Research at the CEP  What do we do here?

New! Theories of animal conflict predict that humans should have an evolved specialization for assessing fighting ability. See Human adaptations for the visual assessment of strength and fighting ability from the body and face by Aaron Sell, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Daniel Sznycer, Christopher von Rueden, and Michael Gurven in Proceedings of the Royal Society London, (Biological Sciences), October 2008. Click here for more

New! Does the presence of status rivals affect risky decision-making in men? Are motivation and cognition inextricably bound together? See Relative Status Regulates Risky Decision-Making about Resources in Men: Evidence for the Co-Evolution of Motivation and Cognition by Elsa Ermer, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby, in Evolution and Human Behavior, 29, 106-118 (2008).

New! Omega-3 fatty acids are a limiting factor in building brains, and are stored in a woman's hips and thighs. New evidence shows a relationship between a woman's stores of these essential fatty acids and her cognitive ability and that of her offspring...
Waist-Hip Ratio and Cognitive Ability: Is Gluteofemoral Fat a Privileged Store of Neurodevelopmental Resources? by William Lassek & Steven J.C. Gaulin, In Evolution and Human Behavior 29, 26-34 (2008). Click here for more

Recent Papers

Category-Specific Attention for Animals Reflects Ancestral Priorities, not Expertise” by Joshua New, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby. In the October 16, 2007 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 104, 16598-16603. Click here for discussion

Spatial Adaptations for Plant Foraging: Women Excel and Calories Count by Joshua New, Max Krasnow, Danielle Truxaw, and Steven J.C. Gaulin. In Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences 274, 2679-2684 (2007). Click here for more, including Krasnow, Truxaw, New & Gaulin's response to Brumfield et al. in Science...

The Architecture of Human Kin Detection by Debra Lieberman, John Tooby, & Leda Cosmides. Nature, 445, 727-731 (Feb 15, 2007). Click here for more

Does reasoning about social exchange engage different brain areas than other kinds of reasoning?  To find out, see:
Ermer, E., Guerin, S., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., & Miller, M. (2006) Theory of mind broad and narrow: Reasoning about social exchange engages ToM areas, precautionary reasoning does not. Social Neuroscience, 1 (3-4), 196-219.

What is the evidence for an adaptive specialization designed for reasoning about social exchange, with a subroutine for detecting cheaters? For a recent review, with special attention to alternative hypotheses, see:
Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (2005). Neurocognitive adaptations designed for social exchange. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), Evolutionary Psychology Handbook. NY: Wiley.

Has the debate on innate ideas been resolved?(!) For a new view, see:
Tooby, J., Cosmides, L. & Barrett, H. C. (2005). Resolving the debate on innate ideas: Learnability constraints and the evolved interpenetration of motivational and conceptual functions. In Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. & Stich, S. (Eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Content. NY: Oxford University Press.

What about David Buller's book, Adapting Minds? click here

Buller's book criticizes the theory and the evidence of evolutionary psychology. Click here to go to our "Critical Eye"section to see responses to Buller from evolutionary psychologists and to read responses to other critiques.

Other Papers of Interest from the CEP

Does morality have a biological basis? An empirical test of the factors governing moral sentiments relating to incest. by Debra Lieberman, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences (2003).  Are our moral attitudes shaped by culture alone, or does our evolved psychology help generate them?  Due to the deleterious effects of inbreeding, many non-human animals have mechanisms that enable individuals to identify their close genetic relatives and avoid having sex with them. Results reported here support the evolutionary psychological claims that the human mind has mechanisms designed to (1) identify potential siblings in the social environment, and (2) inhibit sexual desire toward them -- an outcome that also shapes moral judgments relating to sibling incest.  Nonconscious mechanisms assess kinship based on how long two individuals coresided from infancy through adolescence. The longer individuals lived with opposite sex siblings during childhood, the greater their moral opposition to third-party incest as adults. These results undermine (1) the claim that moral sentiments are solely a reflection of ambient cultural norms and, (2) Freud’s claim that moral opposition to incest originates in incestuous desires toward parents.

Does the human mind have an evolved cognitive specialization for reasoning about social exchange, including a subroutine for detecting cheaters?  Neural and cross-cultural evidence that our minds contain evolved adaptations for reasoning about social exchange -- presented in two new PNAS companion papers (August 13, 2002):

Selective Impairment of Reasoning about Social Exchange in a Patient with Bilateral Limbic System Damage by Valerie Stone, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Neal Kroll, and Robert Knight

Cross-Cultural Evidence of Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange among the Shiwiar of Ecuadorian Amazonia by Lawrence S. Sugiyama, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides

These PNAS papers provide surprising new evidence that our neural architecture has evolved specializations for reasoning about social exchange. That cheater detection can be impaired without impairing other reasoning abilities suggests that this cognitive competence is caused by a functionally isolable brain mechanism (#3526). That this brain mechanism reliably develops even in disparate cultural contexts suggests that it is a universal feature of human nature (#3529). Because social exchange allows trade, this evolved competence provides a cognitive foundation for human economic activity and other forms of cooperation. Click here for more. The results are relevant to debates about:

Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization by Robert Kurzban , John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98 (26), 15387-15392 (#5414).  "Seeing" others as members of a race may not be inevitable, as many psychologists had thought. Instead, the tendency to notice and remember someone’s race may be a changeable byproduct of brain mechanisms that evolved for another reason: to detect shifting coalitions and alliances. By creating a social context in which race was uncorrelated with coalitional alliances, we were able to drastically decrease the extent to which subjects noticed and remembered other people’s race. Click here for more.

Punitive sentiment as an anti-free rider psychological device by Michael Price, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, Evolution and Human Behavior 23: 203-231 (2002). An analysis of the cognitive system causing high contributors in collective actions to be punitive towards low contributors. 

The Center for Evolutionary Psychology has a new, sister center in Japan, the Center for the Sociality of Mind, at Hokkaido University. We recently had a joint conference:

Evolution and the Sociality of Mind Conference
February 23-24, 2008 UCSB-Hokkaido Conference Schedule

EVOLUTION, MIND AND BEHAVIOR PROGRAM (EMB): Joint UCSB-UCLA Initiative.  Taken together, UCLA and UCSB have what might be the largest collection of scholars interested in evolution and behavior in the world.  We have formed a joint program/ intellectual community.  To this end, we have been holding a series of one day conferences each quarter, so that we could get to know each other's work.  Click here for more

Evolution, Mind and Behavior Conference: last one was held at UCSB on November 8, 2008 click here for schedule

Interview with Leda Cosmides Click here