In his paper on the “human interaction engine”, Levinson famously asserted that, in social interaction, people’s responses “are to actions and intentions, not to behaviors” (2006: 45). Indeed human beings […]
Lisa O'Bryan, Rice University In order to obtain social benefits, individuals must remain cohesive, coordinate their behavior, and collectively process information. The field of collective behavior focuses on understanding how […]
Humans are rapidly changing the natural world, leading to decreasing native fauna and increasing non-native fauna. Problematic species range expansions are occurring across the globe, but not all species are […]
We humans come from a diverse order, the primates, which make excellent model systems for studying the interface between the biological and the social. In this talk, I focus on […]
Paleolithic archaeologists have employed expectations generated from models developed in evolutionary anthropology to aid in the investigation of the origins of high-fidelity cultural transmission. Based on the notion that copying […]
Given that animal-borne pathogens pose especially high disease risks and, moreover, that a growing body of research suggests that the evolved function of disgust is the avoidance of disease, it […]
Friends have recurrently provided social, material, and emotional support—helping humans meet a range of recurrent challenges tributary to fitness. But friendships are not the first type of relationship that comes […]
Groupishness is a tendency to commit prosocial acts for which the pathway to compensatory fitness benefits is unpredictable. It is unique to humans, and its evolution is not well understood. […]
For better or worse, humans are now one of the major causal forces acting on the earth’s biosphere. Many would point to technology as the reason, but what exactly is […]
This is a special BEC talk in honor of the retirement of one of BEC's core faculty members, Joe Manson. Please note the special time! Refreshments and snacks on the […]
