Brooke Scelza: University of California, Los AngelesResearch on human mate preferences has been conducted mainly in industrialized societies, where multiple mating and concurrent partnerships are heavily stigmatized. However, cross-culturally, extra-pair partnerships are more common, and there is significant variation in the acceptance of such relationships, particularly for women. In order to better understand how a […]

Lynette Shaw: University of MichiganThe cultures we belong to affect far more than our practices and beliefs - they also fundamentally shape how we perceive the world, each other, and ourselves. Many rich theoretical traditions in the social sciences and humanities have emphasized these “socially constructed” aspects of our experienced realities. To date, however, insights […]

Terry Deacon: University of California, BerkeleyAbstract: The concept of human nature has been challenged by social scientists because of its inability to clearly delineate the distinction between the biologically inherited and experientially acquired attributes of being human. Yet the very fact of being susceptible to acquired cultural influences irrelevant to other species makes clear that […]

Tao Gao: University of California, Los AngelesTheory of mind (ToM) refers to the attribution of an agent’s motion to its mental states, including belief, desire and intention. Modeling ToM is built upon two principles. First, the “rationality principle” (utility theory), assuming that an agent takes actions to maximize its utility. Second, the Bayes’ theorem, solving […]