Jim Sidanius: UCLA Dept. of PsychologyBased upon ideas borrowed from classical elitism theory, social identity theory and evolutionary psychology, social dominance theory basically assumes that human social systems are predisposed to organize themselves as group-based social hierarchies. Given this assumption, social dominance theory then attempts to identity the multi-leveled processes that are responsible for the […]

Greg Bryant: UCSC Dept. of PsychologyDuring speech communication, conversationalists produce and understand many simultaneous pieces of information through prosodic features of the voice (i.e., pitch, loudness, and duration properties). Prosodic variations provide cues to lexical and grammatical units (linguistic prosody), as well as emotional and intentional information (affective prosody). But prosody may also be used […]

Alan Dixson: Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species, Zoological Society of San DiegoThis talk focuses upon the structure and functions of the reproductive organs of mammals, as viewed from the perspective of sexual selection and sperm competition. The living collections of the Zoological Society of San Diego contain many rare and unusual species; valuable anatomical […]

Lynn Stout: UCLA School of LawLegal scholars have become keenly interested in behavioral approaches to lawthat recognize that real people do not always behave in a selfishly rational fashion: numerous recent papers examine how human choice can be distorted by endowment effects, anchoring effects, availability biases, and other cognitive deficiencies. There is a curious imbalance […]

Nancy K. Dess: Occidental CollegeGlimpses at our primate relatives and diverse human cultures provide prima facie evidence that as a species, we are capable of far more benevolent, just, and healthful living than exists in many places. Illuminating human nature through evolutionary reasoning has great potential to make public policy more effective and more humane. […]

Stephen Stich: Rutgers Dept. of PhilosophyThe talk has three parts: In Part I, I will sketch a hotly debated question in moral philosophy. Roughly stated, the issue in dispute is whether moral disagreement is fundamental or superficial; disagreement is fundamental if it would persist even under “idealized” circumstances in which the parties to the dispute […]

Christine Harris: UC San Diego Dept. of PsychologyThe specific innate modular theory of jealousy (JSIM) hypothesizes that men are innately prone to upset over a mate’s sexual infidelity and women, over a mate’s emotional infidelity. This view claims that natural selection has shaped sexual jealousy as a mechanism to prevent cuckoldry and emotional jealousy as […]

Michael Gurven: UCSB AnthropologyThis paper lays the groundwork for a theory of time allocation across the life course. It first develops a parametric model of rates of return on time allocated to productive activities as a function of age. The model is based on the idea that strength and skill vary as a function of […]

Shelly Gable: UCLA Dept. of PsychologySocial bonds are potent sources of both pleasure and pain; yet despite the precarious balance of interpersonal incentives and threats, across the life span people are tenaciously motivated to form and maintain strong and stable social bonds. Although myriad evidence supports the existence of a need for relationships, proportionately little […]

Lynn Fairbanks: UCLA Neuropsychiatric InstituteAdolescence is characterized by behavioral and physiological changes that prepare individuals for the transition to adulthood. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of behavioral, morphological, neurobiological and developmental characteristics of adolescent male vervets in predicting later dominance attainment. The results indicated that males that were high in […]