Pro-Social Primates

Author: Jason Marsh Source: Greater Good

Yesterday Greater Good editor-in-chief Jason Marsh reported on some of the highlights from Saturday’s Being Human conference in San Francisco. Throughout this week, we’ll continue to highlight topics and speakers featured at the conference. Today we present an interview with Yale psychologist Laurie Santos, whose Being Human talk covered “The Evolution of Irrationality.”

“If we really want to know about being human, it might actually make sense to figure out what it’s like to be a monkey.”

So said Laurie Santos, an associate professor of psychology at Yale, toward the start of her presentation at the Being Human conference this past weekend.

Santos practices what she preaches: In her role as the director of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory at Yale, she has run a series of studies that try to get inside the heads of monkeys. Some of her research has explored the roots of irrational decision making. For instance, are monkeys, like humans, so loss-averse that they try to avoid losing a small amount of money even if it means risking an even greater sum? (They are.)

Read more at Greater Good