What drives human behavior? Why do we do what we do? Is free will an illusion? Has civilization made us better? Can we escape our tribal past?

These questions (and many, many others) are the subject of a new book called Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. The author is Robert Sapolsky, a biology professor at Stanford and a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research at the National Museums of Kenya.

In a brisk 800 pages, Sapolsky covers nearly every facet of the human condition, engaging moral philosophy, evolutionary biology, social science, and genetics along the way.

The key question of the book why are we the way we are? is explored from a multitude of angles, and the narrative structure helps guide the reader. For instance, Sapolsky begins by examining a persons behavior in the moment (why we recoil or rejoice or respond aggressively to immediate stimuli) and then zooms backward in time, following the chain of antecedent causes back to our evolutionary roots.

For every action, Sapolsky shows, there are several layers of causal significance: Theres a neurobiological cause and a hormonal cause and a chemical cause and a genetic cause, and, of course, there are always environmental and historical factors. He synthesizes the research across these disciplines into a coherent, readable whole.

In this interview, I talk with Sapolsky about the paradoxes of human nature, why were capable of both good and evil, whether free will exists, and why symbols have become so central to human life.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You start the book with a paradox of sorts: Humans are both exceptionally violent and exceptionally kind. Were capable on the one hand of mass genocide, and on the other hand of heroic self-sacrifice. How do we make sense of this dichotomy?

In an evolutionary sense, we're this incredibly confused species, in between all sorts of extremes of behavior and patterns of selection compared to other primates who are far more consistently X or Y, and we're so often floating in between. In a more proximal sense, I think what that tells you over and over again is just how important context is.

Can you clarify what you mean by context here?

Sure. What counts as our worst and best behaviors are so much in the eye of the beholder. So often it really is the one man's freedom fighter versus the other's terrorist. But even separate of that, just the fact that in some settings our biology is such that we are extraordinarily prosocial creatures, and in other settings extraordinarily antisocial creatures, shows how important it is to really understand the biology of our response to context and environment.

You argue that biological factors don't so much cause behavior as modulate it can you explain what you mean?

Ultimately, there is no debate. Insofar as using "genes" as a surrogate for "nature," it only makes sense to ask what a gene does in a particular environment, and to ask what the behavioral effects of an environment are given someone's genetic makeup. They're inseparable in a way that is most meaningful when it comes to humans.

Given how variable human behavior is, do you believe in a fixed human nature? There is a lot of debate about this in the world of philosophy. I wonder how you think about it as a scientist.

Human nature is extraordinarily malleable, and I think that's the most defining thing about our nature.

Okay, but in the book you come awfully close to concluding something very different. Specifically, in your discussion of free will, you reluctantly embrace a deterministic account of human behavior. You argue that free will is, in fact, an illusion, and if thats true, Im not sure how malleable we can be.

If it seemed tentative, it was just because I was trying to be polite to the reader or to a certain subset of readers. If there is free will, its free will about all sorts of uninteresting stuff, and it's getting cramped into tighter and increasingly boring places. It seems impossible to view the full range of influences on our behavior and conclude that there is anything like free will.

Thats a bold claim...

Youre right. On the one hand, it seems obvious to me and to most scientists thinking about behavior that there is no free will. And yet its staggeringly difficult to try to begin to even imagine what a world is supposed to look like in which everybody recognizes this and accepts this.

The most obvious place to start is to approach this differently in terms of how we judge behavior. Even an extremely trivial decision like the shirt you choose to wear today, if dissected close enough, doesnt really involve agency in the way we assume. There are millions of antecedent causes that led you to choose that shirt, and you had no control over them. So if I was to compliment you and say, Hey, nice shirt, that doesnt really make any sense in that you arent really responsible for wearing it, at least not in the way that question implies.

Now, this is a very trivial thing and doesnt appear to matter much, but this logic is also true for serious and consequential behaviors, and thats where things get complicated.

If we're just marionettes on a string and we don't have the kind of agency that we think we have, then what sense does it make to reward or punish behavior? Doesnt that imply some degree of freedom of action?

Organisms on the average tend to increase the frequency of behaviors for which theyve been rewarded and to do the opposite for punishment or absence of reward. That's fine and instrumentally is going to be helpful in all sorts of circumstances. The notion of there being something virtuous about punishing a bad behavior, that's the idea thats got to go out the window.

I always come back to the example of epilepsy. Five hundred years ago, an epileptic seizure was a sign that you were hanging out with Satan, and the appropriate treatment for that was obvious: burning someone at the stake. This went on for hundreds of years. Now, of course, we know that such a person has got screwy potassium channels in their neurons. It's not them; it's a disease. It's not a moral failing; it's a biological phenomenon.

