– by Kristopher Brazil What kind of characteristics come to mind when you think of a “psychopath?” Callous, cruel, calculating? Ruthless, reckless, remorseless? Daring, dominant, disaffiliated? No doubt, many readers will indicate these characteristics, and likely many others besides, possibly even with terms that have an ancient ring to modern ears that describe conspecifics who […]

– by McQueen Li, Eric Chung, Jessica D. Ayers, and Keelah Williams  Consider the last time something in your life went wrong: An argument that upset you, a project that didn’t go as planned, a difficult moment at work. To whom did you reach out? For many of us, we look to our friends to […]

– by Ze Hong Open the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, one of the founding texts of Chinese medicine, and you will find a curious claim: the human body contains exactly 365 acupuncture points, one for each day of the solar year. Turn to the Zohar, the central text of Jewish Kabbalah, and you will read […]

– by Jessica D. Ayers & Diego Guevara Beltran Friends are integral to our health, well-being, and survival. In fact, having at least one close friend does more for our longevity than quitting drinking, smoking, or picking up a steady habit of exercising. If just one friend is so good for us, why don’t people […]

– by Turan Gunduz, Hasan Gunduz, Erkan Eyrikaya and Hakan Cetinkaya Death has long fascinated philosophers, biologists, psychologists, and many other scholars. Alongside questions about why organisms age and die lies another puzzle: human awareness of mortality. Humans can imagine the future and know that their lives will one day come to an end. How […]

– by Jeremy Garrison We are a social species. Whether in the context of mammoth hunts, food sharing, child-rearing, war, or climate change, cooperation has always been instrumental to our individual and collective survival and propagation. Both the cooperation problems we face and our capacity to solve them are affected by our environments. Our capacity […]

– by Yohsuke Ohtsubo When you inadvertently step on someone’s foot, what would you say or do? Perhaps, you would say something like “Oops, I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to do that.” Most likely, both you and the other person would find it sufficient. People around you also expect that the other person would respond […]

HBES Members, I am thrilled to announce that our Laith Al-Shawaf has just been awarded the Evolution in the Public Eye Award. The EPE Award honors outstanding contributions to the public understanding of evolutionary perspectives on behavior. These contributions positively impact our perception and understanding of evolutionary science by communicating accurate, evidence-based information and/or exposing […]

– by Bonnie Hewlett, Harshita Agrawal, and Barry Hewlett In the high-pathogen rain forests of central Africa, adolescents begin evaluating who looks healthy, attractive, and potentially marriageable in environments that differ markedly from those studied in urban industrial settings. What cues signal health, and which of those cues actually matter? Evolutionary researchers have long argued […]

– by Hossein Samani & Ashley J. Thomas It may be easy for many readers to assume that romantic kissing (lip-to-lip contact between romantic partners) is universal. While romantic kissing is common around the world, it is far from universal. On the other hand, rather than spreading from a single point of origin, ethnographic and […]

– by Sophie Lund Rasmussen Kissing is often considered one of the most human of behaviours. It feels intimate. Emotional. Social. And perhaps even a little mysterious. Why do we do it? Interestingly, lip-to-lip kissing is actually very rare in the animal kingdom—only documented in humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos. But if we take a step […]

– by James R. Roney A lot of research has investigated shifts in women’s psychology and behavior across different phases of the menstrual cycle. One pattern that has emerged in multiple studies is an increase in sexual desire during the “fertile window,” which is defined as the cycle days when unprotected intercourse can lead to […]

– by Edgar Dubourg and Coltan Scrivner What is it about some stories and situations that make them more effective at evoking fear? One way to answer this is to reverse engineer the emotion of fear. Our ancestors would have come across a number of hostile people and animals throughout their lives. Quickly computing the […]

– by Juan Du Quick question: If something went wrong tonight and you needed help fast—someone to watch a child, lend money, give you a ride—who comes to mind first: a friend, your own family, or your partner’s family? And if you asked your partner, would they choose the same side? People sometimes tease that […]

– by Marius Stavang Imagine you’re on a movie date with someone. Everything seems to be going great. The conversation flows easily, you laugh together, you exchange smiles—there’s chemistry. After the movie, you walk them home. On their doorstep, you exchange a lingering look and a shared laugh about how good—or bad—the movie was. The […]

HBES Members, A new issue of Philosophical Transactions B expands the field of cultural evolution and shows why it matters for today’s biggest challenges – from inequality and cooperation to conservation and education. Transforming cultural evolution research and its application to global futures (compiled and edited by Adam H Boyette, Sarah Mathew, Stephen Asatsa, Michael […]

The Department of Psychology at Arizona State University invites applications for a Postdoctoral Scholar to research contemporary antisemitism. The position is full-time (100% research), fiscal-year (12-month), benefits-eligible appointments with no tenure implications. Salary range is $62,232 – $75,564 depending on years of previous experience (following NIH postdoctoral salary standards). The anticipated start date is January […]

Postdoctoral Researcher in Anthropology (2 years, full-time, research-only) Host: Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Oslo, Norway Project: ERC StG Com2Civ (PI: Júlia Palik) Deadline: 26 January 2026 Apply/Info: https://www.prio.org/about/careers/30   Role (brief): Conduct ethnographic fieldwork with former FARC-EP combatants in Colombia, including life-history interviews, participant observation, and social cartography workshops. Integrate qualitative insights into cross-method […]

We are pleased to announce that the fifth edition of our CUP book Evolutionary Psychology by Workman and Reader is now out and that the cover now has a lovely picture of a Golden Headed Lion Tamarin. These tiny primates are interesting for three reasons. First, they are seriously cute little New World monkeys which […]

