Group Cognition, Stress Arousal & Adaptation Under Uncertainty

I am part of an NSF-funded interdisciplinary project examining why some groups successfully cooperate and adapt in uncertain, changing environments while others fragment or fail. The project develops and tests an Embedded Model of Adaptive Capacity (eACM), which links group sense-making (how groups build shared understandings and joint strategies) with physiological stress arousal and environmental feedback in collective decision-making.

We study these dynamics using a controlled behavioral experiment based on an online shared-resource “foraging” game, in which groups must balance short-term incentives against long-term sustainability while the environment becomes more or less volatile. Participants complete validated measures of system cognition (pattern detection and systems thinking) and social cognition (e.g., theory of mind), and we capture physiological arousal during group decision-making using wearable sensors (e.g., skin conductance and heart rate). The central aim is to identify when cognitive diversity and strong social cognition improve performance—and when stress disrupts coordination and undermines adaptive capacity.