Dr. Athena Aktipis\, assistant professor in the department of psychology a t Arizona State University and co-director of The Human Generosity Project.
How generosit y\, cheating\, and exploitation shape our world\, from human social groups to cellular societies.
Cooperation is essential to who we are as multicellular organisms\, as social animals and as humans. We are m ade of trillions of cooperating cells and so we are literally cooperation i ncarnate. As humans\, we cooperate with each other as well\, sometimes with out expecting anything in return. My work explores the question: Are there general principles that underlie cooperation across all systems\, from cell ular societies to human cooperation? In The Human Generosity Project\, we i ncorporate computational modeling\, experiments with human participants in the lab and work at nine fieldsites around the world to understand human sh aring. In my work on cooperation and cheating in the evolution multicellula rity\, I focus on the question of how large multicellular bodies can evolve cooperation among trillions of cells despite the constant threat of cellul ar cheating\, i.e.\, cancer. Cancer is essentially a breakdown of multicell ular cooperation\, and so cooperation theory is an essential tool for under standing why we get cancer and what we can do to better prevent and treat i t. Across systems - from multicellular bodies to human societies - cheater detection and behavior regulation play important roles in stabilizing coope ration. In this talk I will discuss the fundamental principles of cooperati on that span from cellular societies to human societies\, and how these pri nciples can be leveraged to improve our understanding of human nature and h uman health.
Annually the Department of Psychology hos ts a Colloquia Series throughout the academic year. This exciting program brings us together outside of the classroom to have conversations with the speakers we’ve inv ited to our campus to share their ideas. You’ll have the chance to hear fro m international speakers on a wide range of provocative topics.
CATEGORIES:Featured News and Events LOCATION:122\, West Mall Swing Space Building GEO:49.262681;-123.254326 URL;VALUE=URI:https://psych.ubc.ca/events/event/colloquium-how-generosity-c heating-and-exploitation-shape-our-world-from-human-social-groups-to-cellul ar-societies/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://psych.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/03/2019-Colloquium-Digital-Signage_815X402FeatureImage.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 DTSTART:20190310T100000 TZNAME:PDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR