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Prof Bradley Franks QUE.3.03

This course is available on the BSc in Psychological and Behavioural Science. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

This course discusses the relations between cognition and culture using evolutionary perspectives. The course is therefore suitable for students enrolled in other programmes who wish to enrich their understanding by drawing on detailed understanding of the psychological and cultural processes that underpin thought and behaviour, and to locate them in an evolutionary setting.

Students should have taken Foundations of Behavioural Science (PB100) or Foundations of Psychological Science (PB101).

This course will offer students an overview of key theoretical approaches and debates concerning the relations between cognition and culture as they are related to evolution. The course will compare and contrast accounts that emphasise the role of mental adaptations with those that emphasise the role of cultural evolution. It will do so via a consideration of a range of empirical domains, such as categorisation, theory of mind, sense of self and religion. Students will be encouraged to integrate the ideas from the course with their wider learning in psychological and behavioural sciences, and to consider the application of those ideas to real world cases and problems.

The course will include topics such as:

• Relating Cognition and Culture via Evolution
• Thinking about the Natural World
• Thinking about the Social World
• Thinking about (Other) Minds: theory of Mind
• How Thoughts are Expressed: Language and Thought
• How Thoughts Get Around: Cultural Transmission
• Thinking about Ourselves: Self and Identity
• Thinking about Ultimate Things: Religion
• Culture and Special-Purposeness
• Relativity and Universals

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the LT.

1. Essay in the LT

2. Take-home multiple choice quiz in the LT

3. Group-based presentation in the LT

Dunbar, R. I. & L. Barrett (Eds.). (2007). Oxford handbook of evolutionary psychology. Oxford:  Oxford University Press.

Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Pantheon

Henrich, J. (2016). The secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Kitayama, S., & Cohen, D. (Eds.) (2007). Handbook of Cultural Psychology. New York: Guilford Press.

Kurzban, R. (2011).  Why everyone (else) is a hypocrite:  Evolution and the modular mind.  Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press.

Laland, K. N. and Brown, G. R. (2002). Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour. Oxford University Press

Nisbett, R. L. (2003). The Geography of Thought. Free Press. 

Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking.

Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2005). Not by Genes Alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

Students will be expected to read essential readings plus additional reading from the primary literature per class. These readings will be provided in the course outline.

Essay (100%, 2500 words) in the LT.