– by Dor Shilton, Aniruddh D. Patel, Kim Hill, and Chris von Rueden Many think that music evolved to promote or signal social cohesion. However, there are several societies in which group singing and dancing are extremely rare. Why is that the case, and what does it mean for our theories of music evolution? We […]

— by Maria Brackin Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. – William Shakespeare, Hamlet Suppose that you borrow money from a friend and you promise to repay them soon. Wait, you might be thinking, you would never do this! […]

– by Nicolas Baumard & Jean-Baptiste André The evolutionary social sciences are grounded in the idea that evolutionary theory provides a unified framework to explain human behavior, including social norms, institutions, and cultural practices. Historically, the field emerged from the inclusive fitness revolution of the 1960s and developed into a powerful toolkit for analyzing strategic […]

– by Robert Bowers There is a large ground bird from the American plains whose mating system could not be more convenient for studying sexual selection. Over a conveniently short mating season, male sage grouse gather in a conveniently compact space, within a few miles of each other, and there they all perform their best […]

– By Carlota Batres When it comes to children, women can be certain that a child is theirs, but men cannot. In other words, there is always some chance that another man fertilized the woman’s egg. The estimate of children who have genetic fathers different from their alleged fathers is between 1%-3%. One of the […]

– by Yohsuke Ohtsubo Men are riskier than women, which is one of the most robust findings in psychology. When compared to women, men tend to report that they seek more risks in psychometric studies. In laboratory studies, men tend to show riskier behaviors, such as expanding a computerized balloon to the point of exploding […]

– by Luke Glowacki When I set out to write my recent article The Controversial Origins of War and Peace: Apes, Foragers, and Human Evolution, I hoped to provide clarity on the heated debate about the role of war and peace in human evolution. Is warfare part of our evolutionary legacy, or did it emerge […]

– by Amy Zhao and Brendan Zietsch Facial attractiveness studies have typically relied on asking people to rate facial photos of real-life participants or images of computer-generated faces. However, these ratings can be subjective and affected by rater biases. More recent studies (such as our own) have attempted to avoid subjective biases through the use […]

– by Oliver Sng & Krystina Boyd-Frenkel If you think about the last stranger you met, you will likely remember their race. But why do we care and think about others’ race? Laypersons sometimes suggest that humans have evolved to be racist. Evolutionary scholars know that the truth is far more complex. Instead, the somewhat […]

– by Marta Kowal We might not spend much time thinking about how much we pursue beauty, yet we undoubtedly spend a lot of time actually doing it. In one of our large-scale, cross-cultural quantitative studies, 99% of our sample (93,158 participants from 93 countries) reported spending more than 10 minutes a day enhancing their […]

– by Sarah Peacey ‘Witchcraft’ has a variety of associations, from pointed hats and broomsticks to the nature-focused, neopagan religion of Wicca. The oldest and most universal definition is the darkest: the idea that people – perhaps members of your community including relatives and neighbours – are secretly working harmful magic to hurt you. In […]

– by Robin Dunbar Solving the problem of how to live in large, demographically stable groups is probably the single most important achievement of anthropoid primates, and especially so of humans. Group-living does not come for free. A variety of centrifugal forces constantly threaten to destabilise groups. One of these is the infamous public goods […]

Image: woman in Uganda – by Alessandra Cassar Women around the world experience maternal depression, particularly around the time of pregnancy and childbirth. With around 10-15% of mothers in high-income countries and up to 25% in low- and middle-income countries experiencing depression during or after pregnancy, it is essential that we understand its causes and […]

– by Angarika Deb & Christophe Heintz (photo credit: ChatGPT) Just yesterday, my partner and I got into an argument regarding who has been vacuuming the last couple of times, around the house. And now that we expecting some guests, who should be the one to do it? Household arguments about undone tasks (or having […]

– by Macken Murphy Socially monogamous birds, like humans, often have “affairs.” In some species, these liaisons seem to serve a dual mating strategy. The females prioritize good looks in extra-pair mates (e.g., more complex ornamentation) and good parenting in primary partners (extra-pair males generally don’t invest in young). Good looks in males are thought […]

– by Brendan Zietsch A key question for evolutionary psychologists is: what selection pressures have shaped human traits and how do they vary and covary across individuals? Recent genomics studies have revealed a wealth of evidence that sheds light on these questions. In my paper, “Genomic findings and their implications for the evolutionary social sciences”, […]

– By Laure Spake & John Shaver In post-industrialized settings, religious parents tend to have more children than non-religious parents. But in these same contexts, having large families is costly – the more children a person has, the fewer resources there are for each child. How are religious families able to support their large families, […]

– by Mia Karabegovic & Hugo Mercier “Free” information is so ubiquitous that we rarely question the motivations for producing and sharing it in the first place. We can hop on Wikipedia to learn about any topic, however niche, check diners’ experiences on Yelp to figure out where to eat, or consult book reviews on […]

– Letter from the HBES President Dear HBES community, I’m writing with an update regarding child care arrangements for the HBES 2024 conference in Aarhus. Thank you for your patience as we have looked into available options, and to those of you who replied to our recent survey. Although the local hosts put Herculean efforts […]

The following is a grant opportunity for researchers studying religion & cooperation, posted on behalf of Michael McCullough: With the support of a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust, in advancement of their ambitious, multi-decade Social Consequences of Religion (SCORE) Initiative, the SCORE Project for Advancing Research on Religion and Cooperation (SPARRC) welcomes proposals from investigators […]