Now we dont punish epileptics for their epilepsy, but if they suffer bouts frequently, we might not let them drive a car because its not safe. Its not that they dont deserve to drive a car; its that its not safe. Its a biological thing that has to be constrained because it represents a danger.

Its taken us 500 years or so to get to this revelation, so I dont know how long it will take us to reach this mindset for all other sorts of behaviors, but we absolutely must get there.

So what is true for the epileptic is true for all of us all of the time? We are our brains and we had no role in the shaping of our biology or our neurology or our chemistry, and yet these are the forces that determine our behavior.

Thats true, but its still difficult to fully grasp this. Look, I believe there is no free will whatsoever, but I can't function that way. I get pissed off at our dog if he pees on the floor in the kitchen, even though I can easily come up with a mechanistic explanation for that.

Our entire notion of moral and legal responsibility is thrown into doubt the minute we fully embrace this truth, so Im not sure we can really afford to own up to the implications of free will being an illusion.

I think thats mostly right. As individuals and a society, Im not sure were ready to face this fact. But we could perhaps do it bits and pieces at a time.

You write that our species has problems with violence. Can you explain this complicated relationship?

The easiest answer is that we're really violent. The much more important one, the much more challenging one, is that we don't hate violence as such we hate the wrong kind of violence, and when it's the right kind of violence, we absolutely do cartwheels to reinforce it and reward it and hand out medals and mate with such people because of it. And thats part of the reason why the worst kinds of violence are so viscerally awful to experience, to bear witness to. But the right kinds of violence are just as visceral, only in the opposite direction.

The truth is that this is the hardest realm of human behavior to understand, but its also the most important one to try to.

What is the wrong kind of violence? What is the right kind of violence?

Of course that tends to be in the eye of the beholder. Far too often, the right kind is one that fosters the fortunes of people just like us in group favoritism, and the worst kinds are the ones that do the opposite.

Violence is a fact of nature all species engage in it one way or other. Are humans the only species that ritualizes it, that makes a sport of it?

That does seem pretty much the case. Certainly you see the hints of it in chimps, for example, where you see order patrols by male chimps in one group, where if they encounter a male from another group, they will kill him. They have now been shown in a number of circumstances to have systematically killed all the males in the neighboring group, which certainly fits a rough definition of genocide, which is to say killing an individual not because of what they did but simply because of what group they belong to.

What's striking with the chimps is that you can tell beforehand that this is where they are heading. They do something vaguely ritualistic, which is they do a whole bunch of emotional contagion stuff. One male gets very agitated, very aroused, manages to get others like that, and then off they go to look for somebody to attack. So in that regard, there is a ritualistic feel to it, but that's easily framed along the conventional lines of nonhuman animal violence. By that, I mean when male chimps do this, when they eradicate all of the other males in a neighboring territory, they expand their own; it increases their reproductive success.

I believe it is really only humans that do violence for purely ritualistic purposes.

Is our tribal past the most important thing to understand about human behavior?

I think it's an incredibly important one, and what's most important about it is to understand the implications of the fact that all of us have multiple tribal affiliations that we carry in our heads and to understand the circumstances that bring one of those affiliations to the forefront over another. The mere fact that you can switch people's categorization of others from race to religion to what sports team they follow speaks to how incredibly complicated and central tribal affiliation is to humans and to human life.

You spend a lot of time talking about the role of symbols and ideas in human life. We kill and we die for our symbols, and we often confuse the symbols themselves for the things they symbolize. Do you think symbols and ideas amplify our tribal nature, or do they help us transcend it?

Well, its important to understand that not only are we willing to kill people because they look, dress, eat things, smell, speak, sing, pray differently from us, but also because they have incredibly different ideas as to very abstract notions. I think the thing that fuels that capacity is how primitively our brains do symbolism.

I think the fact that our brains so readily intermix the abstractions and symbols with their visceral, metaphorical analogues gives those abstractions and symbols enormous power. That fact that were willing to kill and die for abstract symbols is itself crazy, but nonetheless true.

Has civilization made us better?

Absolutely. The big question is which of the following two scenarios are more correct: a) Civilization has made us the most peaceful, cooperative, emphatic we've ever been as a species, versus b) civilization is finally inching us back to the level of all those good things that characterized most of hominin hunter-gatherer history, preceding the invention of agriculture. Amid mostly being an academic outsider to the huge debates over this one, I find the latter view much more convincing.

