All Episodes

#257 Tania Reynolds: Intrasexual Competition, Moral Typecasting, And Victim Sanctification

Nov 18, 2019

Dr. Tania Reynolds is a Social Psychology postdoctoral researcher at the Kinsey Institute. She received her PhD in Social Psychology from Florida State University under Dr. Roy Baumeister and Dr. Jon Maner. Her research examines how pressure to compete for social and romantic partners asymmetrically affects the competitive behaviors and well-being of men and women. Through a joint appointment with the Gender Studies department, Dr. Reynolds offers courses on human sexuality and sex/gender differences. As a collaborative research team with Justin Garcia and Amanda Gesselman, she hopes to examine the dispositional predictors and physiological correlates of individuals’ romantic relationship experiences, as well as how these associations may differ across gender and sexual orientation. More»
#256 Catherine Salmon: Evolutionary Psychology And Pop Culture

Nov 15, 2019

Dr. Catherine Salmon is a Full Professor in the psychology department at the University of Redlands. She is the co-author (with Donald Symons) of Warrior Lovers: Erotic fiction, evolution and female sexuality. She has written chapters in numerous books including Buss' Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and The Literary Animal. She is also a co-editor of the books Evolutionary Psychology: Public Policy and Personal Decisions (with Charles Crawford) Family Psychology: An Evolutionary Perspective and the Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Family Psychology (both with Todd Shackelford), and co-author with Katrin Schuman of The Secret Power of Middle Children. Her primary research interests include birth order and the family, reproductive suppression and dieting behavior, and female sexuality, particularly with regard to prostitution and pornography. Her interest in pop culture also led to co-authoring a chapter on female wrestling fans and their fantasies in Steel Chair to the Head: The Pleasure and Pain of Professional Wrestling. More»
#255 Mark Sheskin: Moral Developmental Psychology

Nov 14, 2019

Dr. Mark Sheskin is Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at Minerva Schools at KGI, and a Research Affiliate at Yale University, where he is coordinating thechidlab.com. His research interests are at the intersection of philosophy and psychology, with a particular focus on the origins of prosocial behavior and moral judgment. More»
#254 Michael Gurven: Division of Labor, Polygyny, and Personality Across Societies

Nov 11, 2019

Dr. Michael Gurven is a Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, chair of the Integrative Anthropological Sciences Unit, and also head of the Evolutionary Anthropology and Biodemography Research Group. He is an evolutionary anthropologist aiming to explain behavior and physiological systems as adaptive solutions to competing demands of limited resource allocation. He employs ethnographic field settings as laboratories for testing hypotheses about human variation in behavior, psychology and physiology. Currently his research focuses on two broad, inter-related areas: biodemography of human health, lifespan and aging; and transitions in social and economic behavior. More»
#253 Douglas Fry: Is War Part Of Human Nature?

Nov 8, 2019

Dr. Douglas P. Fry is Professor and Chair in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has written extensively on aggression, conflict, and conflict resolution in his own books and in journals such as Science and American Anthropologist. His work frequently engages the debate surrounding the origins of war, arguing against claims that war or lethal aggression is rooted in human evolution. He’s the author or editor of books like The Human Potential for Peace; Beyond War; War, Peace, and Human Nature; and Nurturing Our Humanity. More»
#252 Patricia Churchland: Conscience, Morality, and Moral Philosophy

Nov 7, 2019

Dr. Patricia Churchland is a Canadian-American Philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She is UC President's Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She has also held an adjunct professorship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies since 1989. She is a member of the Board of Trustees Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of Philosophy Department, at Moscow State University. In 2015, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She’s also the author of a number of books, including Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain, Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality, and Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition. More»
#251 Diana Fleischman: Sex Robots, Technology, And The Future Of Human Relationships

Nov 4, 2019

Dr. Diana Fleischman completed a PhD in Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Texas, Austin, US, under the supervision of David Buss. She is currently a senior lecturer of Psychology at the University of Portsmouth, as well as a member of the Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology group there. Her research interests are hormonal influences on behavior, human sexuality, disgust and, recently, the interface of evolutionary psychology and behaviorism. More»
#250 Rachel Kleinfeld: A Savage Order; Decivilization, Dirty Deals, And Recivilization

Nov 1, 2019

Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She’s a leading expert on how democracies – including the United States – can improve, with a particular focus on countries facing poor leadership, polarized populations, violence, and corruption. She advises governments, philanthropists, and activists on how democracies make major social change. In 2010, Time magazine named Dr. Kleinfeld one of the top 40 political leaders under 40 in America. She serves on the boards of various for-profit companies and social sector organizations that align with her passion for issues on the intersections of security, human dignity, and empowerment. From 2011–2014 she served on the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board, which advised the Secretary of State quarterly. She’s the author of three books, the most recent one being A Savage Order: How the World's Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security. More»
#249 Moshe Hoffman: Problems With Theories In Psychology

Oct 31, 2019

Dr. Moshe Hoffman is a Research Scientist at MIT Media Lab & Lecturer at Harvard's Department of Economics. He applies game theory, models of learning and evolution, and experimental methods, to try to decipher the (often subconscious and subtle) incentives that shape our social behavior, preferences, and ideologies. Dr. Hoffman obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business and his B.S. in Economics from the University of Chicago. He also co-designed and teaches "Game Theory and Social Behavior" which lays out a lot of the evidence and models behind this approach. More»
#248 Todd Shackelford & Viviana Weekes-Shackelford: Mating After Children

Oct 28, 2019

Dr. Todd Shackelford is a Distinguished Professor and Chair of Psychology at Oakland University, as well as the Co-Director of the Evolutionary Psychology Lab there. He is the editor in chief of the academic journals Evolutionary Psychology and Evolutionary Psychological Science. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. More»