Past Presentation

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. […]

Ara Norenzayan: University of British ColumbiaThe rise of large-scale cooperation and the spread of parochial-prosocial religions in the last 12 millennia are two longstanding puzzles, one of human psychology, and the other of cultural history. I present a theory, maintaining that these two developments were importantly linked and mutually energizing. It is grounded in the […]

Julian Kapoor: Cornell UniversityAmong animals that develop signals through social learning, dialects – shared signals among a subset of individuals within a larger population – are nearly ubiquitous. Despite the prevalence of dialects across social animal species ranging from hummingbirds to whales to humans, the functional significance of such variation remains elusive; do dialects reflect […]

Katie Hinde: Arizona State UniversityMother’s milk is more than a food full of essential nutrients and more than a medicine packed with protective immunofactors. Mother’s milk contains maternal signals- hormones- that influence infant metabolism, neurobiology, and behavior. A growing body of evidence demonstrates that hormones from the mother, ingested through milk, bind to receptors within […]

Steven Neuberg : Arizona State UniversityHow does being discriminated against affect a person’s health, and through what mechanisms? Most research has focused on two causal pathways, highlighting how discrimination increases psychological stress and exposure to neighborhood hazards. I advance an alternative, complementary set of mechanisms through which stigma and discrimination may shape health. Grounded in evolutionary […]

Sandeep Mishra: University of ReginaSubstantial epidemiological evidence shows that higher levels of income inequality are associated with a wide array of negative societal-level outcomes, ranging from greater risk-taking and crime to poorer mental and physical health. However, surprisingly little research has examined individual-level consequences of inequality. Risk-sensitivity theory, developed in the field of behavioral ecology, […]

Joshua Ackerman: University of MichiganFunctional psychological responses to the dangers of infectious disease first require perceiving that pathogenic threats exist. How do people detect such threats? One way is through use of conceptual knowledge from lay beliefs or direct communication, but another, perhaps more primitive, means involves use of specific sensory information. In this talk, […]

Matthew Zefferman: Arizona State UniversityCombat veterans in western industrialized societies can develop a collection of symptoms classified as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The origins of PTSD are a mystery. Some posit that it has deep evolutionary roots as a mechanism for avoiding and responding to harm. Others posit that it is socially constructed and perhaps […]