You say you incline to pessimism but that this book gave you reasons to be optimistic. Why?

Because there's very little about our behaviors that are inevitable, including our worst behaviors. And were learning more and more about the biological underpinnings of our behavior, and that can help us produce better outcomes. As long as you have a ridiculously long view of things, things are getting better.

Its much nicer to be alive today than it was 100 or 200 years ago, and thats because weve progressed. But nothing is certain, and we have to continue moving forward if we want to preserve what progress weve made.

Read the rest here:
A Stanford scientist on the biology of human evil - Vox

ALTOONA, Pa. Why do people behave in the way they do? Put three people in the same situation and there is no guarantee that all three will react in the same manner. Coming upon a car accident, one might stop, maybe grabbing a blanket out of the car to help the injured. Another might just call 911 and wait for professional help. The third person might just drive on, not wishing to get involved. But why?

The study of psychology helps answer that and many other questions about human behavior. And thats what drew Penn State Altoona student John Leri to change his major.

Leri enrolled at Penn State Altoona intending to be a business major. But then he started working with Samantha Tornello, assistant professor of psychology and womens, gender, and sexuality studies, and, he said, I realized that the research that surrounded psychology was what I was interested in the culture of science, the process of science. You get to ask a question and then try to answer it. So he switched majors.

I felt I would have a more well-rounded view of the world if I focused on how people behave as opposed to how they act in a business setting. It felt right once I was there," he said.

Due to his hard work, Leri was enrolled in the Schreyer Honors College, where one of the requirements is writing a thesis. Because I was interested in research I did an independent study on depression, specifically looking at how people interact with depressed people, he said.

Exploring the concept of social distance, defined as an individuals willingness to associate (or not) with another person, Leri recruited 425 participants and found that people were equally willing to interact with those with depression whether or not the people with depression were taking antidepressants.

Those who held greater stigmatizing beliefs regarding depression, greater social-dominance orientation, and less personal exposure to mental illness reported wanting greater social distance to the individual diagnosed with depression, regardless of treatment status," said Leri. "These results suggest that both mental illness exposure and depression-related stigma can be useful areas of interventions to reduce negative attitudes toward individuals diagnosed with depression.

At the same time Leri was researching and writing his thesis, he was employed as a research assistant in Tornellos lab, so she heard regular updates on his progress. She was impressed with his dedication and passion. He talked about it in great depth, Tornello said. He took the reins spearheading the data collection and data analysis, and writing the manuscript. His efforts, she acknowledged, were equal to students in graduate school.

Lynn Nagle, instructor in psychology and education, first had Leri in some psychology classes and then served as his faculty adviser for his Psych 495 internship. Somewhere along the way, she said, I recruited his involvement with the Psychology Club. Being John, he quickly realized if he was going to be involved with Psychology Club, he was going to run the show, and that he did.

Leri was elected president of the club for the 201516 academic year and Nagle said he was a great asset: He generated novel ideas and increased attendance and participation at Psychology Club events.He was truly invaluable to me as an officer.

The internship Leri had was at NPC, Inc., a document processing service in Roaring Springs, where he helped to refine their job application process. Nagle said, When I supervised his internship based in the field of industrial organization psychology, he was not only focused on improving the employee work environment and making the training more effective, he was truly interested in what drove the employees; he seemed to be trying to decipher employee internal motivation.

In his senior year Leri worked on research projects for two more Penn State Altoona faculty: Cairsty DePasquale and Lara LaDage, both assistant professors of biology. DePasquales research fits well with Leris interest in why people behave the way they do.

Anecdotal evidence shows exercise can reduce anxiety and depression, DePasquale said, noting human studies where exercise regimes can reduce anxiety. Similar results occur with animal models.

To study the effects of exercise on zebrafish, DePasquale had Leri use a swim tunnel built by engineers on campus.

This brings questions, such as how does one exercise a fish? (The swim tunnel) uses channels. We vary the flow of water in the channels and get fish to swim against the flow of water, DePasquale explained.

So how does one test for anxiety in fish? DePasquale said, Its very similar to tests on rodents but we have to adapt to an aquatic environment. We put them in a novel tank with nothing else and the fish will stay at the bottom of the tank. As they begin to explore the tank more, they are more willing to move out of their comfort zone. Fish who move up are less anxious fish. Another test was the light/dark test; fish tend to shy away from bright lights, as do rodents. We use that avoidance to look at anxiety behavior.

How did Leri like working with the zebrafish? Working with animals is a pain in the butt, he said, injecting a little humor into what is serious research. With humans you can at least give them instructions. Getting (the fish) to read the instructions is the hard part.

