The relationship between social identity and cognitive diversity in environmental stakeholders

Groups with higher cognitive diversity, i.e. variations in how people think and solve problems, are thought to demonstrate improved performance in complex problem-solving. However, embracing or even engineering adequate cognitive diversity is not straightforward and may even jeopardize social inclusion. In fact, those that want to promote cognitive diversity might make a simplified assumption that there exists a link between identity diversity, i.e. range of social characteristics, and variations in how people perceive and solve problems. If it holds true, incorporating diverse identities may concurrently satisfy desirable cognitive diversity while social inclusion is explicitly acknowledged. However, currently there is a lack of empirical evidence to support this hypothesis in the context of complex social-ecological systems—a system wherein human and environmental dimensions are interdependent, where common-pool resources are used or managed by multiple types of stakeholders. Using a fisheries example, we examine the relationship between resource stakeholders’ identities and their cognitive diversity. We used cognitive mapping techniques in conjunction with network analysis to measure cognitive distances within and between stakeholders of various social types (i.e. identities). Our results empirically show that groups with higher identity diversity also demonstrate more cognitive diversity, evidenced by disparate characteristics of their cognitive maps representing their understanding of the fishery dynamics. These findings have important implications for sustainable management of common-pool resources, where the inclusion of diverse stakeholders is routine, while our study shows it may also achieve higher cognitive coverage that can potentially lead to more complete, accurate, and innovative understanding of complex resource dynamics.