Jeffrey Davis: California State University Long Beach Department of SociologyFisher is widely known for his extraordinary contributions to population genetics and evolutionary biology. His sociological insights have received far less attention, even though five of the twelve chapters of The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection are devoted to developing a theory of the evolutionary consequences […]
Chris Guzelian: Searle Scholar, Northwestern University School of LawEvidence increasingly suggests that selection between competing ideas to become a prevailing social belief may be strongly influenced by evolutionarily descended limitations on human sensory and mental capabilities. Scholars posit that these limitations permit many "selfish" ideas to gain social traction and spread epidemically, driving out and […]
Joseph Campos: UC Berkeley Department of PsychologyThere is a fascinating paradox about fear of heights in humans and some animal species. Such fear has enormous biological adaptive value, represents a true life-span emotional reaction, and constitutes one of the strongest and most reliably-elicited fears in the human. As such, one would expect fear of heights […]
Nancy Burley: UC Irvine Department of Ecology & Evolutionary BiologySexual imprinting, a process by which early contact with parents shapes the mate preferences of developing young, has been widely documented among birds and has been reported for other vertebrates, especially mammals (including humans). Historically, studies of imprinting have emphasized causal and ontogenetic perspectives, with function […]
Michael Shermer: Skeptic MagazineThere are a number of parallels between evolution and economics that we shall explore on two tiers—historical and theoretical: the parallels between natural selection and the invisible hand; the nature of evolution and the characteristics of a free market economy; the reluctance to accept the theory of evolution and free market economics; […]
Bruce Winterhalder: UC Davis Department of AnthropologyArchaeological research shows that many human populations continued to hunt-and-gather for thousands of years after beginning the use of plant domesticates. This kind of mixed economy is rare in the ethnographic literature on foragers and horticulturalists; its persistence for millennia in the early stages of agricultural origins is inexplicable […]
Robert Hoffmann: Department of Economics, Nottingham University Business School, The University of NottinghamHuntington's notion of a clash of cultures has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. In particular, religious differences as well as religious fundamentalism have been identified as crucial dimension of present culture clashes. We conducted a study to explore to […]
Dacher Keltner: UC Berkeley Department of PsychologyIn this talk I will present recent work on the pro-social emotions. I will present studies of smiling, the relations between oxytocin and the nonverbal displays of love and desire, and recent evidence exploring the role of vagus nerve activity in compassion and pro-social dispositions. I will use these […]
Wendy Treynor: USC Institute for Creative TechnologiesIs one who believes that unethical activity is common unlikely to act ethically? To test the hypothesis that cynical beliefs predict unethical behaviors, actual unethical activity was examined by developing two laboratory techniques. In the American History Aptitude Test cheating technique, participants were told they would be rewarded with […]
Andreas Wilke: UCLA Department of AnthropologyWhen resources are distributed in patches animals must decide when to switch from a depleted patch. The optimal policy is given by the Marginal Value Theorem, which has successfully predicted animal behaviors, but as a mechanism it becomes problematic when each patch contains few discrete prey items. Biologists have proposed […]
