Zoe Liberman: University of California, Santa BarbaraSimilarity influences myriad social relationships. From group membership to friendship, to marriage, to mere proximity, people who are similar to one another tend to be closer than people who are dissimilar. Here, I present research indicating that infants understand the importance of homophily in determining social structure: they expect […]

Matthew Lieberman: University of California, Los AngelesOur social cognitive abilities can either be thought of like a piece of software that is written on top of existing general purpose hardware or as dedicated machinery of its own. I will present six lines of research from my lab that examine the ways in which our brain […]

Julie Miller: University of California, Los AngelesThe slave-making ants are social parasites that steal their workers in coordinated raids on other colonies. Their parasitic lifestyle has made these ants a model of host-parasite co-evolution, however their charismatic brood-raiding behavior is virtually unstudied. Here I explore how colonies make collective decisions when selecting a raiding site […]

Cristina Moya: University of California, DavisWhile many social species are group living, linguistically or symbolically marked social groups, characterized by large repertoires of shared cultural norms and behaviours, are uniquely human. However, the evolutionary relevance and psychological underpinnings of such ethnic groups remains debated. In this talk, I will examine the possibility that the way […]

Amy Non: University of California, San DiegoHispanic immigrants represent the largest and fastest growing ethnic minority in the US. Thus, an important research focus for the future health of the US is to determine factors that influence the declining health of immigrants with more time lived in the US, and across generations. Much research has […]

P.J. Lamberson: University of California, Los AngelesThe challenge of balancing between exploiting existing solutions and exploring for new ones spans problem domains from animals foraging for food to businesses searching for new revenue streams. In this talk I will discuss a simple version of this tradeoff: When tackling a complex problem, is it better for […]

Jim Sidanius: Harvard UniversityUsing Social Dominance and evolutionary theory as theoretical frameworks, we argue for a model entitled the Theory of Gendered Prejudice (TGP), which in broad terms, suggests that arbitrary-set discrimination must be understood as an inherently gendered phenomenon. Employing multiple methodologies, I argue that: 1) In general, males will display higher levels of […]

Elizabeth Chrastil: University of California, Santa BarbaraOrienting oneself in novel environments, as well as finding and remembering the locations of resources, is critical for human and animal existence. Despite the importance of this skill, getting around is easy for some people, while others struggle. Working at the interface between immersive virtual reality and neuroimaging techniques, […]

Michael Rescorla: University of California, Los AngelesJust as the heart serves to pump blood and the stomach serves to digest food, one of the mind’s principal functions is to represent the world. For instance, I have various beliefs about Barack Obama: that he was once president of the United States, that he is married to […]

Sarah Benson-Amram: University of WyomingAs urban centers all over the world have grown, biologists have struggled to explain why some species can invade and thrive despite human-induced environmental change whereas others suffer often to the point of extinction. One potential explanation is that the evolution of advanced cognitive abilities has enabled some species to exhibit […]