Mary K. Shenk: University of Missouri Department of AnthropologyEvolutionary anthropologists have given significant attention to the global phenomenon of the demographic transition, especially the remarkable decreases in fertility that characterize it. The literature is crowded with competing theories and sub-theories, and scholars often call for more comprehensive, better-controlled studies that would allow us to distinguish […]

Federico Rossano: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary AnthropologyIn this talk I address two crucial aspects of gestural communication in non-human primates: how gestures are acquired/developed and how similar is their use when compared to human behavior (in particular with respect to issues such as communicative intentions and recipient design). There is general agreement among researchers […]

Charles Perreault: UCLA Department of AnthropologyHumans adaptive radiation has been explained by our capacity to socially learn information (culture). Culture is an inheritance system that parallels and interacts with the genetic one. Cultural variation and innovations accumulate in a population throughout time, allowing for complex cultural adaptations to evolve. Since, it is assumed, cultural evolution […]

Ralph Adolphs: Cal TechLike most other social neuroscience groups, my lab has been using pictures of faces as stimuli for a long time-- we investigate how people look at them, what social judgments they make about them, and how their brains respond to them. But how ecologically valid is this? Recently, we have begun exploring […]

Dora Costa, Matthew Kahn: UCLAIn Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War we used the life histories of more than forty thousand Civil War soldiers to discover when people are willing to sacrifice for the common good, what are the benefits of friendship, and what are the costs and benefits of being in a […]

Alyssa Crittenden: UNLVHuman prosociality is one of the defining characteristics of our species, yet the developmental origins of altruistic behavior remain little understood. The evolution of widespread food sharing in humans helped shape cooperation, family formation, life history, language, and the development of economies of scale. While the behavioral and ecological correlates of food sharing […]

Andrew Shtulman: OccidentalEvolution by natural selection is a theory that has unified the biological sciences but divided the general public. In this talk, I shall discuss how early-emerging, essentialist constraints on the conceptualization of biological kinds impedes learning about population-level phenomena like evolution and natural selection. Data from cognitive studies (Shtulman, 2006), developmental studies (Shtulman […]

Derek Penn: UCLAHuman animals– and no other– build fires and wheels, diagnose each other’s illnesses, communicate using symbols, risk their lives for ideals, collaborate with others, explain the world in terms of unobservable causes, punish strangers for breaking the rules, worship ghosts and teach each other how to do all of the above. Why are […]

Robin Nelson: UCRIn this talk, I will explore the extent to which variability in the quality of familial and social relationships is correlated to the phenotypic expression of biological indicators of health status for adults and children. This research applies theories popularized in evolutionary ecology to a study of sociality and health in Manchester Parish, […]

William Harbaugh: U of OregonOne potential explanation for some of the differences in incomes between men and women is a difference in preferences for economic competition. In experiments with real effort and cash payoffs men are more likely to select into winner-take-all tournaments, while women tend to choose individual piece-rate pay or equal payments based […]