Social Complexity Research Articles (Page 1)

Abstract Cooperative breeding, a rare trait in <1% of mammals, is explored within African wild dog packs ( Lycaon pictus ), where alpha females typically produce the first litters, but subordinate females may also breed, resulting in second litters within the same pack. We investigated the reproductive dynamics of wild dog packs in Zimbabwe's Savé Valley Conservancy (SVC) using 14 years of data from 49 packs and 131 den sites, obtained through spoor tracking, radio telemetry, sighting reports and camera traps during denning periods. Among packs capable of multiple litters, 41.15% of breeding events produced multiple litters annually, with 24.86% of all litters from subordinate females, primarily litter sisters of the alpha. Generalized linear mixed models revealed that younger packs and those with more subordinate females were significantly more likely to produce multiple litters, indicating weaker dominance hierarchies. Within multiple litter packs, pup survival to 1 year was significantly higher for second‐born than first‐born litters. However, 2‐year survival significantly increased with higher pre‐emergence rainfall, older alpha females and higher maximum temperatures. Across both litter types, 1‐year and 2‐year pup survival significantly improved with larger packs, while 2‐year survival also significantly increased with pre‐emergence rainfall. Pups from single litters had significantly lower survival to 2 years compared to multiple litters. Despite the potential for reproductive conflict, we found low infanticide (2%) and moderate pup stealing or adoption (14%), suggesting that kin selection promotes reproductive tolerance. These findings highlight the social and ecological complexity of cooperative breeding and its conservation relevance.

Examining social identity transition from a relational perspective: a qualitative study across treatment and non-treatment pathways.

Social identity complexity mitigates outgroup derogation in moral judgment

Evaluating the Safety and Efficacy of Same Calendar Day Discharges for Total Joint Arthroplasty in a Veterans Affairs Hospital.

School-based vaccination programs in the United States are a vital component of public health strategy, offering a practical and equitable means of reaching diverse child and adolescent populations. As key sites for immunization delivery, schools have historically contributed to the success of vaccine initiatives while also reflecting the social, cultural, and logistical complexities that shape public health outcomes. This literature review synthesizes research on vaccination programs implemented in the K-12 educational system, with a focus on ethical considerations, cost-efficiency, community engagement, and operational challenges. Grounded in the Health Belief Model, this integrative review explores how risk perceptions, communication strategies, and healthcare provider capacity influence vaccine acceptance and uptake. It further examines how individual decision-making and structural barriers-such as regional policy variation, consent procedures, and school nurse availability-affect program success.

ABSTRACT This transdisciplinary paper addresses two recent dystopian Australian novels responding to (m)anthropocentric crises, examining imaginary futures for men and masculinities. Using hegemonic masculinities, sociological utopianism and ecofeminism to interrogate ‘thought experiments’ in relation to gender, the work considers the novels’ epistemological foundations, form, framing and futures to establish the usefulness of dystopias in (m)anthropocentric future-thinking regarding gender. Drawing on a recent argument for the usefulness of dystopias in communicating social complexity, it centralises the research-base of these narratives, and their affective capacities to communicate dynamics of agency and structure. The dystopias of McKay (2020, The Animals in That Country) and Winton (2024, Juice) are critiqued through intersecting anthroparchal relations, including masculine domination, human-exceptionalism and colonial theft. These Australian dystopias responding to the anthropocene provide a pathway for expanding future-thinking relating to gender, specifically in the formations for men and masculinities, an area thus far relatively neglected in posthuman constructions of futures of egalitarian equivalences.

ABSTRACT In this work, we introduce case-based systems mapping (CBSM), an integration of exploratory systems mapping and case-based complexity. CBSM explores different groups of cases and their distinct configurations and then generates submaps that display the causal flows for these different groups. Combining these allows users to advance on systems mapping by allowing them to (1) explore how the causal factors within the map may cluster based on groups of cases and (2) engage in greater data corroboration of exploratory systems maps to support, clarify, or further develop ideas. CBSM involves four steps: (1) generating an initial exploratory systems mapping; (2) identifying possible case-based clustering; (3) data corroboration via clustering, machine learning and network analysis; and (4) assessment. As a demonstration, we apply CBSM to a dataset on the social determinants of teenage pregnancy in 100 Local Authorities in England. We conclude with future directions for research.

