more similar to each other than any one is to a human brain. What changed since we split off from our ape cousins is both the overall geometry of the brain in terms of the relative size of different components, as well as the connections both within and between these components....
Results for “Marc D. Hauser”
Search across the indexed text of every released document.
Names that match “Marc D. Hauser”
163 documents found
In a competitive world with limited resources, our desire system never rests. This is a good thing as it motivates us to take care of our self-interests and strive for bigger and better. But a desire system that never sleeps is a system that 1s motivated to accrue ever larger cof...
Stang] and Eichmann: two different routes into evil. Both possible and both equally lethal to humanity. This is a lean explanation of why evil evolved and how it develops within individuals and societies. It is an explanation that strips evil down to its root causes, focusing on...
…one by combining it with our systems of language, morality, and beliefs. This combination allows us to use symbols to demarcate those within our group from those outside, to tie these symbols to distinctive beliefs, values, and emotions, and to use these different psychological s...
of mathematical expression. There are also thousands of ways of being violent, and equally, ways of counteracting such violence. But none of this takes away from the importance of biology, especially its role in constraining the form that these expressions take in different envir...
Morality Games 313 development of sexual selection theory, one might have argued that perfect spheres are some kind of Platonic solid, and inherently desirable, or that curvy hips yield golden ratios. But with our current understanding of sexual selection, we recognize that our...
* Lustful violence: Gellerman, D.M, & Suddath, R. (2005). Violent fantasy, dangerousness, and the duty to warn and protect. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law, 33, 484-495; V_J. Gerberth. (1998). Anatomy ofa lust murder. Law and Order Magazine, 46 (5), pp. 1-6;...
Cho’s case 1s not the exception, but the rule: persistent fantasies, whether sexual, violent, or sexually violent, are often played out in real life. When people voice their fantasies, we should open our ears. When therapists, especially those influenced by the catharsis view of...
Across the globe, most people in these small scale societies offered some amount of the initial pot. Across the globe, most people rejected really low offers. This shows the universal signature of fairness: an expectation of sharing resources and a no-tolerance view of greed. Cul...
When this happens, our promiscuous brain has worked its combinatorial magic, causing us to feel good when we witness someone else’s misfortune. Schadenfreude, like envy, causes us to self-evaluate, looking inside of ourselves to assess our net worth relative to others. We know f...
Chimpanzees also suffer, experiencing pain from both physical attacks and social loss. But getting angry at something or someone and feeling pain from a physical or social assault are different from getting angry because someone’s behavior was morally wrong, and suffering from a...
of dopamine. Later, these same subjects imagined what it would be like to actually vacation in these places, and rated their imagined experience. Those on L-dopa felt they would be much happier, revealing the power of dopamine to cause changes in our experience of reward. Complim...
predictable. This unpredictability is partially responsible for changes in the brain. Promiscuous mating systems demand more flexibility, creativity and out of the box thinking. The anthropologist Steve Gaulin explored the idea that a species’ mating system is directly related t...
new line of mice with a special accessory: an upgraded memory and learning system. When these new and improved mice ran through an IQ test, they outperformed normal mice. Tsien pulled off an extraordinary engineering trick, creating a lineage of smarter mice. This is cowboy scie...
Chapter I: Nature’s secrets Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse. — Albert Einstein In Charles Darwin’s day, biologists unearthed the mysteries of evolution by means of observation, sometimes accompanied by a simple experiment. T...