Evolution, Mind & Behavior Program HomePage

 

Evolution, Mind, and Behavior Conference at UCSB

Fall Quarter 2004

 

Joint UCLA-UCSB Conferences held quarterly by

UCSB’s Evolution, Mind, and Behavior Program (EMB)  and

UCLA’s Human Nature and Society Program (HNAS)

 

Saturday 6 November 2004

Location: State Street Room, University Center (UCEN), UCSB

(see directions below)

Schedule:

10:00  AM  Breakfast buffet opens

10:30  AM  First talk: Robert Warner, Sex change, 'social selection', and what's new in an adaptive view of sexual expression.

12:00  PM  Lunch (UCEN, no host)

  1:30  PM  Second talk:  James Roney, Homology as evidence for adaptation with an example from mating psychology.

  3:00  PM  Coffee break

  3:30  PM  Third talk:  Daniel T. Fessler, Grossness in all its glory: Some evolutionary musings on disgust.

  5:30  PM Adjourn for no-host dinner, Ming Dynasty (see below)

 

 

10:30  

Robert Warner    UCSB Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology  email

Sex change, 'social selection', and what's new in an adaptive view of sexual expression.

 

Abstract. TBA

12:00-1:30 

Lunch, UCEN

 

1:30

James Roney   UCSB Department of Psychology email

Homology as evidence for adaptation with an example from mating psychology.

 

Abstract. TBA

 

3:00-3:30  

Blood sugar break

 

 

3:30 

Daniel T. Fessler    UCLA Anthropology  email

Grossness in all its glory: Some evolutionary musings on disgust.

 

Abstract. Conceptualizing emotions as discrete adaptations (or the products thereof) can shed substantial light on subjective experience, decision making, and the relationship between these processes and culture. Disgust provides a ready target for such an enterprise, as it is both relatively understudied and of importance in a number of highly fitness-relevant domains of behavior. Conventional accounts of disgust either a) constrain evolutionary explanations of this emotion to simple matters of ingestion, or b) postulate questionable anxiety-reducing functions revolving around issues of existential terror. Arguing for a more thoroughly adaptationist portrait of this emotion, I will present results from a number of studies that, I suggest, illuminate the nuanced functioning of a complex evolved mechanism. Disgust is nonrandomly distributed across the body, has a sex-specific effect on risk-taking, varies in a domain-specific fashion across the menstrual cycle, mediates inbreeding avoidance responses, exhibits patterned changes with age, and is elevated during early pregnancy. In turn, these and other findings hint at the origins of a number of prominent cultural patterns, including incest taboos, food taboos, and a sex-based division of labor in foraging societies. 

 

5:30 

Self-funded dinner at Ming Dynasty

(Ming Dynasty 805-968-1308, 290 Storke Road, at the intersection of Storke and Hollister in Goleta. In the unlikely event you are coming from 101, take Storke exit North of UCSB).

 

Cosponsored by the UCSB Center for Evolutionary Psychology and the UCLA Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture. This event is organized as a working seminar for faculty and graduate students. For their generous support of this conference, we thank the UCSB Division of Math, Life, and Physical Sciences, the Division of Social Sciences, and the College of Letters and Sciences. For more information, please contact Leda Cosmides or John Tooby or call 805-893-8720.

 

UCLA and UCSB will hold a  conference once a quarter, alternating between the two campuses.

 

Map of the UCSB campus (University Center is at coordinate F3)

There may be car pools coming from UCLA; ask Alan Fiske and Clark Barrett.

 

Directions

Take 101 North toward Santa Barbara. There is a double exit (Patterson; then 217 UCSB / Airport). Take the 217 UCSB exit. Follow the signs to campus (when road forks, take the left fork)

When you come into UCSB from 217, there is a UCSB gate & kiosk. Stop there to get a campus map. Turn left onto Lagoon Road (ocean on your left), then RIGHT onto Ucen road, and park in one of the lots.

 

Parking

UCSB will honor parking stickers issued by UCLA, as long as these are prominently displayed on the lower left side of your windshield. If you do not have a UCLA sticker, please note that parking has changed at UCSB.  You cannot park in places marked "Enforced 24 hours".  Other spaces are numbered and you need to get a ticket, which can be bought from a machine in the parking lot. The closest lot is #3 (but this has a number of illegal spaces, so be careful). Other close lots are #7, 9, and 4.  See map for lot location.