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 […]
Louise Barrett: University of LethbridgePrimates are known for their large brains, behavioural flexibility and cognitive complexity. These, in turn, are argued to have been selected for by the complexity of the social environment. The interesting thing is that no one quite knows what social and cognitive complexity actually are, and our attempts at conceptualising primate […]
Michele Gelfand: University of Maryland Over the past century, we have explored the solar system, split the atom, and wired the Earth, but somehow, despite all of our technical prowess, we have struggled to understand something far more important: our own cultural differences. Observing the wide variety of cultural permutations, people assumed for centuries that there […]
Simine Vazire: University of California, DavisA fundamental part of the scientific enterprise is for each field to engage in critical self-examination to detect errors in our theories and methods, and improve them. Psychology has recently been undergoing such a self-examination. Psychological scientists arguably tackle one of the hardest phenomena to understand and predict: human behavior. […]
