THE 19TH ANNUAL EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY PRECONFERENCE @SPSP
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THE 19TH ANNUAL EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY PRECONFERENCE @SPSP
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The 19th Annual Evolutionary Psychology Preconference
Wednesday, February 10th, 2021
We invite you to join us at the 19th annual SPSP Evolutionary Psychology Preconference, to be held virtually.
ABOUT THE PRECONFERENCE
The Evolutionary Psychology preconference is a forum for discussing innovative research on the myriad psychological mechanisms that evolved to help humans navigate the social world they faced over evolutionary history (and still do today).
Presenters and attendees aim to tackle questions about the functions and structures of human social cognition and humans social behavior (e.g., cooperation, morality, romantic relationships, culture, stereotypes and prejudice).
For the past 18 years, the Evolutionary Psychology Preconference has spotlighted interdisciplinary research:
- social + personality psychology
- developmental, cognitive, + cultural psychology
- evolutionary anthropology + behavioral ecology
- primatology + comparative research
- political science, philosophy, + economics, and more!
Each year, we showcase cutting-edge research from scholars across career stages. We welcome scholars at every career stage to attend (and to submit data blitz and poster presentations)!
The preconference is a single, all-day event.
Registration will open via the SPSP website.
We look forward to seeing you!INVITED SPEAKERS
Joan Silk
Arizona State University
The reproductive tactics of male baboons: rethinking tradeoffs between mating effort and parenting effort
In virtually all human societies, men and women form stable pair bonds, male reproductive skew is low, children receive considerable care and resources from both of their parents, and nuclear families are part of a set progressively larger social units that commonly include kin, affines, and unrelated members of the same ethnic group. Understanding of the evolution of this suite of traits is problematic because the most recent common ancestor of humans and the genus Pan probably did not share any of these features. However, a growing body of data from studies of living primates suggest that there may be multiple pathways to the evolution of male paternal care and extended breeding bonds, and provide a broader foundation for thinking about the evolution of human reproductive strategies. My research group has been exploring the trade-offs between mating and parenting effort for male olive baboons, a species with relatively high male reproductive skew and a polygynadrous mating system. Our data provide evidence of behavioural trade-offs between mating effort and parenting effort in wild primates, changes in allocation of mating and parenting effort across the life course, and the existence of enduring reproductive bonds. I will describe these data and their implications for understanding the evolution of the unusual set of traits that characterize our own species.
Joyce Benenson
Harvard University
Some Cross-Species, Cross-Cultural Principles Regarding Sex Differences in Social Behavior
Knowledge of human nature can be augmented by understanding sex differences in social behavior that apply across species. Several fundamental principles differentiate the sexes during their early development and adolescence that continue into adulthood. First, from early in life and throughout adulthood, females invest more in basic survival of themselves and others, whereas males engage in overt competition to attain status for themselves. Second, from early childhood onwards, females maintain closer ties to kin, while males invest more in same-sex peer relations. Thus, females inhabit static, hierarchical worlds, whereas males live in relatively egalitarian and fluid ones. Third, while both sexes segregate their social worlds by sex, from early in life males are more homophilic than females. Within their sex-segregated peer worlds, females form intimate bonds with a fellow traveler which for humans depends on mutual, verbal emotional support. Males in turn interact in interconnected, differentiated, competitive, tolerant groups that in some cases cooperate to defeat out-groups. Fourth, females grow up faster than males in terms of reaching adolescence and reproducing earlier, so that females confront a disadvantage at the beginning of adulthood. Understanding these principles can aid in improving understanding how human females and males successfully navigate their lives.
Juliana French
Florida State University
Evolved Mechanisms for Established Relationships in the Modern Environment
Why are satisfying, long-term relationships notoriously difficult to maintain? The adaptive problems and their solutions inherent to successfully maintaining long-term relationships such as marriage (e.g., sex as a pair-bonding mechanism, mate-guarding against rivals) are ancient. But the modern environment vastly differs from the ancestral environment, and such differences may impact the evolved psychological mechanisms underlying human relationship maintenance. This talk will highlight how evolutionarily novel features of the modern environment can interact with human’s evolved psychological mechanisms to influence the dyadic relationship processes implicated in people’s marital satisfaction and stability. Specifically, I will draw upon three independent, longitudinal samples of newlywed couples to show that modern novelties such as inundation of alternative relationship partners and hormonal contraceptives impact intimates’ marital satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, and even their likelihood of divorce. For example, associations between sex-differentiated partner traits and marital satisfaction depend on individual differences in how people make decisions, like choosing between alternative relationship partners. Additionally, evolved motivations to pursue casual sexual relationships and changing hormonal contraceptive use after relationship formation may undermine sexual functioning and relationship quality. Taken together, this talk highlights the utility of using evolutionary perspectives to gain a better understanding of modern-day established romantic relationships.
