#186 Felix Warneken: Cooperation And Altruism In Apes And Children
Dr. Felix Warneken is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. He’s interested in Developmental Psychology; Culture; Cognition; and Comparative Animal Behavior. His research group addresses questions like how and why human social life involves complex interactions between individuals working together, and what cognitive skills allow them to do so. They do so by examining the earliest forms of cooperation in young children, untangling the processes shaping cooperation across development in different sociocultural contexts, and comparing human cooperation with that of our closest evolutionary relatives, the great Apes.
In this episode, we talk about cooperation in the great Apes and human infants. First, we discuss the proper ways of talking about seemingly disparate behaviors, like cooperation, helping, and altruism. Then, we refer to how crucial it is for us to know how social cognition works in different species. We also address the problem of establishing a biological basis for behavior, and how to deal with sociocultural and behaviorist explanations, without disregarding environmental influences. We then talk about kin selection, reciprocal altruism, in-group favoritism, deception, and other mechanisms that operate in both humans and other close primates. Toward the end, we talk about what distinguishes humans from other primates at the level of social cognition.
Time Links:
Cooperative, helping and altruistic behavior in Biology and Psychology
Proximate and ultimate explanations for animal behavior
The importance of knowing how social cognition works in different species
Is cooperative behavior innate in humans?
How to deal with sociocultural and behaviorist explanations
Cooperation in children is found across cultures
Environmental influences (ecology, society, culture)
Studying infants before they can use language
In-group favoritism
Kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and groupish behavior in great Apes
Deception and self-deception
What distinguishes humans from other primates?
Follow Dr. Warneken’s work!
Follow Dr. Warneken’s work:
Faculty page: https://bit.ly/2GaISTp
Social Minds Lab: https://bit.ly/2KquJXn
Articles on Researchgate: https://bit.ly/2Tlud0e
Experiments with altruism in children and chimps (YouTube): https://bit.ly/1AYay7s
Twitter handle: @felixwarneken