Science & the Big Questions

Big Gods Came After the Rise of Civilizations, Not Before, Finds Study Using Huge Historical Database

God only started watching over us quite recently, according to a new study that analyzed 414 societies from 30 world regions.

The Conversation

Topics: Cooperation Cultural Evolution Morality

Cultural Intelligence: A Conversation with Michele Gelfand

In this ever-increasing global world, we need to understand culture.

Edge.org

Topics: Cultural Evolution Revenge Values

How Belief in Punitive Gods May Have Helped Large Societies Cooperate

Belief in punitive gods may have helped humans cooperate across larger societies by uniting distant populations into a cohesive group.

New Scientist

Topics: Belief Cooperation Cultural Evolution Evolution of Religion Faith Morality Religious Groups

Sexual Selection in Action: Birds That Attract Multiple Mates Change Their Songs More Quickly

Biologists investigated whether birds that search for multiple mates would evolve ever more elaborate songs to attract them. What they found might have surprised Darwin.

The Conversation

Topics: Animal Studies Cultural Evolution

How Evolutionary Theory Guides Policy

A review of David Sloan Wilson’s new book, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution.

Nature

Topics: Cultural Evolution David Sloan Wilson Evolutionary Mechanisms Evolutionary Theory

Cave That Housed Neanderthals and Denisovans Challenges View of Cultural Evolution

Researchers have deduced which early human species occupied Denisova Cave and when, drawing surprising conclusions about who made the sophisticated artifacts found there.

Scientific American

Topics: Cultural Evolution Human Evolution Neanderthals Symbolic Behavior

Tight and Loose Cultures: A Conversation with Michele Gelfand

Life can look quite different when a culture’s enforcement of norms is tight or loose.

Behavioral Scientist

Topics: Cultural Evolution Power

Gods Are Everywhere Because It’s Hard to Bargain With Them

The cognitive similarities between institutional life and religion.

Science on Religion

Topics: Cognition Cultural Evolution Evolution of Religion Imagination Religiosity Ritual Scientific Study of Religion

The Universe, Meaning, Culture, Gratitude, and Human Nature

The Psychology Podcast recap for November 2018.

Beautiful Minds, Scientific American

Topics: Cultural Evolution Gratitude Meaning Scott Barry Kaufman Universe

Indonesian Caves Hold Oldest Figurative Painting Ever Found, Scientists Say

Archaeologists found thousands of drawings and stencils in a warren of limestone caves in remote mountains on the island of Borneo. But no one knew how old they were until now.

NPR

Topics: Cultural Evolution

The Secret Life of Social Norms

Michele Gelfand uses field, experimental, computational, and neuroscience methods to understand the evolution of culture and its multilevel consequences for human groups.

TEDxPaloAltoSalon

Topics: Cultural Evolution

Why Are Some Religions More Popular Than Others?

Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism are followed by roughly 75 percent of the global population. What made these religions, with billions of believers, so successful while others fizzled?

The Crux, Discover

Topics: Belief Cooperation Cultural Evolution Evolution of Religion Morality

What Made Us Unique

How we became a different kind of animal.

Scientific American

Topics: Animal Studies Cognition Cognitive Development Cultural Evolution Human Uniqueness Kevin Laland Social Behavior Social Learning

Creating God

An in-depth look at a provocative idea about the origin and purpose of the world’s religions.

Hidden Brain, NPR

Topics: Azim Shariff Belief Cooperation Cultural Evolution Evolution of Religion Faith Religiosity Ritual Trust

Why Social Science Needs Evolutionary Theory

The lack of willingness to view human cognition and behavior as within the purview of evolutionary processes has prevented evolution from being fully integrated into the social science curriculum.

Nautilus

Topics: Cognition Cristine Legare Cultural Evolution Evolutionary Theory Social Behavior Social Learning

Neuroscience and the Roots of Human Connections

Humans work together on enormous scales to build complex tools as large as cities and create social networks that span the globe. What is the key to our success?

World Science Festival

Topics: Animal Studies Cultural Evolution Social Behavior Social Cognition Social Learning

Signs of Symbolic Behavior Emerged at the Dawn of Our Species in Africa

Although other sites have yielded Middle Stone Age tools, the new, securely dated chronology nudges the transition back by at least 20,000 years, matching when our species, Homo sapiens, is now thought to have emerged.

Science

Topics: Cultural Evolution Rick Potts Social Networks Symbolic Behavior

Simple Moral Code Supports Cooperation

The evolution of cooperation is a frequently debated topic. A study assessing scenarios in which people judge each other shows that a simple moral rule suffices to drive the evolution of cooperation.

Nature

Topics: Cooperation Cultural Evolution Morality Reputation

How People Talk Now Holds Clues About Human Migration Centuries Ago

New research suggests that hints left in Creole languages can identify where the original speakers came from — even hundreds of years after they migrated and mixed together.

The Conversation

Topics: Cultural Evolution Language

Did Human Sacrifice Help People Form Complex Societies?

The debate over how well ritual killings maintained social order.

The Atlantic

Topics: Cultural Evolution Evolution of Religion Power Ritual Scientific Study of Religion Social Inequality Violence

Culture and the Mind: A New Theory of Human Intelligence

What role might culture play in intelligence? And how does human culture differ from culture found in other animals?

Science Weekly, The Guardian

Topics: Animal Studies Cultural Evolution Human Uniqueness Intelligence Kevin Laland Language Social Learning