LaDage said, John joined my and Cairstys lab at the same time, which speaks to his interest in, and dedication to, pursuing research opportunities. In my lab he was instrumental in collecting data and writing up a manuscript concerning the assessment of substructural changes in the brain.

Even though Leri graduated in August 2016 he continued the research work while considering continuing his education in graduate school. In January 2017 Leri presented his research at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in New Orleans.

Leri described their research as follows: The lizard hippocampal equivalent, the medial cortex, is used to study environmental impact on neural tissue and spatial memory. Although the cortex is comprised of three substrates, each with differentiating traits in cellular architecture, studies typically use overall volume as an outcome variable. Our research showed that overall volume may not accurately represent changes taking place within cortical substrates.

Leri attended the Eastern Psychological Association conference in Boston in March and presented a poster based on his honors thesis and his work with Tornello. It discusses the predictive role of negative attitudes associated with depression and willingness to interact with an individual diagnosed with depression, he explained.

Nagle echoed Leri's other professors when she said, John is one of those stellar students, who you wish you could replicate. Hes cordial, respectful and has an incredible work ethic. He has a great sense of humor and is very interesting to talk with. He has such a wide range of experiences, I think anyone could find something in common with him and once you get him talking, he just lights up. I cant wait to see where John goes to grad school and how accomplished he will become.

Leri has now chosen his path. Beginning in the fall of 2017 he will attend the University of Florida to work under Darlene Kertes. Once again, hell be tackling more than one subject. I have been admitted into the behavioral and cognitive neuroscience (psychology) program," he said.

Based on his history of taking on more than one project at a time at Penn State Altoona, its no surprise that hes planning to pursue a dual doctorate in behavior and cognitive neuroscience and social psychology. A long way from that freshman business major but, for John Leri, definitely the right path.

Read more:
Altoona student's interest in behavior leads to research on humans and zebrafish - Penn State News

Injections of the love hormone oxytocin have made wild seals friendlier towardone another, making them want to spend more time togetherand display far less aggressive behavior, which would normally surface among strangers.

The discovery shows oxytocin, which is involved in social bonding and sexual reproduction, encourages members of the same species to seek out one another and remain closea finding that could have implications for human behavior and what happens when these social bonds break down.

Researchers at the University of St. Andrews gave wild gray seals intravenous injections of either oxytocin or saline. The dose of oxytocin was designed to mimic natural concentrations of the hormone, making it one of the lowest doses ever used to manipulate behavior.

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Wild gray seal. Oxytocin was found to increase social behavior in wild seals. University of St Andrews

The researchers used newly weaned seal pups that had never met beforeadults could not be used, the authors note, because they could not be certain the seals were complete strangers. After the injections, seals were observed for behavioral changes.

Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, showed the oxytocin group were significantly friendlier for up to two days after the initial doselong after the effect of the hormone would have worn off.

Pups spent significantly more time in close proximity after oxytocin treatment. They also performed fewer checks on one another, indicating a level of comfort or familiarity, and had fewer aggressive interactions.

Wild gray seals. After oxytocin injections, seals wanted to spend more time together. University of St Andrews

Researchers say this is the first time it has been possible to show the effect of oxytocin on the relationships of wild animals, and that this pro-social behavior emerges naturally after the initial trigger.

Despite using a minimal oxytocin dose, pro-social behavioral changes unexpectedly persisted for two days, despite rapid dose clearance from circulation post-injection, they wrote. This study verifies that oxytocin promotes individuals staying together, demonstrating how the hormone can form positive feedback loops of oxytocin release following conspecific stimuli [stimuli from the same species], increased motivation to remain in close proximity and additional oxytocin release from stimuli received while in close proximity.

The scientists say their findings could have benefits for humans, potentially providing a way to prevent anti-social behavior. Study author Kelly Robinson said in a statement: This study proves that oxytocin promotes individuals staying together, highlighting its fundamental role in forming and maintaining parental and social bonds.

By studying the underlying physiology motivating bonding, social and parental behaviour, we can better understand what factors influence their existence in a variety of animals including humans. It also allows us to perceive what is happening when such bonds break down, why the frequently negative consequences associated with such losses happen, and how hormone treatments could be used to influence or avoid such events.

See the article here:
Oxytocin: Love Hormone Injections Turn Gray Seal Strangers Into Best Friends - Newsweek

There is a new design philosophy centered in a collaborative, well-thought-out process that brings homes to be a living part of family connectivity, well-being, and time management. Designers and builders work together to study behavior and incorporate elements to intentionally bring people together during times of the day when its needed and when its meaningful to them.

