Clik here to view.
Barash and Lipton on Bin Laden (and Us)
David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton are unafraid of explaining modern social behavior from an evolutionary perspective. As famous communicators of evolutionary psychology, they see in an...
View ArticleWhat kind of in-group does Facebook represent?
On the Media “Life in Facebookistan” I am fascinated by the idea that we all belong to many overlapping social groups, and I wonder how these groups might be subject to multilevel selection....
View ArticleChimpanzees, our closest relatives, cannot triangulate punishment
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “No third-party punishment in chimpanzees” This is pretty astonishing, but perhaps not entirely surprising. As numerous other studies have shown, there...
View ArticleCan playing games make the world a better place?
One of the very talented students I work with in the Envirolutions club, Rhett Bradbury, pointed me towards the work of Jane McGonigal, a game designer and evangelist for the idea that games can save...
View ArticleCan neuroeconomics help economics become a real science?
The Chronicle of Higher Education “The Marketplace in Your Brain” I think that this article suggests that much of economics is not much of a science. Faced with new information, mainstream economics...
View ArticleDavid Sloan Wilson on Ayn Rand and the delusion of a world without tradeoffs
The Huffington Post “Ayn Rand and Modern Politics” What I really appreciate about this post is its very simple brand of analysis. It asks a simple question and employs a clear methodology to...
View ArticleNew PNAS special issue explores the developmental effects of early social...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Biological Embedding of Early Social Adversity: From Fruit Flies to Kindergartners Sackler Colloquium“
View ArticleOn becoming a psychopath
The Chronicle of Higher Education “Psychopathy’s Double Edge” There are so many fascinating elements to this article and what it says about human behavior. First, there is the fact that most people...
View ArticleNPR provides a quick overview of the human drive to reciprocate
National Public Radio Shots “Give And Take: How The Rule Of Reciprocation Binds Us” I appreciate the far-ranging nature of this piece, and how it applies a basic understanding of reciprocity to larger...
View ArticleThink the Milgram Experiments tell us something definitive about human...
WNYC The Leonard Lopate Show “The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments” This great feature uncovers two major sources of scientific distortion: Milgram himself selectively...
View ArticleString Theory: should we care?
On Being “Reimagining the Cosmos” I always find myself stuck on the fence when it comes to the confrontation between physics and philosophy (and by extension religion). This episode effectively...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Do humans form genetically similar social groups independent of kinship?
Proponents of kin selection as the most parsimonious explanation of how cooperation evolves face a problem when it comes to humans: counter to the predictions of kin selection theory, humans aim a fair...
View ArticleClik here to view.
When it comes to sex, we are consumately proximate
The Guardian “Why the UK sperm bank is running short” Further evidence that while we are — on the one hand — one of the weirdest species in the world, at our core we remain not unlike the rest of our...
View ArticleFormation of the Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution has the...
I was excited to recently discover that The Evolution Institute, a “think-tank that doesn’t just think” about how to apply evolutionary understanding to human problems, is working to foster a new...
View ArticleDo creative people have “messy minds”?
Scientific American Beautiful Minds blog “Creative People Are…” This is an interesting little summary for someone like myself who teaches future creative professionals. Anecdotally, the “messy mind”...
View ArticleMy testimonial for Gregory Tague’s “Evolution and Human Culture”
I have written a lot of book reviews, but I have never been asked to write a book testimonial before. So I am honored to have been asked to write a testimonial for Gregory F. Tague’s Evolution &...
View ArticleClik here to view.
I will speak about the tension between biological and cultural evolution at...
I am excited to announce that I am scheduled to speak about the tension between biological and cultural evolution at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn Heights. The title of my talk is “Highly-creative...
View ArticleMalcolm Gladwell on the social contagion of mass shootings
National Public Radio Morning Edition “How Riots May Help Us Understand School Shooters” This is a great example of how understanding our cultural evolution, and how we have evolved to live...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Does Bayesian bias aid us in making adaptive distorted self-assessments?
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Receipt of reward leads to altered estimation of effort” This is an interesting study because it suggests that we can make rational but distorted...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What’s the evolved function of curiosity?
Image courtesy of Jeffrey Pang via Wikimedia Commons Neuron “The Psychology and Neuroscience of Curiosity” (Kidd & Hayden 2015) This is a fantastic review of what is known about curiosity and what...
View Article
