tel. +31(0)50 36 36234
Email:
Email:
Email:
Tel: +31(0)50 36 36469
Email:
With respect to scientific matters, the International Advisory Board can be asked for advice. The members of the advisory board are world-class researchers that all have agreed to participate:
Prof. Christina Bicchieri (University of Pennsylania)
Prof. Andreas Diekmann (ETH Zurich)
Prof. Phyllis Moen (Minnesota)
The aim of this program is to address external shocks, spillover, and feedback effects that threaten a resilient society. We achieve this by examining cooperation sustainability in and between families, communities, and organizations. In recent years, we have developed an interdisciplinary framework integrating insights from psychology, sociology, history, and philosophy (the SCOOP approach). This framework specifies institutional arrangements that facilitate cooperation by considering complex interactive dynamics and their societal effects from a long-term (historical) perspective. It also provides an understanding of the tension versus compatibility between underlying goals and values, which can erode or enhance cooperation over time. This approach addresses these dynamics from an integrated theoretical perspective. It also connects different datasets and methodologies that shed light on cooperation sustainability as a central outcome variable. The unique features of the SCOOP approach are indispensable in achieving our overarching goals of developing roadmaps for a resilient society and creating criteria for interventions that effect lasting change.
SCOOP’s central dependent variable – sustainable cooperation within and between families, organizations, and communities – is located at the group level, but the dynamics affecting it cannot be restricted to one level of analysis. Cooperation is affected by actions and behavioral patterns at the individual level, by changes at the societal level, and by the ideals and values that govern each domain. To adequately analyze and assess the patterns of cooperation on all these levels of analysis, SCOOP is designed as a thoroughly interdisciplinary endeavor, combining expertise from psychology and sociology, history, and philosophy. As a result, SCOOP forms a comprehensive and integrated framework encompassing different levels of analysis and comprising a variety of methods to describe, explain and analyze the relevant variables. Throughout the SCOOP-program, we apply the framework to study the interplay between behavioral mechanisms, institutions, and ideals and values.
Three Kinds of Sustainability Threats
The interdisciplinary approach consists of the integrated use of a number of methods and tools from the social sciences and humanities. SCOOP research will employ methodologies from Experimental Social Psychology, Analytical Sociology, Historical-Institutional Analysis, and Analytic Philosophy.
In the application of the interdisciplinary approach, the emphasis will fall on the way behavioral mechanisms, institutions, and ideals and values contribute to or sustain different forms of cooperation in society. First, behavioral mechanisms are (intra-, inter-personal and intergroup)psychological processes affecting the motives, cognitions, and actions of individuals. The key question that we address with respect to these mechanisms is under what conditions are individuals willing to forgo personal benefits in order to contribute to the realization of collective benefits? Second, the institutions of cooperation form the complexand constantly changing combinations of formal and informal rules, procedures, and conventions that regulate social life. SCOOP examines, in particular, the conditions under which institutions enhance or hinder sustainable cooperation within and between societal domains. The third focal point is the identification of the ideals of cooperation as reflected in the individual and social benefits that may arise from cooperation as well as the beliefs thatindividuals, organizations, and communities have regarding those ideals.
Cooperation is sustainable when it realizes values and ideals, thus any account of sustainability must include a normative analysis of these. A major threat to sustainable cooperation emerges when its internal benefits come at the expense of its social value. Furthermore, tensions between social values (e.g., diversity and consensus,security and freedom, economic welfare, and personalwell-being) challenge sustainability. In a study of sustainable cooperation, therefore, a systematic examination of how values may support or conflict with each other is of central importance.
The key challenges for societal resilience result from external shocks, spillover, and feedback cycles. These can represent threats to existing cooperative arrangements, but may also provide opportunities to develop novel solutions for care, inclusion, and work. This can be achieved by specifying which individual and societal values need (re-)alignment; understanding the psychological mechanisms that connect individuals through their common identities, goals, and networks; and identifying which institutional provisions and arrangements are needed to address these. The analytical tools are offered by the SCOOP approach, which integrates theoretical insights and links empirical evidence from different disciplinary and methodological perspectives to develop roadmaps for effective policy strategies and solutions.
Our SCOOP approach to develop roadmaps for resilience incorporates the features of so-called Wise Interventions, specified by Stanford University. The success of this stepwise procedure to build interventions that have lasting societal effects has now been convincingly demonstrated indifferent domains and national contexts. Distinctive features of a ‘wise’ intervention prescribe that they are psychologically precise, address recursive processes, and are context dependent – instead of offering generic ‘silver bullet’ solutions. The program of research we propose offers just that, by:
SCOOP is a research and training centre dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of sustainable cooperation as a key feature of resilient societies. The centre connects research groups from sociology, psychology, history, philosophy, public administration, research methods, and statistics. SCOOP is a joint initiative by the University of Groningen (Strategic Theme Sustainable Society) and Utrecht University (Strategic Theme Institutions for Open Societies), and also involves researchers from the VU Amsterdam, the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Radboud University Nijmegen. The 2025 Vision for Science of the Dutch Ministry of Education (2014, p. 19) praised SCOOP as an “example of cross-pollination between disciplines”.
SCOOP scholars have built an innovative theoretical model to integrate their complementary expertise and developed an interdisciplinary joint research strategy. To overcome the limitations of prior research, the program is organized in four multidisciplinary work packages (WPs). These break with the tradition to focus on a single domain of cooperation at a time because interventions that secure cooperation sustainability need to take into account the implications that they have for cooperation in other domains. WP1 targets solutions for care. WP2 focuses on solutions for inclusion. WP3 identifies solutions for work. WP4 specifies and extends the SCOOP approach, integrates the resulting insight with basic research and theory formation.
In addition to the academic ambitions, the program also wants to realise several tangible long-term gains, including the development of a multi-method, open-access data interface; a research infrastructure capable of tackling cooperation issues from multiple disciplinary perspectives; and a talent selection and training program to prepare the next generation of top researchers. The main result will be the generation of insights and instruments that can be used by societal partners and stakeholders to foster a resilient society.