This study explores the enduring and multifaceted relationship between law and theology through a systematic literature review (SLR) of scholarly works published between 2006 and 2024, sourced exclusively from the Scopus database. It identifies six key thematic areas: historical intersections, theological influence on jurisprudence, comparative law and theology, theological normativity in legal frameworks, the Indonesian context, and contemporary challenges. Special attention is given to Indonesia as a unique case of legal pluralism, where Islamic theology plays a prominent role. Yet, Christian theological influences persist indirectly through Dutch colonial legal transplants, most notably in the KUHP, KUHPer, and KUHD. The finding reveals that law and theology, while distinct in methodology, are interdependent in their pursuit of justice, human dignity, and moral order. This study underscores the relevance of theological insights for enriching legal systems and calls for more excellent interdisciplinary dialogue to address ethical, social, and legal complexities in pluralistic societies.

Social systems vary across the primate order, both within and between major lineages. Understanding how and why this variation arises and how social systems have changed over the radiation is a major focus of comparative primate evolutionary biology. For anthropologists in particular, the issue of social evolution resonates strongly because of interest in how certain aspects of human social systems—e.g., multilevel societies, divisions of labor—have come about. For primatologists, interest centers more around understanding the evolution of particular kinds of sociality (e.g., solitary versus various forms of group living); the variation observed in mating, breeding, and care systems; and the adaptive value of relationships. Attention has also been paid to the evolution of social “complexity,” although that concept is ill-defined and complicated by our human-centered perspective on the natural world. Here, I review 50 years of research on primate social evolution and how comparative phylogenetic approaches have informed that work, while offering some cautions and suggestions for the future.

Food waste as a complex social system: How computational social science can help Researchers in Norway use computer modeling to understand the social complexities of food waste and to test potential interventions that could be part of the solution. How can computational social science contribute to this understanding? Addressing complex social issues like food waste are not just about individual decisions or technical inefficiencies. They are entangled within social norms, human motivations, and situational constraints that interact in unpredictable ways. Traditional research methods can measure correlations or test limited interventions, but they struggle to capture the richness of these dynamic social systems.

Looking into early Christian–Muslim relations seems to be the outcome of greater interest in Islam transcultural encounters due to current issues of mass migration. Sicily presents an informative example of the interaction between different ethnic and religious groups over centuries. Several scholars, including Jeremy Johns, Alex Metcalfe and Julie Taylor, have explored the social and administrative position of Christians and Muslims within the complex society of Sicily, although their contributions were largely from the umbrella of Norman Sicily from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. Thus, there is a need to shift away from the Normans’ experience to exploring Christian–Muslim relations in Sicily during the ninth through eleventh centuries, especially the expansion, society and activities during the rule of the Fāṭimids of Ifrīqiya (909–965) and their Kalbid allies (948–1053). These forms of relationships are not only important for Sicily but for the whole region of the central Mediterranean. This paper will build on the works of Umberto Rizzitano and other scholars to explore the relations between the Arabs and Muslims and the Christians in Sicily during the Muslim rule of the Island. Using Arabic and Islamic sources, including travel accounts by the Muslim geographer Ibn Ḥawqal (d. 988), this paper aims to discuss the lives of Christians and their dynamic exchanges with Muslims within the social and political complexities of Aghlabid and Fāṭimid Sicily as well as Sicily’s link to North Africa (Ifrīqiya). Sicily’s proximity to North Africa and to Europe has been an essential aspect of its history, which facilitated movement of communities between these regions. The paper will also compare the policies of the Fāṭimids towards Christians in Sicily with their relations towards their Christian subjects in Cairo, Egypt. It will show the pragmatic aspects of this relationship concerning marriage, legal status, the movement of people, and cultural and intellectual exchange. Christians and Muslims practised cultural hybridisation that brought changes in Sicily with respect to language, religion, and social habits, resulting in a distinctive Sicilian multicultural identity.

