Mapping the relationship between individual minds and group behavior is the goal of the “Interconnected Minds” cluster hire. This cluster seeks to understand how individual minds influence group behavior and vice versa, to gain a better understanding of social behavior, social communication, and social decision-making.

With guiding questions: How is the behavior of individuals shaped by phenomena at the social level, such as group differences and group structure? And what aspects of the behavior of groups can be traced back to cognitive and neural processes acting within individuals and what aspects are only emergent at the group level?

Answering these questions is a complex challenge that requires integrating knowledge across the biological and social sciences and advancing both theory and methods. Investigations need to link the rigor of well-controlled lab experiments and the realism of ecologically valid studies in more natural environments. These efforts benefit from new technologies to measure behavior and neural activity in interacting groups and corresponding methods to analyze the complex datasets that result. New theoretical developments will be required to understand complexity across scales and at multiple levels and to understand the links between phenomena at the individual and group levels.

We are thrilled to have successfully brought three scientists exploring these questions to the University of Pennsylvania.