The Meritage reNEWable Living home represents a design that understands how important time is as a valuable commodity and helps the homeowners optimize time, even giving back time in every possible way.CR Herro, vice president, environmental affairs at Meritage Homes, says that all of the team's design initiatives for this concept home are centered around the value proposition of the people who will live in the home, which required a complete shift in the home's functionality. This new concept re-engages a broader family dynamic and promotes it in an emotional, credible way.

In the past, we gave people homes and told them to figure out how to live in it, says Stephen Moore, senior partner and director of marketing at BSB Design, the architect for the reNEWable Living Home. We worked to create an environment that anticipates the way the buyers live. The design of the house understands human behavior.

The home presents itself as a "system" with embedded functionality that speaks to a new family dynamic. Herro points out that this new family dynamic addresses multigenerational independent living for both older and young adults so that dignity and independence are maintained, but still allow a synergistic family dynamic to occur under one roof. Plus, there is an entire suite of technology interwoven throughout the house to act as lifestyle enhancers without changing the aesthetics to do laundry and cook dinner.

Herro says that the trick is that it needs to not feel like technology to the home buyer. When the Meritage team identifies products for the home, they focus on dynamic interaction that anticipates and responds to buyers' needs with minimal technical interaction. His hope is that the additional automation features they are including in the reNEWable Living Home add value that formerly wasnt available.

We want to allow buyers to not have to think to manage it, Herro says. It is not designed to be a technical interaction, but a support behind the scenes to enhance the lifestyle and to free time up to enjoy the lifestyle.

Moore and his team at BSB also are thinking about technology in the design, and he pinpoints the importance of sensing technology. He says that new sensors allow home buyers to do washing and drying, cooking, and other tasks the way they want to instead of being a slave to the machine.

Herro points out that is how the concept home is helping disrupt housing. It breaks from the path, he says. It doesnt have appliances that are informed by what has been successful, but by what is best, what is possible.

Along with technology, one of the key components of this home is multigenerational living. Herro explains that analogous to both the technology and the new family dynamic, its returning to a more collective society where two or more generations can coexist in the same home to enable synergies that have been lost in modern distributed urbanism. This reNEWable design concept optimizes human performance by providing new sources of childcare, new ways to educate all generations, and new ways for family members to support each other.

The balance of multigenerational design is to maintain independence and dignity and still create spaces for interaction and synergy. Each of the defined independent living areas exit into common living areas to promote family community.

In this house, the suite for the grandmother is located in a very specific spot to interact with the family at every critical point of the day, Moore says. It is designed for her to pop out immediately to help with the grandchildren. That connectivity is important for the grandmother. For the Fonzie flat, the eldest son has privacy, but hes still connected. It offers both. Human peak performance is about rejuvenation and renewal of the spirit. People like to spend time with family.

This connectivity and family bonding is especially important with international buyers that proliferate the Orlando market.

The reNEWable Living Home implies that families will be healthier, and their living space will be serene, rejuvenating, and conducive to living. The house thinks of everything, from being able to ensure family safety to not having to get up and walk around to turn off all the lights. For ongoing news about the home, visit http://www.builderonline.com/renewable.

Read the original:
Thoughtful Home Design Anticipates Human Behavior - Builder Magazine

Artificial intelligence research firm OpenAI took inspiration from infants for its latest project, specifically the stunning ability for a newborn to mimic a person minutes after birth. The result is a robot that learns by example, and if you squint, you can see a future where helper robots mimic a person doing household chores once, and then repeats them forever.

The nonprofit of which Elon Musk is a founder and whose mission is discovering and enacting the path to safe artificial general intelligence revealed Tuesday the system that uses two neural networks to train a robot how to mimic behavior performed in virtual reality. The example behavior was simple: stacking blocks a certain way.

The robot uses two brains to get this done, which work in sequential order. One brain (the vision network) uses information from a camera and transfers what it sees to the second brain (the imitation network) that controls the robotic block-stacking arm.

Our system can learn a behavior from a single demonstration delivered within a simulator, then reproduce that behavior in different setups in reality, OpenAI explains in a blog post. You might be thinking to yourself, why does the demonstration have to be delivered within a simulator? Wouldnt it be easier if a human stacked up actual blocks in real life, instead of doing it all in virtual reality? Itd be easier on the human, sure, but processing those images would be glacially slow.

Heres why: Traditional vision networks (most of them around today) are programmed to merely classify images and do nothing else. OpenAIs Jack Clark offers Inverse this example: Take 10,000 photos of dogs. Some photos have labels, perhaps by breed, while others do not. When all the images are fed through a vision network, it will determine how to sort any unlabeled photos under the right label.

