Latest Past Events

Henrike Moll – Social Motivation and Cognition in Toddlers: Their Demands of Reciprocity and Affective Anticipations of Others’ Misguided Actions

Henrike Moll: USCHumans are an extraordinarily social species. Their unique way of relating to one another becomes evident very early in ontogeny. In this talk, I will present two lines of experiments, both of which exemplify toddlers’ attunement to other persons and their awareness of others’ perceptual and epistemic states. In one line of experiments, […]

Gregory Clark – Nature versus Nurture in the Inheritance of Social Status

Gregory Clark: UC DavisMost work studying the inheritance of aspects of social status across societies suggests two things. The first is that this inheritance is weak. Most social status for people is not determined by inheritance from parents. The second is that the strength of inheritance of status varies markedly across societies, so that status […]

Thom Scott-Phillips – The Evolution of Human Communication and Language

Thom Scott-Phillips: Durham UniversityLanguage is arguably humanity's most distinctive characteristic. What, exactly, is language, and why are we the only species that has it? In this talk, based upon my recent book*, I will argue that the differences between human communication and the communication systems of all other species is probably not a difference of […]