Reputational poverty traps” and the reproduction of social inequality in South Asia and the world

Ample theoretical and empirical evidence shows that people’s evaluations of others are not straightforward. Often, we base our judgements not solely on a person’s actions, but also on what we think others think of the person. This reliance on social information (what we could often call gossip) can readily lead to misapprehensions. Crucially, these imperfect judgements can burden (advantage) already-disadvantaged (advantaged) groups as normative expectations, categorisations, and stereotypes further colour people’s perceptions. How do people act in light of their expectation of others’ (biased) reactions? Experimental games show that people respond to the threat of punishment and the prospect of reputational reward. But how might this responsiveness differ between people, and what consequences does that have?  

In this talk, I will introduce an ongoing cross-cultural project aimed at tackling these questions. With a team including ethnographers, an experimental psychologist, and a modeller, we are examining how people's identities and social position influence how they are perceived by others, and so how they consequently choose to act in the world. A key element of the project is the combination of social network data with experimental games played with known others, where we vary the social exposure of participants’ actions. To date, we have conducted these games with over 1500 people from communities in India, Nepal, Colombia, Mexico, and Morocco. I will present some of our ongoing work, putting forth our preliminary findings and outlining what still remains to be done. 

The Cognitive Science Colloquium series is the most attended event of our department, hosting monthly talks by world-renowned experts in various fields of cognitive science, including neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, philosophy and anthropology.

2025-2026 Program