Simone Schnall: CambridgeHow do people tell right from wrong? It used to be assumed that moral decisions are based on rational thought, such that people determine on objective facts and logical analysis what is morally acceptable behaviour. More recently, however, empirical findings suggest that decisions about morality and ethical behaviour are far from rational, but […]
James Andreoni: UCSDGiving to those in need is inherently a social act. First, altruistic giving requires empathy for, or perhaps simply awareness of, those who are needy. Second, giving nearly always involves a social interaction between the donor and someone seeking a donation. Third, those who are generous tend to be admired by others, and […]
Joel Sachs: UCRBeneficial bacteria improve our health and are crucial to crops plants and fodder animals. However, symbiosis is evolutionarily unstable: harmful mutants can invade symbiont populations and cause cooperation to collapse. My research encompasses both theoretical and empirical work on the evolution and maintenance of bacterial symbioses with eukaryotes. My theoretical work seeks to […]
Alison Gopnik: UCBOne of the most striking generalizations in evolutionary psychology is the correlation between sophisticated and flexible learning-based knowledge in adult organisms and a long protected period of immaturity in the young. In terms of the classic altricial vs. precocial, or r vs. k distinction in evolutionary biology, the altricial species are more likely […]
Roberto Schonmann: UCLA Department of Mathematics, Sao Paulo University Department of Applied MathThe evolution of cooperation and altruism are fundamental scientific challenges highlighted by their role in the major transitions in life's history, when natural selection acted simultaneously on several competing levels. The relevance of basic concepts, including group selection and Hamilton's rule remain nevertheless […]
Keise Izuma: Cal TechHuman behaviors are influenced by the concern for social reputation (e.g., how other people think of us). It is well known in behavioral sciences that individuals tend to behave in a more egoistic manner under guaranteed anonymity, whereas less anonymous situations (e.g., the presence of others) increase pro-social behaviors. These observations are […]
Heather Watts: LMUPatterns of survival and reproduction are known to be influenced by prevailing environmental conditions. In this talk, I will draw from my research on gregarious mammals and birds to examine how the social environment can affect these two components of fitness. First, I will discuss how social status, group size and maternal support […]
Nga Nguyen: CSU FullertonMaternal care is the most significant measure of successful adaptation among female mammals. Understanding the predictors of individual differences in offspring care is a major objective of mammalian reproductive biology. In this talk, I will evaluate the impact of maternal and infant characteristics, maternal hormones, and friendships with males on the mother-infant […]
Anne Kandler: Santa Fe Institute‘Language shift’ is the process whereby members of a community in which more than one language is spoken abandon their original vernacular language in favour of another. We model the dynamic of language shift as a Lotka-Volterra type competition process in which the numbers of speakers of each language and of […]
Rebecca Sear: London School of EconomicsThe question of why people have the number of children that they do has still not been fully answered, despite decades of research on this topic. Recently, the hypothesis that humans are cooperative breeders has emerged in evolutionary anthropology, which suggests that the support women receive in raising children from […]
