Tools for Understanding Social Systems

A policy that works in one country may not work in another. Measuring how far two societies differ, and what GDP and national averages leave out, helps show which assumptions need testing before a policy is adapted.

Michael Muthukrishna, Adrian Bell, Joseph Henrich and colleagues developed the Cultural Fixation Index, which measures cultural distance between countries from survey answers about values, beliefs and behavior. Edward Slingerland's team at the University of British Columbia created the Database of Religious History, in which experts answer standard questions about religious groups across history. Katharina Lima de Miranda and Dennis Snower built SAGE, a dashboard that measures wellbeing beyond GDP, and UNDP is developing an index of countries' relationships with nature. Charles Efferson and Sonja Vogt developed versions of implicit association tests, which infer attitudes from reaction times, for sensitive topics. David Sloan Wilson and colleagues used a student survey to map prosociality, behavior that benefits others, across Binghamton, New York.