But thats just classifying images, not taking action on them.

If we used real-world images wed need the robot to be storing a real-world image of every single action it took and appropriately labeling them, Clark explains. This is extremely slow.

Instead, researchers at OpenAI use simple virtual reality simulations of objects the A.I. already knows. And thats why this robot needs to learn from VR for its real-life block-stacking.

Belows an animation of block-stacking that a human does using a VR headset and controller, which the robot learns from before imitating it in the real world. Check it out:

The announcement from OpenAI builds on two recent developments from the research firm. The first was vision-based and announced in April: An A.I. trained in VR was used in a real-world robot to successfully identify and pick up a can of Spam from a small table of groceries and throw it in the garbage. It was, naturally, dubbed a Spam-Detecting A.I. That was a fairly simple task, though.

The researchers combined the vision-based learning you see above with so-called one-shot imitation learning, wherein robots should be able to learn from very few demonstrations of any given task. This one-shot learning ability means a human only has to perform a task in this case stacking blocks in a certain order one time for the robot to nail it.

Belows a video released by OpenAI about the project. So while speedy robot butlers may not be right around the corner, training robots in VR to do basic physical tasks is something thats happening right now.

Nick is deputy editor at Inverse. Email him at nick@inverse.com

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Robotic Imitation of Human Behavior Just Took a Big Step Forward ... - Inverse

May 22, 2017 Credit: CC0 Public Domain

How you dress, talk, eat and even what you allow yourself to feel - these often unspoken rules of a group are social norms, and many are internalized to such a degree that you probably don't even notice them. Following norms, however, can sometimes be costly for individuals if norms require sacrifice for the good of the group. How and why did humans evolve to follow such norms in the first place?

A new study from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis explores this question, shedding light on the origins of human cooperation.

The results, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that the ability of humans to internalize social norms is expected to evolve under a wide range of conditions, helping to forge a kind of cooperation that becomes instinctive.

The researchers used computer simulations to model both individual behavior in joint group actions and underlying genetic machinery controlling behavior. The researchers worked from the premise that adherence to norms is socially reinforced by the approval of, and rewards to, individuals who follow them and by punishment of norm violators. The researchers' goal was to see whether certain norms get internalized, meaning that acting according to a norm becomes an end in itself, rather than a tool to get something or to avoid social sanctions.

In the model, individuals make choices about participating in collective actions that require cooperation, and individuals who don't cooperate, or "free riders," can face consequences.

Specifically, the authors looked at two general kinds of collective actions requiring cooperation that our ancestors might have regularly faced. The first type of group action involves "us-vs.-nature" scenarios, where groups must defend against predators and hunt and breed cooperatively. The second type of group action is "us-vs.-them," which constitutes direct conflicts or other costly competition with other groups over territory, mating, access to trade routes, and the like.

The model found that norm internalization readily evolves in both scenarios.

The model also shows that encouraging peer punishment of free-riders is much more efficient in promulgating cooperation in collective actions than promoting participation itself.

The study predicts a significant genetic variation in the ability of humans to internalize norms. In particular, under some conditions populations are expected to have a relatively small frequency of "over-socialized" individuals who are willing to make extreme sacrifices for their groups. Examples in today's society might be suicide bombers and other displays of extreme self-sacrificial behavior for the good of the group. Likewise, there are also "under-socialized" individualspsychopathswho are completely immune to any social norms.

As social and physical environments vary greatly between different human groups, the model accounts for this variation and can predict how these differences will affect human social behavior and human decision-making in different regions.

In addition to answering theoretical questions about the origins of human cooperation, the study may have a variety of practical applications.

"Every day human beings make choices among multiple options in how to respond to various social situations. Those choices are affected by many interacting factors, including social norms and values. Understanding the effects of social norms could help us better understand human decision-making and better predict human actions in response to certain events or policies," said lead author Sergey Gavrilets, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and mathematics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and NIMBioS associate director for scientific activities.

Gavrilets also said the models could be helpful in social and economic policymaking.

"Changing social institutions is a common strategy for changing human behavior," he said. "Sometimes there are attempts to borrow or transfer institutions from one country or region to another. Often such strategies fail miserably, however. Our models can help explain why. Generalizing our models can lead to the development of better tools for predicting consequences of introducing certain social policies and institutions and in identifying the most efficient strategies for changing or optimizing group behaviors."

