#143 William von Hippel: The Social Leap, Human Sociality, Mating, Agriculture, and Happiness
Dr. William von Hippel is Professor of Psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia. He has published more than a hundred articles, chapters, and edited books in social psychology, and his research has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, The Economist, the BBC, Le Monde, El Mundo, Der Spiegel, and The Australian. He also recently published a book, “The Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are, Where We Come From, and What Makes Us Happy” (2018).
In this episode, we go through the main topics of Dr. von Hippel’s book, The Social Leap. We compare humans with other animals. We talk about the movement from the rainforest to the savannah; the evolution of bipedality and our hands; meat, cooking, and diet; hunting, cooperative breeding, and the social brain hypothesis; alloparenting, pair-bonding and monogamy. We also refer to Christopher Ryan’s book, Sex at Dawn, and the points where his thesis fails. We then go through the importance of language and culture, and gene-culture coevolution. We also talk about tribalism, the advent of agriculture, and hierarchy and economic, social and sexual inequality, and the problem with polygamic societies. Also, the mismatch between the ancestral environments we adapted to and the modern ones, and what our innate psychology tells us about what makes us happy, even in modern industrialized societies. We finish off by talking about a recently paper authored by Dr. von Hippel and Dr. David Buss, “Psychological barriers to evolutionary psychology: Ideological bias and coalitional adaptations”.
Time Links:
Humans and the Great Apes
From the rainforest to the savannah
The evolution of our bipedality, and the stone-throwing hypothesis
The importance of our hands
Meat and diet
Fire and cooking
The social brain hypothesis
Large brains, prolonged development, and cooperative breeding
Alloparenting and monogamy
Christopher Ryan, Sex at Dawn, jealousy, polygamy and monogamy
Language and learning
Culture, and gene-culture coevolution
Tribalism and coalitional psychology
Agriculture and inequality
The mismatch between ancestral and modern environments
What makes people happy
Psychological barriers to Evolutionary Psychology
Follow Dr. von Hippel’s work!
Follow Dr. von Hippel’s work:
Faculty page: https://tinyurl.com/yadugvvu
Website: https://williamvonhippel.com/
Psychology Today blog: https://tinyurl.com/yb7487az
Articles on Researchgate: https://tinyurl.com/ycrabthn
Joe Rogan Experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dtv8ibI1vk
The Social Leap: https://tinyurl.com/yct2nljn
Other relevant links:
Sex at Dawn: https://tinyurl.com/y7rca225
Sex at Dusk: https://tinyurl.com/y9u77cfh
Psychological Barriers to Evolutionary Psychology: Ideological Bias and Coalitional Adaptations: https://tinyurl.com/y89j2m9s