Joseph Billingsley
North Carolina State University
Forgiveness
How do we best respond to those who harm or exploit us? Behavioral options include avoidance, retaliation, and reconciliation, with the latter perhaps ideally conditioned upon better treatment at the hands of the transgressor. Each strategy comes with its own risks and benefits, and evolution-minded researchers suggest that a suite of adaptations—a set of “forgiveness mechanisms,” if you will—has evolved to help individuals navigate this complex social landscape. Based on principles of adaptive design, these researchers suggest that the decision-making systems tasked with regulating a victim’s behavior in the wake of interpersonal harm should modulate forgiveness based at least in part on two factors: victims’ perceptions of the transgressor’s relationship value and victims’ perceptions of the transgressor’s exploitation risk. Such reasoning further suggests that altered perceptions of transgressor relationship value and exploitation risk are the key reasons why conciliatory gestures such as apologies and offers of compensation often increase forgiveness. To test these predictions derived from an evolutionary model of forgiveness, we conducted three experiments, using an online sample from the United States (N = 1019), a laboratory sample from the United States (N = 318), and an online sample from Japan (N = 186).
Helena Miton
Santa Fe Institute
How to study cultural phenomena? Insights from Cultural Attraction Theory
Cultural attraction theory, one framework in cultural evolution, can be used across different cultural domains and diverse types of causal factors relevant to explaining the emergence, success, and evolution of cultural types. This framework can be used to integrate both cognitive processes or physical constraints as factors stabilizing cultural phenomena, as evidenced by several case studies. The first study provides evidence of the existence of a forward bias in human profile-oriented portraits: there is a widespread tendency to represent
sitters with more space in front of them than behind. The second study shows that different physical affordances can influence the rhythms naïve participants produce in a transmission chain experiment. Rhythmical sequences produced by participants having to adapt to use different movements reflected such material constraints in both their structure and timing. Additionally, the same approach explains non-random aspects of various cultural productions, including non-adaptive medical practices, such as the enduring and widespread practice of bloodletting. Finally, I will briefly sketch a few implications of this approach for the study of cultural phenomena and evolutionary psychology.Brooke Scelza
UCLA
Husband, Lover, Pater, Genitor: Paternity and concurrency in northwest Namibia
Research on human mate preferences has been conducted mainly in industrialized societies, where multiple mating and concurrent partnerships are heavily stigmatized. However, cross-culturally, extra-pair partnerships are more common, and there is significant variation in the acceptance of such relationships, particularly for women. In order to better understand how a system of concurrency can be maintained, I will present data from 10 years of fieldwork with Himba pastoralists living in northwest Namibia, a culture where nonmarital partnerships are both common and normatively sanctioned. After presenting demographic and genetic data on the rates of concurrency and extra-pair paternity in this population, I will discuss the potential benefits to women of having multiple partners, using both quantitative and qualitative data. Next, I will explore the reasons why men might tolerate, or even support, such a system, despite the paternity loss that accompanies non-marital sex. Finally, I will discuss how social norms about extra-marital sex, jealousy and paternal care support a system of concurrency in this population.
Jim Roney
University of California, Santa Barbara
Theoretical Frameworks for Human Behavioral Endocrinology: Decoding the Evolved Functions of Hormones
What is the best way to build theories about the evolved functions of hormones? My proposed answer is predicated on two premises: (1) hormones typically have multiple, simultaneous effects throughout the organism, such that their abstract function is the coordination of diverse outcomes; and (2) coordinated output effects are often evolved, functional responses to the input conditions that trigger changes in hormones. Given this, a logical way to study hormones is to catalog how multiple input conditions are mapped into coordinated output effects. I call these input-output mappings “theoretical frameworks.” In this talk, I propose partial theoretical frameworks for gonadal hormones in humans, and also suggest how application of the theoretical framework approach might promote a better functional understanding of oxytocin. The theoretical framework approach can be contrasted with what I call “parsimony-based theories” that attempt to abstract the one main thing that a hormone does with respect to psychology or behavior. The replacement of parsimony-based theories by theoretical frameworks may be necessary to achieve an explanatory account of human endocrinology that effectively decodes the evolved functions of hormones.
A Conversation:
"New Perspectives on Gullibility"
Hugo Mercier & David Rand
will present their new perspectives on gullibility and chat with the audience toward understanding where we agree, where we disagree, & what exciting future directions are.
