Category Archives: Sociology

NPR provides a quick overview of the human drive to reciprocate

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Chris Jensen

National Public Radio Shots “Give And Take: How The Rule Of Reciprocation Binds Us” I appreciate the far-ranging nature of this piece, and how it applies a basic understanding of reciprocity to larger social phenomena. There is not much here … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Behavior, Cooperation, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Emotion, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution, Political Science, Psychology, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Reciprocity, Reputation, Social Norms, Sociology | Leave a comment

Chronicle of Higher Education feature explores the question of why more women do not succeed in science

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Chris Jensen

The Chronicle of Higher Education ”More Gender Diversity Will Mean Better Science” The Chronicle of Higher Education ”Why STEM Fields Still Don’t Draw More Women” The Chronicle of Higher Education ”Is Biology Just Another Pink-Collar Profession?” The Chronicle of Higher Education “Does This … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Articles, Biology (general), Ethics, Neuroscience, Public Policy, Science (General), Science as a career, Sociology | Leave a comment

New PNAS special issue explores the developmental effects of early social environment

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Chris Jensen

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Biological Embedding of Early Social Adversity: From Fruit Flies to Kindergartners Sackler Colloquium“

Posted in A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Development, Gene by Environment Interactions, Phenotypic Plasticity, Psychology, Sociology | Leave a comment

Hurricane Irene evacuation naysayers point out some fundamental human problems with understanding risk

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Chris Jensen

A downed tree in East River Park in Manhattan’s East Village after Hurricane Irene. Photo and caption text by David Shankbone. The east coast of the United States woke up this Monday morning to begin cleanup following the passing of … Continue reading →

Posted in Belief, Climate Change, Ethics, Political Science, Prediction, Sociology, Stochasticity | Leave a comment

How the right wing co-opts research into the evolution of cooperation

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Chris Jensen

One of the ways that I keep up with my field these days (inasmuch as that is even possible given the pace of innovation and activity) is by using Google Alerts. For those of you who are not familiar with … Continue reading →

Posted in Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Ethics, Human Evolution, Memetic Fitness, Political Science, Punishment, Reciprocity, Sociology, Web | 2 Comments

Mexican Culture and Collective Action

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Chris Jensen

Today there was an interesting feature on the Leonard Lopate show highlighting former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda and his new book Manana forever? Mexico and the Mexicans. The central thesis of the book is that Mexicans are a very … Continue reading →

Posted in Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Radio & Podcasts, Sociology | Leave a comment

Easy-IPD version 1.0 released!

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Chris Jensen

After a full semester of development, including a round of in-classroom testing with real live Pratt undergraduates, I am proud to announce the release of the Easy Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (Easy-IPD) interface, a free web-based teaching tool that allows students … Continue reading →

Posted in Cooperation, Easy Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, Economics, Evolution Education, Game Theory, Political Science, Reciprocity, Sociology, Teaching Tools | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Barash and Lipton on Bin Laden (and Us)

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Chris Jensen

David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton are unafraid of explaining modern social behavior from an evolutionary perspective. As famous communicators of evolutionary psychology, they see in an understanding of biology the promise of explaining humanity. In their latest column … Continue reading →

Posted in Articles, Cooperation, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Nature, Multilevel Selection, Psychological Adaptation, Psychology, Punishment, Sociology | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Evolution of Cooperation” by Robert Axelrod

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Chris Jensen

I just finished reading Robert Axelrod’s seminal book entitled The Evolution of Cooperation. Although I had read a lot about Axelrod’s work and am quite familiar with the body of literature that it inspired, I had never actually read his … Continue reading →

Posted in Altruism, Behavioral Ecology, Books, Coevolution, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Evolution, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Human Evolution, Individual-based Models, Interdisciplinarity, Multilevel Selection, Mutualism, Political Science, Public Policy, Reciprocity, Sociology, Spatially Explicit Modeling | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Robert Trivers and colleagues on Nowak, Tarnita, and Wilson’s “The evolution of eusociality”

Posted on October 13, 2010 by Chris Jensen

One of the most difficult things about being the only full-time biologist on the Pratt Institute campus is that I do not have the opportunity to discuss serious science in my field with colleagues or guest speakers. To help alleviate … Continue reading →

Posted in Adaptation, Altruism, Articles, Behavioral Ecology, Cooperation, Data Limitation, Evolution, Game Theory, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Multilevel Selection, Sociology, Superorganisms, Talks & Seminars | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments