Friday, September 21, 2012

Jeremy Van Cleve - Prosocial Preferences and the Evolution of Behavior Within and Between Groups


Here is an interesting talk by Jeremy Van Cleve, Omidyar Fellow, Santa Fe Institute, given on April 15, 2011 at the Science Board Symposium. Van Cleve is generally interested in "evolutionary and ecological theory and has worked on the evolution of genomic imprinting, social interactions including other-regarding preferences, and evolution in variable environments." 

There is no description with the video, so here is a brief summary of his research in the realm of prosocial behavior and within/between-group behavior.
Although the evolutionary forces that can support the spread of cooperative or mutually beneficial social interactions are fairly well understood, a systematic framework for how to explore proximate mechanisms for such cooperation that is amenable to evolutionary analysis is lacking.  In collaboration with Erol Akçay, I have developed a system of studying behavioral objectives that can clarify the ecological requirements for cooperative interactions.

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