Colin Holbrook: UCLAHumans are inclined to cherish their communities and derogate groups regarded as alien, particularly during times of threat. The capacity for threatening circumstances to exacerbate group prejudice holds both social relevance and theoretical interest, and has been widely discussed within psychology and evolutionary anthropology. Perhaps the most intensively studied experimental measure of group […]

Sergey Gavrilets: University of TennesseeHumans exhibit strong egalitarian syndrome, i.e. the complex of cognitive perspectives, ethical principles, social norms, and individual and collective attitudes promoting equality. The universality of egalitarianism in hunter-gatherers suggests that it is an ancient, evolved human pattern. The evolutionary emergence of this syndrome is one of the most intriguing unsolved puzzles […]

Robert Frank: CornellNote: this talk will begin at 3:30pm. Economists since Adam Smith have insisted that competition produces the greatest good for the greatest number. But as Charles Darwin emphasized, individual and group interests do not always coincide. And when they clash, individual interests tend to trump, often resulting in wasteful arms races. The Darwinian […]

Clark Barrett: UCLAThe capacity of organisms to deal with evolutionary novelty has been regarded by some as a puzzle. If adaptations have been shaped by natural selection operating in the past, then how can they possibly respond adaptively to objects, events, and situations that clearly did not exist until recently? This has been regarded as […]

Adrian Jaeggi: UCSBFood sharing is a vibrant field of study that has provided important insights into the evolution of cooperation, life history, and social learning. Common functional explanations for sharing include nutritional and informational benefits to offspring, tolerated scrounging, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and costly signaling. I review the most important findings regarding food sharing […]