#551 Louise Barrett: Baboon Societies, Ecology, Embodied Cognition, and Evolutionary Psychology
Dr. Louise Barrett is Professor of Psychology and Canada Research Chair in Cognition, Evolution & Behaviour at the University of Lethbridge. She ran a long-term project on baboons in South Africa for twelve years, and currently co-directs the Samara Vervet Monkey Project in South Africa. Her research programme centers on the issue of how ecology shapes patterns of sociality and cognitive evolution, and includes work on thermal physiology and responses to climate change, parental investment strategies, cooperation, sexual conflict, movement ecology, and infant development. She is also interested in how culture and biology intersect to influence human behavior, and runs projects on female reproductive decision-making in Independent Samoa and the Canadian North. She is the author of Beyond the Brain: How Body and Environment Shape Animal and Human Minds (Princeton University Press).
In this episode, we talk about evolutionary psychology. We start by talking about behavioral ecology, and how ecological factors influence behavior. We discuss the place of culture in the context of evolutionary psychology. We ask if the brain-as-computer metaphor is scientifically useful. We talk about modularity of mind. We discuss the place of behaviorism in contemporary psychological science. We talk about enactivism, and embodied cognition. We then get into Dr. Barrett’s studies on baboon societies, and discuss things like individual-level movement bias, and how it influences higher-order social structures in baboon societies. We discuss the concept of “social complexity”. Other topics include a valid version of genetic determinism; limitations of evolutionary psychology; parsimony as a criterion in evolutionary theory; and the incorporation of embodied cognition and the influence of the environment into evolutionary theory.
Time Links:
Intro
How ecology influences behavior
Culture in evolutionary psychology
The brain-as-computer metaphor
Modularity of mind
Behaviorism in modern psychological science
Enactivism
Baboon sociality
Social complexity
Genetic determinism
Limitations of evolutionary psychology
Parsimony
Embodied cognition within evolutionary theory
Follow Dr. Barrett’s work!
Follow Dr. Barrett’s work:
Faculty page: https://bit.ly/3e21CW9
ResearchGate profile: https://bit.ly/2QnWcfS
Amazon page: https://amzn.to/2RtvLWA