The Evolutionary Basis of Rigidity: Locks in Cells, Minds, and Society
By Marten Scheffer, Frances Westley. 2007
124 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Feedbacks leading to alternative stable modes of behavior occur on levels varying from the cell and the mind to societies. The tendency to lock into a certain pattern comes at the cost of the ability to adjust to new situations. The resulting rigidity limits the ability of persons, groups, and companies to respond to new problems, and some even suggest that it may have contributed to the collapse of ancient societies. In the face of these negative effects, it may seem surprising that lock-in situations are so ubiquitous. Here, we show that the tendency to lock into one of several alternative modes usually serves an apparent purpose. In cells, it filters out noise, and allows a well-defined and consistent behavior once a certain threshold is passed. Basically, the same holds for the attitudes and behavior of individuals and groups. This functionality is not surprising as it has evolved through selection for fitness. Understanding why rigidity makes sense may help in finding ways to avoid traps in situations where flexible response and innovation are needed.
Subfields: Genetics, Global and Planetary Change, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3e8cc6c62084c0fb06bc16acc317bdecda12aa85
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Citations in the corpus
- Assessing a farm's sustainability: insights from resilience thinking (2010, background): “Given this important role of the farmer, it is necessary to understand the key characteristics of social systems, human biases and processes of social self-organization (Dörner, 1989; Westley et al., 2002; Beratan, 2007; Elster, 2007; Scheffer and Westley, 2007).”
- Research, part of a Special Feature on Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Global Environmental Change Biocultural Refugia: Combating the Erosion of Diversity in Landscapes of Food Production (2013, background): “Instead, TEK is responsive to global changes and pressures (Gomez-Bagethun et al. 2012, Gomez-Bagethun and Reyes-Garcia 2013, Reyes-Garcia et al. 2013), so that it becomes a sort of hybrid dynamic knowledge (GómezBaggethun et al. 2013).”
- Resilience and why it matters for farm management (2014, background): “Such lock-ins can be of various kinds: functional or cognitive, financial or due to the entrenched vested interests (Allison and Hobbs, 2004; Scheffer and Westley, 2007; Schoon et al., 2011).”