Mathematical Approaches to Cooperation
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Unlike other organisms, humans acquire a rich body of information from others by teaching, imitation, and other forms of social learning, and this culturally transmitted information strongly influences human behavior. Culture is an essential part of the human adaptation, and as much a part of human biology as bipedal locomotion or thick enamel on our molars. My research is focused on the evolutionary psychology of the mechanisms that give rise to and shape human culture, and how these mechanisms interact with population dynamic processes to shape human cultural variation.
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Joe Henrich
What are the psychological processes that allow children and adults to acquire culture (ideas, beliefs, values, ways of thinking, and habits of mind)? How can the logic of natural selection and data from ancient environments be combined to predict the kinds of learning mechanisms make up our cultural learning abilities? The evolution of cooperation, institutions, societal complexity: How and why did some human groups develop large-scale cooperation, complexity and specific social forms? Given what is known about cultural learning and human decision-making, how can we construct of psychologically-based theory that can account for pattern of economic behavior and change. Intregating experimental techniques from cognitive and development psychology and experimental economics with in-depth, long-term field ethnographyHudson R R, Turelli M (2003). Stochasticity overrules the "three-times rule": Genetic drift, genetic draft, and coalescence times for nuclear loci versus mitochondrial DNA. Evolution 57: 182-190. Iwasa Y, F Michor, MA Nowak (2003). Evolutionary dynamics of escape from biomedical intervention. Proc R Soc B 270: 2573-2578.
Program for Evolutionary Dynamics