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That beard and deep voice may be to put him in his place, not attract her
There have been a lot of evolutionary psychology experiments that have tried to define both female and male attractiveness to the opposite sex, an indirect way to get at the nature of sexual selection...
View ArticleJonathan Haidt on the business advantage of being ethical
Click here to view the embedded video. This is a fascinating talk by Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist situated within one of the most prestigious business schools in the world whose research focuses on...
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Fascinating and clever study of how personal contact norms vary by relationship
Image from PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Topography of social touching depends on emotional bonds between humans” (Suvilehto et al. 2015) This is a really clever study in that...
View ArticleMaybe infants don’t really care who helps and who hinders after all…
Click here to view the embedded video. PLoS ONE “Probing the Strength of Infants’ Preference for Helpers over Hinderers: Two Replication Attempts of Hamlin and Wynn (2011)” Great example of how studies...
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Religious children are less altruistic… or maybe not…
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons A recent study published in Current Biology claims to have demonstrated that children raised in religious households are less altruistic and more vindictive than...
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Primates — but not their rodent relatives — can infer the effects of other...
Image courtesy of Frans de Waal via Wikimedia Commons Journal of Comparative Psychology “Inference in a social context: A comparative study of capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella), tree shrews (Tupaia...
View ArticleIs family-linked terrorism a cultural and genetic phenomenon?
National Public Radio “In Worst Attacks, Terrorists Often Have Fraternal Bonds” This is an interesting — albeit brief — piece on a recent “pattern” that has emerged in terror attacks: teams of...
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My first “Breeders, Propagators, & Creators” talk: next Friday at St. Francis...
Next Friday, December 11th, at 3 pm I will be delivering a talk at St. Francis College entitled “Highly-creative baby-breeding idea propagators: what human (re)productive choices mean for the future...
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It was an honor to talk to St. Francis College!
Last Friday (December 11th, 2015) I had the pleasure of speaking to students and faculty at Saint Francis College. I delivered a talk entitled “Highly-creative baby-breeding idea propagators: what...
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How the built environment influences our ability to sustain personal and...
“exercise is good in principle, but it’s almost never the case that it’s the best thing you could do right now.” -Dan Ariely There’s a really interesting experiment being conducted by behavioral...
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Is there a trade-off between reproduction and creativity?
One of the ideas that I am exploring in my work-in-progress book Breeders, Propagators, & Creators is that human beings face a fundamental trade-off between three activities: Breeding: behaviors...
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How do we know when people are actually happy?
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Science “Conservatives report, but liberals display, greater happiness” This paper was published back in March, but I just discovered it. I am somewhat fascinated by...
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Food is personal, sometimes ethical, but rarely political
Image courtesy of Nick Gray via Wikimedia Commons The Chronicle of Higher Education “The Vegetarian Lesson” This article by Chad Lavin neatly distills ideas and issues that I have been grappling with...
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What do we know about Cultural Transmission?
As I have been working on my book-in-progress (Breeders, Propagators, & Creators), I have encountered a difficult-to-answer question of road-block proportions: how do we quantify cultural...
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Dan Ariely’s “Arming the Donkeys” podcast
Today I have had to work on a really tedious, mindless task for hours on end, so I have tried to take advantage of this time by catching up on some podcasts. I am a big fan of Dan Ariely, both of his...
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I visit Pratt’s Poetics Lab focused on play
Last week I had the privilege of being a guest of Pratt’s Poetics Lab course, whose focus this semester is on play behavior. The course involves a number of different faculty and hosts a bevy of guests...
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My next Breeders, Propagators, & Creators talk: Columbia University on March...
I am excited to be speaking on March 7th, 2016 at Columbia University about the topic of my book-in-progress: Breeders, Propagators, & Creators. The talk, a part of the Columbia Population Biology...
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America Society of Primatologists condemns H. A. and Margret Rey, calls for...
Curious George and his cooperative partner The Man in the Yellow Hat are widely loved by naive children In a scathing press release disseminated today, the American Society of Primatologists (ASP)...
View ArticleA potentially interesting Evolution of Play documentary
Click here to view the embedded video. This looks like a potentially-interesting documentary that might address some issues related to the evolution of play behavior. It is interesting that balls — in...
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My article on adolescence featured in the This View of Life culture series
I am very excited to have an article that I wrote on the adaptive nature of adolescent behavior featured in a new culture series in the This View of Life (TVoL) online magazine. My piece, entitled...
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