psychology

#369 Alberto Acerbi: Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age

Sep 24, 2020

Dr. Alberto Acerbi is a Lecturer in Psychology in the Centre for Culture and Evolution at Brunel University London. He is a cognitive/evolutionary anthropologist with a particular interest in computational science. The main question that drives his research is: is it possible to find some general factors determining why some cultural traits succeed and others do not? He is interested in particular in contemporary cultural phenomena, and he uses a naturalistic, quantitative, and evolutionary approach with different methodologies, especially individual-based models and quantitative analysis of large-scale data. He published a book recently, Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age. More»
#365 Dan McAdams: The Psychology of Donald Trump

Sep 14, 2020

Dr. Dan P. McAdams is the Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology and professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University. Dr. McAdams is most well-known for formulating a life-story theory of human identity, which argues that modern adults provide their lives with a sense of unity and purpose by constructing and internalizing self-defining life stories or “personal myths.” He’s a leader in the recent emergence within the social sciences of narrative approaches to studying human lives – approaches that place stories and storytelling at the center of human personality. His theoretical and empirical writings focus on concepts of self and identity in contemporary American society and on themes of power, intimacy, redemption, and generativity across the adult life course. He’s also the author of nearly 300 scientific articles and chapters, numerous edited volumes, and seven books, including “The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning”. More»
#364 Limor Raviv: Psycholinguistics, Child Development, and Language Acquisition

Sep 11, 2020

Dr. Limor Raviv is a research associate at the University of Madison, Wisconsin. Her research focuses on the cultural evolution of languages in different social environments. Specifically, she studies how the social structure of the environment affects the grammatical structure of languages. More»
#362 Manvir Singh: Shamanism, Witchcraft, Religion, and Music

Sep 7, 2020

Dr. Manvir Singh just graduated with a PhD in human evolutionary biology from Harvard University, with a focus on cognitive and evolutionary anthropology. His research program aims to explain why societies develop complex, recurrent traditions such as shamanism, witchcraft, origin myths, property rights, sharing norms, lullabies, dance, music, and gods, as these have appeared in all types of societies across the globe, from nomadic hunter-gatherer bands to complex, industrial, mega-urbanized states. More»
#361 Joseph Henrich: The WEIRDest People in the World

Sep 4, 2020

Dr. Joseph Henrich is Professor and chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He is interested in the question of how humans evolved from "being a relatively unremarkable primate a few million years ago to the most successful species on the globe", and how culture affected our genetic development. He is also the author of The Secret of Our Success and The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. More»
#360 Bo Winegard: The Intellectual Elite, and Social Conservatism

Sep 3, 2020

Dr. Bo Winegard generally approaches psychological puzzles from an evolutionary perspective, applying Darwin's theory of natural selection to the human mind. He focuses mostly on status, group differences, individual differences, bias, methods, and political psychology. He’s also the cohost, together with Cory Clark, of the Psyphilopod podcast. More»
#359 Guy Madison: Gender Studies, and the Politics of Gender

Aug 31, 2020

Dr. Guy Madison is Professor at the Department of Psychology at University of Umeå, Sweden. Dr. Madison does research in Neuroscience, Genetics and Evolutionary Biology. More»
#358 Michael McCullough: The Kindness of Strangers

Aug 27, 2020

Dr. Michael McCullough is a professor of psychology at the University of California San Diego, where he directs the Evolution and Human Behavior Laboratory. Most of the research they conduct in the lab is focused on extending an evolutionary analysis to some of the key psychological features of human social life. He is the author of several books, including “Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct,” and, the most recent one, “The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral Code”. More»
#357 Elliott Sober: Group Selection, Altruism, and Multilevel Selection

Aug 24, 2020

Dr. Elliott Sober is Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Dr. Sober is noted for his work in philosophy of biology and general philosophy of science. He’s the author of books like Philosophy of Biology, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, and The Design Argument. More»
#354 Agner Fog: Warlike and Peaceful Societies

Aug 13, 2020

Dr. Agner Fog is associate professor of computer science at Technical University of Denmark. Dr. Fog does research in Evolutionary Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Social systems and Computer Science. His current project is 'Theory of cultural change based on evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, and cultural evolution.' He’s the author of “Warlike and Peaceful Societies: The Interaction of Genes and Culture”. More»