Abstract As generative AI becomes more deeply integrated into society, building public trust in this technology has emerged as a key challenge for policymakers. Existing approaches, such as the European Commission’s Trustworthy AI framework, largely seek to tackle this issue by offering comprehensive technical and legal measures for promoting a more trustworthy AI industry. However, this paper argues that such approaches are limited in scope and do not fully account for the social complexity of generative AI. As these technologies can now replicate modes of human communication and contribute to our collective knowledge, they cannot be simply considered products to be regulated. Rather, they exist as active social actors and AI policy should reflect this. To better account for this social role, this paper develops a network approach to trust in AI inspired by philosophy of technology and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). This approach argues that trust emerges, first and foremost, from the material interactions between social actors involved in a vast and precarious network. In the context of generative AI, this material network extends far beyond the AI industry to include those various actors that are not directly involved in AI development but that nonetheless influence public trust. As such, this paper argues that the policy goal of establishing trustworthy AI, and thus promoting public trust in AI, is not solely a matter of promoting a more trustworthy AI industry. Rather, to achieve such a goal, more diverse policy solutions need to be devised on the basis of social interactions as part of a whole-of-society approach. Primarily, this paper highlights that public trust in generative AI is influenced by those actors that play a key role in socio-political discourse such as political figures, media organizations, academic institutions and government bodies, among others. As such, public trust in generative AI is linked to trust in our information environment more broadly. To conclude, the paper argues that policymakers seeking to promote trustworthy AI must first seek to combat the current post-truth political crisis and restore public trust in democratic institutions.

In highly organized animal societies, individual behavioral differences and close social relationships are crucial for group success and cohesion. However, in naked mole-rats, a eusocial mammal, these factors remain poorly understood because monitoring all colony members simultaneously is challenging. We developed an automated radio frequency identification (RFID) tracking system to continuously collect behavioral data from entire colonies, monitoring 102 individuals from five colonies for 30 days. Based on behavioral parameters, we statistically identified distinct behavioral phenotypes, comprising one cluster for breeders and six clusters for nonbreeders. Breeders formed strong social bonds, consistently remaining close in activity rhythm synchrony, spatial proximity, and directional following. In contrast, nonbreeders exhibited behavioral heterogeneity according to their cluster: One cluster avoided other active nonbreeders, whereas another cluster attracted frequent following. Our study highlights social complexity in this eusocial mammal and establishes a robust platform for further investigations into naked mole-rat social dynamics.

This study, grounded in Feminist Standpoint Theory (FST), investigates how pregnant individuals discuss Non-invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) in online and in-person communities. Recognizing that social location shapes understanding, the research centers their lived experiences to illuminate perceptions, emotions, and decision-making about NIPT. By analyzing shared themes within these communities, the study uncovers situated knowledge and potential challenges to dominant reproductive health narratives. The analysis considers how power dynamics and societal expectations shape information access and interpretation. Ultimately, this research provides a nuanced understanding of the social and ethical complexities of NIPT as communicated within these community spaces.

Large shell middens or shell mounds are present throughout the world’s coastlines. They are frequent expressions of higher population densities, more sedentary lifestyles, social and technological innovation and/or complexity, and overexploitation of large and small prey. Large Holocene shell middens on the west coast of South Africa are known as megamiddens and date to the third millennium BP. Earlier studies have explained their appearance as resulting from a resource intensification process. Megamiddens situated further south in Paternoster village were known to contain comparatively larger quantities of vertebrate fauna and artifacts; however, they remained much less studied until now. Recent findings on Paternoster North megamidden, are reported here and compared to other local sites and to central west coast megamiddens. Previous observations on fauna and artifacts from Paternoster megamiddens are confirmed in this study, with their chronology appearing to be somewhat earlier than that of the central west coast megamiddens. Climatic, geographical, geological, and environmental differences in both terrestrial and coastal settings seem to explain the contrasting records. Further studies on Paternoster megamiddens will improve our understanding of a millennium which has the most intense use of coastal resources in southern African prehistory.