Explore further: Evolutionary computation scientists find social norms required for the transition to cooperative societies

More information: Sergey Gavrilets el al., "Collective action and the evolution of social norm internalization," PNAS (2017). http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1703857114

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(Phys.org)A team of researchers from the U.S. and the U.K. has found that governmental initiatives to provide electricity to poor communities in India has not brought about the socioeconomic benefits that were predicted. ...

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The tribal dynamic = internal altruism + external animosity.

The tribes that were better at this dynamic could be expected to prevail in conflict.

This is group selection. The results are biological. Innate. We are born with these traits.

IOW we are domesticated. Artificial. Selected over 100s of gens for our ability to ascribe to the tribal dynamic.

"Rude tribes and... civilized societies... have had continually to carry on an external self-defence and internal co-operation - external antagonism and internal friendship. Hence their members have acquired two different sets of sentiments and ideas, adjusted to these two kinds of activity... A life of constant external enmity generates a code in which aggression, conquest and revenge, are inculcated, while peaceful occupations are reprobated. Conversely a life of settled internal amity generates a code inculcating the virtues conducing to a harmonious co- operation (Spencer, 1892, i, 322).

"These two different sets of sentiments and ideas he called the 'code of amity' and the 'code of enmity'." http://rint.recht...rid2.htm

-Tribalism made us human.

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The right thing to do: Why do we follow unspoken group rules? - Phys.Org

Behavioral finance a body of work combining psychology, economics and other social sciences has upended the way we think about people and money. Where we once assumed that men and women are purely rational decision makers, we now realize that people are rational some of the time but also emotional, biased and often seemingly irrational when making money-related decisions. Omar Aguilar, Senior Vice President and Chief Investment Officer, Equities and Multi-Asset Strategies, at Charles Schwab Investment Management, analyzes global equity markets through a behavioral finance lens. In a recent discussion with Evan Cooper, Executive Editor of InvestmentNews Content Strategy Studio, he shared some thoughts on the rational and irrational elements in human investment behavior and ways advisers can help bridge the gap.

InvestmentNews: Let's begin with some basics. What are the core principles of behavioral finance?

Omar Aguilar: This whole field came into being because conventional economic theory with its math, models and equations could not explain what happens in real life. So it's appropriate that the first principle of behavioral finance is that we're human; we're not machines carrying out algorithms. Second, and closely related, is that because we're human, we have biases. We're wired that way, and our biases have enabled us to survive as a species, even if they sometimes lead to less-than-optimal solutions. Finally, there is a significant degree of dispersion in how people react to different events, partly due to our innate biases and partly due to social pressure and circumstance.

IN: What decisions do people make that reveal these biases?

OA: All of them. It's actually irrational to think that people will always make rational decisions. Again, traditional economic theory assumes market efficiency and that every individual is making rational investment decisions. If that's the case, and if people are making rational decisions constantly, then markets become efficient. If an individual doesn't make a rational decision, the market is supposed to correct it instantly and say, You were wrong. But the market doesn't know what an individual's objectives are, the costs associated with achieving those objectives, and hence the lack of information may be at odds with the theory of efficient markets. In other words, an individual's investment decision could be irrational, but right for the individual utility function. By the same token, you could make a decision that's perfectly rational and in your best economic interest, but it might keep you awake at night. So if it's a rational decision that maximizes your wealth but doesn't let you sleep, you'll probably be biased towards irrational decisions. For advisers, the challenge is trying to understand client biases, getting clients to understand them, and then encouraging actions that will be in a client's best interests.

IN: Many veteran advisers probably would say they don't need behavioral finance to know that their clients often make irrational decisions. How can a formal understanding of the area help advisers better serve clients?

OA: Making the connection between the client's investment objectives and emotional tendencies is what makes a long-term relationship succeed. At Charles Schwab Investment Management, we have a defined process that can help advisers do that. We help them understand a client's investment objectives in the pure economic sense, using financial planning tools to create a rational solution. That's the traditional part, which of course only solves part of the problem.

For the emotional side, we encourage advisers to get into deeper discussions with clients to understand their needs as well as the trade-offs clients and the adviser may have to make to reach the long-term goal. Getting there isn't based on just one decision, it's a journey. So advisers should understand if their recommended investment solutions will satisfy the emotional and human aspects of their clients. The best thing that can happen for an adviser is to make good recommendations that meet client needs, so that the client sticks with those recommendations in a plan that lasts a long time.

IN: What should advisers do to nudge clients in the right direction?

