Andrew Gersick: University of Pennsylvania Department of Animal BehaviorSexual selection is widely understood through the lens of the peacock’s tail – as the evolutionary driver shaping elaborate courtship displays and signals. Less studied is the influence of sexual selection on cognitive abilities or behaviors that allow individuals to regulate how they use those signals. Prevailing […]

Eli Berman: UCSD Department of Economics This paper explores the relationship between investment and political violence through several possible mechanisms. Investment as a predictor of future violence implies that low private sector investment today provides a robust indicator of high violence tomorrow. “Rent-capture” or predation asserts that investment increases violence by motivating extortion by insurgents. […]

Karen Kramer: University of Utah Department of Human Evolutionary Biology Human life histories differ from those of other closely related species in ways that significantly affect parental care and childhood. Most explanations for the hominization of life histories incorporate ideas about social interdependence and cooperative breeding. While cooperation for the purposes of raising children is […]

C. Randy Gallistel: Rutgers University Department of Cognitive Psychology I present a computational model to explain the results from experiments in which subjects estimate the hidden probability parameter of a stepwise non-stationary Bernoulli process outcome by outcome. The model captures the following results qualitatively and quantitatively, with only two free parameters: 1) Subjects do not […]

Dwight Read: UCLA Department of AnthropologyThe theme of my talk centers on the evolutionary changes that distinguish human social systems from those of our non-human primate ancestors---are we simply the next step in the phylogenetic sequence that leads to our evolutionary development as a species, or did the innovation that we refer to as culture […]

Andy Sih: UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy Over the past decade, a rapidly growing number of studies have shown that animals often exhibit personalities; e.g., where some individuals are consistently more aggressive, bold, active, exploratory or social than others. Here, I present theory, data and ideas on three ‘frontiers’ in the study […]

Jay Belsky: UC Davis Department of Human Ecology, Human Development and Family Studies Program An evolutionary biological perspective on the effects of the extra-familial and familial environment on multiple psychological, behavioral and even somatic features of children’s development challenges prevailing thinking about human development which regards some contextual conditions and their sequelae as “good” and […]

Pamela Smith: UC San Diego Rady School of Management, Professor of Management and Strategy I propose that individuals with higher power should view the world in a more high-level, abstract fashion than individuals with lower power (Magee & Smith, 2013). As having power makes individuals less dependent on others (relative to lacking power), it increases […]

Paul Rozin: University of Pennsylvania, Department of Psychology None Available

Robert Watson: UCLA Department of English Creative arts and humanistic learning allow us to vary, evaluate, and regulate the evolving cultural systems that we empower, at some cost and risk, to protect us from the unique openness of human consciousness. Culture takes over the conservative tasks (performed biochemically in most non-human creatures) of giving shape […]