Daniel M.T. Fessler: UCLA Department of AnthropologyCross-cultural comparisons can a) illuminate the manner in which cultures differentially highlight, ignore, and group various facets of emotional experience, and b) shed light on our evolved species-typical emotional architecture. In many societies, concern with shame is one of the principal factors regulating social behavior. Three studies conducted in […]

Raymond Gibbs: UC Santa Cruz Department of PsychologyMetaphor is traditionally viewed as a special use of language. But recent research from cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics suggests that metaphor is ubiquitous in language and a fundamental part of human conceptual systems. I will argue in this talk that metaphor is also deeply rooted in recurring aspects […]

Sang-Hee Lee: UC Riverside Department of AnthropologyIncreased longevity, expressed as number of individuals surviving to older adulthood, represents one of the ways the human life history pattern differs from other primates. We assessed changes in longevity with the ratio of older to younger adults (OY ratio) in four hominin dental samples from successive time periods, […]

Brian Lickel: University of Southern California Department of PsychologyIn this talk, I’ll present data examining how people think about and react to the wrong-doing of ingroup members. In particular, I’ll describe affective reactions of self-blame (shame, guilt, ingroup directed anger) that people sometimes experience when a member of their ingroup harms an outgroup. I argue […]

Jennie Pyers: UC Berkeley Department of PsychologyFalse-belief understanding is the non-egocentric ability to recognize that one's own thoughts and beliefs can be different from others', and different from real-world events (i.e., mistaken). Research on early child development suggests that false-belief understanding is contingent upon language development. Recent findings from an emergent sign language in Nicaragua […]

Piotr Winkielman: UC San Diego Department of PsychologyMy talk explores the relation between emotion and conscious experience. Conscious feelings are typically viewed as a central and necessary ingredient of emotion. In contrast, I will argue that emotion also can be genuinely unconscious (i.e., occur without the accompanying subjective experience). Theoretically, my argument is anchored in […]

Douglas Wallace: UC Irvine Department of Ecology and Evolutionary BiologyThe investigation of human origins and migrations has been greatly advanced by the analysis of human genetic variation to determine the relationships between different human populations. Such studies have permitted demonstration of the recent African origin of humans, the reconstruction of ancient migrations, and the correlation […]

Morten Christiansen: Cornell University Department of Psychology Language is undoubtedly governed by innate constraints. Otherwise, it is difficult to account for the close match between the intricate structure of languages and the mechanisms involved in acquiring and processing them. Innate constraints are also needed to explain the existence of language universals; that is, why languages […]

Joseph Manson: UCLA Department of AnthropologyInbreeding reduces fitness in various taxa, and several behavioral and physiological mechanisms have evolved that inhibit fertile matings between close kin. Most commonly, members of one or both sexes disperse before breeding. In primates, males usually disperse and females often benefit from lifelong relationships with maternal kin within the group. […]

Antoine Bechara: USC Department of PsychologyFor a long time, the prefrontal cortex has been considered a “non-functional” brain area, and understanding its function has lagged behind nearly all other areas. This is no longer true since appreciation of the vital role that this brain region plays in adaptive behaviors, and especially decision-making, is now evident […]