Hugo Mercier
Institut Jean Nicod
Fake news has been painted as one of the most formidable threats to our democratic systems. A common narrative paints people as gullibly accepting just about any news—in particular if it supports their political priors—leading to widespread misinformation and disastrous political decisions. The data, however, does not support this narrative. First, fake news represents only a tiny sliver of people’s media diet. Second, many people who share fake news do not even believe them. Third, even a professed belief in fake news generally does not affect other opinions or behaviors. Still, fake news remains a fascinating object of study, and I will present novel data on what motivates people to share or not share fake news.
David Rand
MIT Sloan
Why do people share false and misleading news content on social media, and what can be done about it? Data suggest a disconnect between accuracy judgments and sharing intentions: True headlines are typically rated as much more accurate than false headlines, yet headline veracity often has little impact on sharing. Although this may seem to indicate that people share inaccurate content because, for example, they care more about furthering their political agenda than they care about truth, my colleagues and I argue for an alternative attentional account. By our account, most people do not want to spread misinformation, but the social media context focuses their attention on factors other than truth and accuracy. Supporting this account, we find in survey experiments and a field experiment on Twitter that priming the concept of accuracy increases the quality of the news they subsequently share. These results, together with additional computational analyses, challenge the narrative that people no longer care about accuracy. Instead, the findings support our inattention-based account wherein people fail to implement their preference for accuracy due to attentional constraints – particularly on social media. Furthermore, our research provides evidence for scalable anti-misinformation interventions that are easily implementable by social media platforms. For details, see https://psyarxiv.com/3n9u8
DATA BLITZ & POSTER SUBMISSIONS
SUBMISSION INFORMATION
Submissions for 150-word to 250-word (max) abstracts are NOW OPEN (deadline: November 15).
The organizing committee invites authors to submit their research for presentation at the 19th annual Evolutionary Psychology Preconference to be held virtually on February 10, 2021. The schedule will run from 10AM - 6PM EST.
Abstracts must be submitted by 11:59pm EST on, November 15, 2020.
First authors will be notified of acceptances in early December.
Data Blitz: Each data blitz presenter will have 5 minutes to present their research and will also have time to answer 1 brief audience question.
Poster Presentation: We'll provide more information about this presentation mode as we receive it from SPSP.1DO YOU WANT TO PRESENT A DATA BLITZ OR POSTER?
We will be accepting data blitz and poster submissions from researchers at any level.
2Click here to submit your abstract.
3YOU'LL BE NOTIFIED.
First authors will receive notifications in early December.
PROGRAM
PROGRAM
Begin at 7AM PST / 10AM EST (times below in EST)
10:00 - 10:10AM: Opening remarks
10:10 - 10:50AM: Joyce Benenson (Harvard University)
10:50 - 11:10AM: Helena Miton (Santa Fe Institute)
11:10 - 11:20AM: Quick Morning Coffee Break
11:20 - 12:00AM: Brooke Scelza (UCLA)
12:00 - 1:00PM: Virtual Poster Session
1:00 - 1:30PM: Lunch
1:30 - 2:30: NEW!! Conversation Format: "New Perspectives on Gullibility"
with Hugo Mercier (Institut Jean Nicod) & David Rand (MIT)
2:30 - 2:50PM: Joseph Billingsley (North Carolina State University)
2:50 - 3:00PM: Quick Afternoon Coffee Break
3:00 - 4:00PM: Data Blitzes
4:00 - 4:40PM: James Roney (UC Santa Barbara)
4:40 - 4:50PM: Quick Afternoon Coffee Break
4:50 - 5:10PM: Juliana French (Florida State University)
5:10 - 5:50PM: Joan Silk (Arizona State University)
5:50 - 6:00PM: Closing Remarks
REGISTRATION & INFO
Register via the SPSP Meeting website.
Some important registration information:
- The Preconference will be held on February 10th, 2021.
- Registration to the SPSP convention and the Evolutionary Psychology Preconference are now open! The event will be fully virtual this year, which is reflected in the discounted registration cost.
- Attending the Preconference this year is easier than ever, so we anticipate higher-than-usual attendance. Although we will be able to accommodate many more attendees this year due to the virtual format, we still suggest you secure a spot early.
- Registration for the EP Preconference is independent from registration for the main SPSP convention. Attendees who register for both the EP Preconference and the convention will receive a $10 discount on their registration.
YOUR 2021 EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY PRECONFERENCE ORGANIZERS
Have a question? Email us!