Behavioral Bio & Cultural Evolution

Characterization of Pan social systems reveals in-group/out-group distinction and out-group tolerance in bonobos

September 7, 2022

Abstract: "Human between-group interactions are highly variable, ranging from violent to tolerant and affiliative. Tolerance between groups is linked to our unique capacity for large-scale cooperation and cumulative culture, but its evolutionary origins are understudied. In chimpanzees, one of our closest living relatives, predominantly hostile between-group interactions impede cooperation and information flow across groups. In contrast, in our other closest living relative, the bonobo, tolerant between-group associations are observed. However, as these associations can...

How humans evolved to get along (to extent that we do)

July 20, 2022

Chimps3 From the Harvard Gazette:

"Humans display a capacity for tolerance and cooperation among social groups that is rare in the animal kingdom, our long history of war and political strife notwithstanding. But how did we get that way...

Dr. Max Winkler

Postdoctoral Fellow

Personal Website

mwinkler@fas.harvard.edu

Dr. Joe Dexter

Postdoctoral Fellow

jdexter@fas.harvard.edu

Dr. Helen Elizabeth Davis

Postdoctoral Fellow, Culture, Cognition and Coevolution Lab

Personal Website

Office Location:
Museum of Comparative Zoology 533B
26 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Mailing Address:
Department of Human Evolutionary Biology
11 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138

helendavis@fas.harvard.edu

2018 Sep 28

HEB Colloquium: "Universal Norm Psychology Underlies Cross Cultural Variation in Prosocial Behavior"

12:00pm to 1:00pm

Location:

Haller Hall, Geological Museum Room 102, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA

Professor Joan Silk

Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University

Professor, Institute of Human Origins, Arizona State University

2018 Sep 27

HEB Colloquium: "Third Party Monitoring and the Evolution of Reciprocity"

4:00pm to 5:00pm

Location:

Haller Hall, Geological Museum Room 102, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA

Professor Robert Boyd

Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University

Cooperation based on reciprocity is undermined by perception errors, mistakes that cause interacting individuals to disagree about past behavior. Strategies like Win-Stay-Lose-Shift (WSLS) and Generous Tit for Tat (GTFT) can reestablish cooperation following a perception error but only when errors arise infrequently. Here I introduce a strategy that relies on third-party arbitration to resolve disagreements, and show that...

Dr. Martin Surbeck

Assistant Professor

My research focusses mainly on questions related to aspects of competition and cooperation within and between groups. I make use of our closest living...

Dr. Erin Hecht

Assistant Professor

My lab’s research asks how brains change in response to selection pressure on behavior, and how brains acquire heritable adaptations for complex, learned...

CANCELLED: This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution and Evolving the Future

11:30am

Location:

Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

CANCELLED: Julia Booms Memorial Lecture

David Sloan Wilson, Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences and Anthropology, Binghampton University.... Read more about CANCELLED: This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution and Evolving the Future

Nutritional Ecology Lab

Our lab supports nutritional analyses of foods eaten by humans (Hadza, Ju-Hoansi), great apes (chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas), and monkeys (...

Culture, Cognition and Coevolution Lab

Research conducted at the Culture, Cognition and Coevolution Laboratory aims to construct a vertically integrated approach to culture and cultural evolution that synthesizes theory and methods from across the sciences, particularly from...

Cognitive Evolution Group

A chimpanzee at Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Sanctuary in the Republic of Congo heads into the forest.
A...

Dr. Rachel Carmody

Assistant Professor

I seek to understand how the human body acquires and utilizes energy, and how past changes in energy budget have shaped...

Dr. Joseph Henrich

Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology
Former HEB Departmental Chair 2018-2022

Joseph Henrich's research focuses on evolutionary approaches to psychology, decision-making and culture, and includes...

Behavioral Bio & Cultural Evolution

Characterization of Pan social systems reveals in-group/out-group distinction and out-group tolerance in bonobos

How humans evolved to get along (to extent that we do)

Dr. Max Winkler

Dr. Joe Dexter

Dr. Helen Elizabeth Davis

HEB Colloquium: "Universal Norm Psychology Underlies Cross Cultural Variation in Prosocial Behavior"

Location:

HEB Colloquium: "Third Party Monitoring and the Evolution of Reciprocity"

Location:

Dr. Martin Surbeck

Dr. Erin Hecht

CANCELLED: This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution and Evolving the Future

Location:

Nutritional Ecology Lab

Culture, Cognition and Coevolution Lab

Cognitive Evolution Group

Dr. Rachel Carmody

Dr. Joseph Henrich

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