The development of decision-making across diverse cultural contexts Dorsa Amir Boston College Department of Psychology The human behavioral repertoire is uniquely diverse, with an unmatched flexibility that has allowed our species to flourish in every ecology on the planet. Despite its importance, the roots of this behavioral diversity — and how it manifests across development […]
The evolution of covert signaling in diverse societies Paul Smaldino Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California, Merced Identity signals are common components of communication transmissions that inform receivers of the signaler’s membership (or non-membership) in a subset of individuals. Signals can be overt, broadcast to all possible receivers, or covert, encrypted so […]
The nature and origins of religious super-attractors Manvir Singh Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse Human societies reliably develop “cultural super-attractors”, or complex practices and beliefs that exhibit striking similarities. In this talk, I will present research on the nature and origins of three religious super-attractors: shamanism, religious self-denial, and beliefs in […]
It's funny: the evolution and science of laughter Sophie Scott Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL Laughter is a nonverbal emotional expression associated with play and joyful emotions. In this talk I will explore the evolutionary roots of laughter, it's role in human development, social interactions and communication, and some evidence about the neural systems recruited […]
At Face Value: The Role of Chimpanzee Facial Expressivity in the Evolution of Gestural Communication and Social Bonding Britt Florkiewicz UCLA Department of Anthropology Primates make frequent use of visual signals when communicating with conspecifics, which includes facial expressions and gestures. These two forms of visual communication are thought to be different from one another: […]
Socio-cognitive mechanisms of fairness Nadia Chernyak UC Irvine Department of Cognitive Sciences One of the most critical societal issues is our perpetuation of inequality. One important quandary, however, is that humans agree that equality is important, but continue to endorse and perpetuate existing inequalities. This talk presents some developmental evidence for why this may be […]
Rethinking stereotypes: Social perceivers as lay adaptationists Oliver Sng Department of Psychological Science, UC Irvine Individuals have evolved to adaptively allocate energy across different life tasks, such as mating effort, parenting effort, and building embodied capital. From various theoretical perspectives (e.g., parental investment theory, life history theory), an individual’s biological sex, current life stage, and […]
How to Know Celeste Kidd Department of Psychology, UC Berkeley This talk will discuss Kidd’s research about how people come to know what they know. The world is a sea of information too vast for any one person to acquire entirely. How then do people navigate the information overload, and how do their decisions shape […]
Learning to forage in hunter-gatherer societies Sheina Lew-Levy Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University & Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Aarhus University Studying how contemporary hunter-gatherer children learn to forage can help shed light on the evolution of human cognition, life history, and social organization. Still, our species’ developmental plasticity and socioecological diversity complicates […]
Meaning-making, belief and world shaping as core processes in the human niche Agustín Fuentes Department of Anthropology, Princeton University Humans are not unique in the world. But we are quite idiosyncratic. Across the Pleistocene the genus Homo developed a distinctive suite of cognitive, behavioral, ecological, and technological processes and patterns; in short, a human niche. […]
