn, Dmitry Grigoriev (research fellow at CSKA) intends to conduct a cross-country analysis of life history strategies in response to the harshness and unpredictability of the environment.
Leading researchers in the study of neurophysiological mechanisms of cooperation and social conformity will be Alisa Godovanets and Eliana Monakhova (Center for Neuroeconomics and Cognitive Research). While Anna Mironova (Centre for Integrated Social Policy Research) and Anna Vasyunina (International Laboratory for Population and Health Research) will study life history trade-offs in differences between Russian regions.
The ultimate goal of the joint work is to create an integrative interdisciplinary direction in Russia for the study of human behavior within the framework of life history theory. This will require not just bringing together different areas of research, but also creating synergies between them, opening new horizons of understanding of human behavior and culture.