This paper examines access to Global Goal 3 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—ensuring good health and well-being—as both a fundamental human right and the foundation of human prosperity, particularly in the context of future smart cities in Libya. The objective is to promote healthy lives and well-being for all at all ages, a prerequisite for sustainable development. After presenting key facts, figures, and targets for 2030, the paper outlines the scope of Goal 3, which addresses global health challenges such as increasing life expectancy, reducing infant mortality, and ending epidemics including HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and other communicable diseases. Despite progress, the global picture remains uneven: more than 1.3 billion people lack access to effective and affordable health care, 93 percent of whom live in low- and middle-income countries—including Libya. These countries account for only 18 percent of global income yet represent just 11 percent of total health expenditure, highlighting a stark imbalance. Maternal mortality rates remain 14 times higher in developing countries than in developed ones, and only half of women in these regions receive the recommended health care during pregnancy. According to the UN, over 16,000 children under the age of five die daily from malnutrition, dehydration, and preventable diseases. Although the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of 2000 brought significant progress, major hurdles remain, particularly for women and children in vulnerable regions. Sustainable progress requires universal, affordable health systems supported by strong vaccination programs, equal access to sexual and reproductive health services, and widespread health education. This paper further examines how global health threats were being addressed in 2018 through preparedness, prevention, and rapid response, under the WHO’s “No Regrets” policy for health emergencies. It highlights how outbreaks may be inevitable, but epidemics are preventable, provided that governments and communities can keep pace with increasing social, economic, and environmental complexity. In Libya, particular attention is given to the health of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and migrants. As more than half of the world’s population now resides in cities, the paper emphasizes urban health governance to address non-communicable diseases, emerging pathogens, and the human impact of natural disasters. The study explores key components of healthy development—including the role of big data, ICT, and infographics in health services; the introduction of SMART healthcare insurance cards; the WHOQOL-BREF mental health program; specialized clinics for Tawerghan IDPs and migrants; and access to safe water and sanitation. Case studies are presented showing the feasibility of powering large hospitals and research centers with solar energy, thereby supporting universal health coverage and advancing medical research. The paper also discusses the establishment of an autonomous National Committee for Health Sector Reform (NCHSR), emerging from the Libya Health System Strengthening Programme (LHSS) initiated with EU support, to conduct a root-level reform of Libya’s health sector. Finally, it offers recommendations aimed at ensuring that suffering belongs to no one, guided by the principles of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, as part of a vision for a shared and interdependent planet, promoting health, well-being, peace, progress, and prosperity.

This paper examines the role of architects in identifying and implementing design strategies that enhance labour skills, facilitate technology transfer, and support capacity building in developing economies. It examines whether specific design approaches can introduce technological robustness to address the social, cultural, and economic challenges of construction in fragmented industrial environments. The study develops a normative framework for ‘technological robustness,’ which counteracts socio-technical fragmentation and promotes resilient, adaptable building practices in low-resource settings. Through a practitioner-researcher case study of a community library project in Sri Lanka, the paper illustrates how design strategies can expand operational capacity, adjust to variations in workmanship, and encourage organic skill development on real construction sites. The research offers two main contributions: a scalable, structured design methodology that guarantees technical adaptability, cultural relevance, and economic resilience; and an empirical example demonstrating how design can actively generate opportunities for capacity building within fragmented socio-technical systems. Overall, the framework provides practical pathways to enhance construction outcomes in developing economies.

