Holidays are a time to celebrate and encourage generosity. Yet helping others is a behavior that exists throughout the year, and is deeply rooted in our psychology. This holiday season, through January 10, 2009, the Exploratorium offers Goodness! Generosity & the Science of Altruism, a series of events that looks at the social and biological aspects of altruism with leading scientists, and offers fun and creative ways to give of ourselves to others.
The program in December is as follows:
Sunday, December 7, 2008, 2pm
Heroic Decisions: A Conversation with Dr. Philip Zimbardo
Dr. Zimbardo will discuss his research and thoughts on heroism, which is closely related to altruism, as well as decisions we make based on our perception of time. Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized scholar, educator, researcher, and media personality, winning numerous awards and honors in each of these domains. He has been a Stanford University professor since 1968, having taught previously at Yale, NYU and Columbia. His career is noted for giving psychology away to the public through his popular PBS-TV series, Discovering Psychology, along with many text and trade books, including the best-selling The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (2007) and The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life (2008). He was recently president of the American Psychological Association and has twice served as president of the Western Psychological Association.
Saturday, December 13, 2008, 2pm
Divided We Stand: Understanding the Evolution of Cooperation
A Conversation and Experiment with Karthik Panchanathan
All of us have intuitions about and experiences with altruism. Are humans really altruistic, or do we help others merely to further our self-interest? Is altruism a specifically human phenomenon, or do non-human animals also make sacrifices for others? What can scientists tell us about our propensity for generosity? Evolutionary anthropologist Karthik Panchanathan joins us from UCLA's Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture to discuss the ways in which our capacity for helping others is investigated across scientific disciplines. Learn how different fields do and do not agree on altruism and where cultural notions of fairness intersect and diverge. Find out how research on everything from chickens to economics informs our collective understanding of altruistic behavior -- and how using models and even game theory might help us understand why individuals sacrifice for others.
During the presentation, we'll re-create an experiment designed to reveal aspects of fairness. This experiment was run on peoples the world over, from university undergraduates to Amazonian hunter-gatherers to Highland New Guineans, showing us that people in general have a shared notion of fairness, with some notable cross-cultural differences.
Karthik Panchanathan's research investigates the evolution of human cooperation and culture. He draws inspiration from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, evolutionary biology, economics, and psychology. With a combination of theoretical modeling and experiments, he is interested in questions like, What mechanisms explain the extent of human cooperation and competition? How does our capacity for learning and cultural transmission change the rules of game when it comes to human evolution and adaptation?
Saturday, December 13, 2008, 1pm
On Good Behavior: Exploring the Biological Roots of Caring and Sharing, with Dr. Joan Silk
We routinely help strangers, stick up for friends, and care for children who are not our own. None of these behaviors appear to increase our ability as individuals to survive; in fact, they seem to contradict ideas of natural selection. Or do they? Is there an evolutionary basis to human goodness? Meet esteemed primatologist Dr. Joan Silk and discover what the social behaviors of baboons and bonnet macaques have to tell us about our own altruistic tendencies, such as why we seek to foster kindness and sharing in children, and why we love our grandmothers.
A professor of biological anthropology at UCLA, Dr. Joan Silk studies how natural selection has shaped the evolution of social behavior in primates. She is interested in researching the roots of reconciliation, cooperation, friendship, paternal investment, and the origins of prosocial sentiments -- such as helping and comforting one another -- that play a crucial role in human societies. She is co-author of How Humans Evolved (2006), a textbook designed for use in introductory classes in human evolution and biological anthropology. -- www.exploratorium.edu
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