Tim Waring: UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and PolicyNumerous scholars have shown that increasing ethnic diversity is correlated with reduced cooperation and fewer public goods. This result has significant implications for development policy, lowering expectations for success in public infrastructure investment with ethnically diverse populations. I present evidence that ethnic hierarchy may be driving […]

Nameera Akhtar: UCSC Department of PsychologyParents and researchers in Western middle-class societies emphasize dyadic interactions and teaching children new skills directly. This emphasis obscures the fact that young children can learn much through observation of others’ interactions. I will describe the results of several recent studies of young children’s learning from third-party interactions. Some of […]

Eric Vilain: Professor of Human Genetics, Pediatrics and Urology Director, Center for Gender-Based Biology, Chief, Medical Genetics - Department of Pediatrics, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLAHuman sexual orientation, one’s preference for male or female sexual partners, is a largely stable behavioral trait with a significant genetic component. It is a highly sexually dimorphic […]

Karen Bales: UC Davis Department of PsychologyIn socially monogamous mammals like humans, many individuals such as mothers, fathers, and alloparents often display parenting behaviors. While the hormonal and neural basis of maternal care has been well-studied, both fathering and alloparenting remain more mysterious. Studies from prairie voles and titi monkeys, both monogamous mammals, implicate oxytocin, […]

Peter Kim: USC Department of Management and Organization, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern CaliforniaThroughout history, people have faced the question of how best to respond to a wide range of alleged and/or actual transgressions. A fundamental uncertainty, in this regard, is whether our reactions to such transgressions would differ depending on whether we […]

Russell Gray: University of Auckland Department of PsychologyCurrent debates about “Darwinizing culture” have typically focused on the validity of memetics. In this talk I will argue that meme-like inheritance is not a necessary requirement for descent with modification and suggest that an alternative, and more productive, way of Darwinizing culture can be found in the […]

Peter Fashing: CSU Fullerton Department of AnthropologyGiven that animal societies represent a collection of genetically selfish individuals that have come together to live and reproduce as part of a group, conflicts over the allocation of resources essential to survival and reproduction must routinely occur. For groups to remain stable over evolutionary time, these conflicts must […]

P. Jeffrey Brantingham: UCLA Department of AnthropologyIt is well known that victims of both violent and property crime experience an increased risk of being victimized again, especially during a brief interval of time following the initial event. Ethnographic evidence suggests, in the case of property crime, that offenders seek out previous targets to replicate previous […]

Peter Gray: University of Nevada-Las Vegas Department of AnthropologyHow does fatherhood impact men's sexuality? In this presentation, we review some of the core facets of paternal sexuality. Cross-cultural patterns of fertility beliefs suggest that a physiological basis of paternity is usually recognized, but without a link to mid-cycle ovulation. Male anatomy and semen components are […]

Tom Griffiths: UC Berkeley Department of Psychology and Group Major in Cognitive ScienceLearning a language, a concept, or a social norm all require making an inductive inference, going beyond the data provided by the behavior of other people. Such inferences are underdetermined by the available data, allowing people's biases to influence the conclusion that they […]