Abstract Aging is a general phenomenon that affects all mammals, yet there is considerable variation in the aging phenotype both within and between species. Some individuals maintain robust cognitive function and functional wellbeing well into old age while others experience significant impairments. Despite substantial investment in aging research, we still do not why such variation exists. Thus, it is increasingly important to elucidate the mechanisms of and observed individual variability in aging and aging-associated diseases. One gene that may play a disproportionate role in aging is TP53. TP53 encodes for the protein p53, which is primarily known for its role in cancer and slowing cell growth while damage is repaired or initiating cell death if stress is overwhelming. However, TP53 is involved in several hallmarks of aging. TP53 maintains genomic integrity, regulates cellular senescence, influence mitochondrial health, and modulates various metabolic pathways (e.g., IGF-1 regulation, mTOR inhibition), in addition to playing a role in brain health and cognitive function. Interestingly, elephants have on average 20 copies of TP53, with variation in the number of copies within and between elephant species. Elephants are the only known mammal with more than two copies of TP53 and the only known mammal that has TP53 copy number variation. Elephants have a long lifespan, capable of living into their 7th or 8th decade of life, typically give birth to a single offspring, and demonstrate slow maturation. Elephants’ fitness depends on social bonds, memory, and complex cognition. Elephants live in a complex fission-fusion society, with adult females remaining with their natal families and males leaving at puberty and forming bachelor herds. Breeding herds are led by an older-aged matriarch, serving as the family’s repository of knowledge. Both older aged males and females serve as the hub of social and ecological knowledge within their network. Yet, elephants have been largely overlooked as a comparative species in aging research. We have established elephants for aging and cognitive aging research. By comparing orphaned to non-orphaned wild elephants, we have started to investigate the role of early life trauma on health and pace of aging. Our pilot data have demonstrated that orphan elephants display different hormonal profiles by age compared to non-orphaned elephants. We are currently analyzing how biological age compares to chronological age in orphaned elephants, the differences in pace of aging. We have established the first, and only, national elephant brain database to investigate cognitive changes with age in elephants. Preliminary data demonstrates that elephants may not display neurodegeneration based on neurofilament light concentrations and the staining of brain tissue from one, 52-year old female Asian elephant. We are currently developing cognitive assessments for wild elephants to investigate the relationship between TP53 copy number and cognitive performance.

Purpose This conceptual paper examines what underlies decision-making in generative change processes to explore how generative artificial intelligence (GAI) might shape the future of organisational change. Design/methodology/approach This investigation draws on Snowden and Stanbridge's (2004) social complexity concept, Archer's (1995) morphogenetic/morphostatic explanatory methodology and Mackenzie and Bititci's (2023) social systems-based model for organisational change to explain how structure, culture and agency influence generative change processes in complex adaptive social systems. Findings Both human-based decision-making and machine-based decision-making have roles to play in generative change. This paper proposes that human reflexivity mediates ideas, whereas the material aspects of artificial intelligence (AI) and GAI mediate tasks. The former shapes the change interventions that take place and the latter contributes to their more effective execution. Practical implications In generative change processes, AI and GAI technologies should be focused on tasks that support human-based decision-making. Originality/value This paper explores decision-making in organisational change from a social complexity perspective and identifies the complementary roles of human reflexivity and AI and GAI materiality in delivering emergent outcomes.

Introduction: Chronic noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), such as systemic arterial hypertension (SAH) and diabetes mellitus (DM), represent important causes of morbidity and mortality in Brazil, with a greater impact on vulnerable populations. Low adherence to treatment, combined with misinformation, cultural beliefs, and access barriers, worsens the clinical picture and increases the risk of complications. Experience Report: The intervention was carried out in May 2025, in a social housing complex in the municipality of Mafra, Santa Catarina, by two students and a professor from the Medical School at the Universidade do Contestado, affiliated with the Academic Merit Credit Program. The activity consisted of blood pressure measurements, simplified medical history taking, and guidance on lifestyle habits and proper medication use, based on national guidelines. Discussion: Low therapeutic adherence was observed through residents' reports, where they reported using continuous medications inappropriately, impacting blood pressure and capillary blood glucose levels at the time, where their practice is influenced by the perception that the absence of symptoms would indicate disease control. The intervention, conducted in accessible language appropriate to the local context, helped demystify information, encourage self-care, and strengthen community ties. Conclusion: The experience reinforces the relevance of extension actions as effective health education strategies, capable of promoting the prevention of NCDs and strengthening the role of universities in primary care, integrating health promotion, community ties, and continuous care.