Presentation

Robert Kurzban : University of Pennsylvania Evolutionary psychologists are committed to the view that form follows function. This commitment carries an epistemic corollary: if a mechanism with a proposed function does not have the form that is required to perform that function, confidence in the proposed function should be reduced. The view that moralistic punishment – imposing […]

Tamsin German: University of California, Santa BarbaraI will discuss research conducted in my lab assessing recent proposals that complex human cultural concepts such as acquired scientific knowledge and religious belief rely on the co-option of early developing psychological mechanisms for representing and reasoning about the world. I will present evidence for this idea from studies […]

Anne Pisor : Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary AnthropologyRelative to non-human primates, humans are heavily reliant on social connections beyond the boundaries of their local communities. However, individuals vary in the extent to which they exhibit interest in extra-community relationships. How did humans come to have such pronounced tolerance toward extra-community individuals, and what are the […]

Carolyn Parkinson: University of California, Los AngelesThe cognitive demands of navigating large groups comprised of many varied and enduring social bonds are thought to have significantly shaped human brain evolution. Yet, much remains to be understood about how the human brain tracks, encodes, and is influenced by the social networks in which it is embedded. […]