OA: There aren't any nudges or tricks. Advisers have to understand each one of the client's biases and incorporate them into their solutions. That is what's critical for a successful, long lasting relationship with their clients. As we describe it to our advisers and clients, there are two types of human biases: emotional and cognitive, and they are very different. Some people tend to have biases that are more emotional in nature, others more cognitive. As a result, even individuals who on paper look the same in terms of wealth, generation or education may react very differently to the same economic conditions or even communications.

For clients whose biases tend to be emotional in nature, we encourage financial advisers to create a clear and disciplined strategy for addressing uncertainties that may generate emotional reactions, for example changes in volatility or market corrections. Most importantly, we help advisers identify a communication strategy that focuses on their clients' emotional traits. Clients are not going to change very easily because emotional biases never change. Emotional biases can be mitigated and controlled, but they rarely change.

Cognitive biases are easier to deal with as they tend to be driven by evidence or are social in nature, for example feeling left out of a bull market. Advisers can provide clients with information explaining their biases and how they can actually use them to work in their favor. This gives clients a better sense of solid evidence that will help them achieve their long term goals.

IN: What about an adviser's own biases? How can those be countered?

OA: That's a question we get all the time, and I always offer the following analogy. Imagine you're on a plane and it suddenly hits turbulence. No matter who you are a passenger, the pilot or a crew member a reaction is expected because we are human. If you're the pilot or a flight attendant, the cognitive part of your brain kicks in almost immediately and calms you down. But if you don't travel that often or if you hate flying, it will take a while for the rational part of your human brain to override the emotional part. Both the trained and the untrained flyers have the same emotional reactions, it's just that trained professionals can switch mental gears more smoothly.

In the same way, financial advisers have the training and experience to help them overcome their own biases. But don't be mistaken; advisers have biases just like anyone else, and those biases don't go away. Advisers need to understand their own biases and how to manage them.

For example, if the market takes a dive, some advisers' gut reaction based on experience would be that everything will be okay like it was in the past, in other words this is just turbulence. They would immediately reach out to clients and reassure them. Other advisers will first do research around similar historical market scenarios and then call clients armed with data to show how markets recovered under similar circumstances. In the first case, advisers are relying on their own emotional and experience bias to stay calm. In the second case, advisers gather information so their cognitive brain can override their emotional brain.

IN: Should advisers admit their biases to clients?

OA: I think they should. Being upfront about it makes you more human. But advisers also should explain that they have the training and experience to help understand their own biases, as well as the tools and equipment to help clients handle different market conditions when emotions can be overwhelming.

IN: Are there certain patterns of client biases, based perhaps on age or gender?

OA: Absolutely. In addition to psychology and economics, society plays a role in triggering and reinforcing cognitive biases. We've done a lot of work on generational differences, and there are several biases based on those differences. For example, the generation that lived through the Great Depression was very risk averse even after they realized that things were getting better.

As kids, baby boomers had to fight to get a seat in school because there were too many of them and not enough schools or chairs. They were always elbowing each other to get attention, which shaped and reinforced their risk taking nature.

Millennials on the other hand grew up in the middle of several economic recessions and stock market collapses since the late nineties. Therefore, they tend to be more risk averse than other generations and less trustworthy of capital markets in general than other generations at their age. They also have more school loans than any previous generation. Their risk aversion is likely to carry through as they age.

IN: Does the rise of robo advice, where things are more or less on autopilot, mean that behavioral finance issues will become less important in the future?

OA: Robo advisers are great because they provide financial recommendations for people who may not otherwise have access. But we believe the human touch is necessary too and shouldn't be lost. The client-adviser relationship is just as important as the investment solution itself, whether the solution comes through traditional methods or a machine. The ability to merge investment solutions with an understanding of clients' social and behavioral preferences can help advisers deliver more optimal investment solutions and build stronger long-term relationships.

IN: Why is Charles Schwab Investment Management so interested in behavioral finance?

OA: Our mission is to create solutions for clients that are in their best interest. So, understanding what makes investors tick is very important, especially if you look at products and solutions through the eyes of clients, which is what we always try to do.

Understanding the client means not just trying to make a good asset-allocation decision. It also means trying to understand how an asset allocation is going to affect the life of a particular human being.

We also recognize that markets contain a lot of information that reflects inefficiencies created by human behavior. Sometimes people refer to this as soft data. We strive to understand behavioral aspects that may be moving markets so that we can reconcile that with the hard data and hence can provide appropriate guidance to advisers and clients about how to navigate market conditions.

IN: For advisers who want to know more about behavioral finance, what does Charles Schwab Investment Management offer?

OA: We have a behavioral finance program called Biagnostics to help advisers understand and address their clients' biases. It also helps them better understand behavioral science and the ways it can benefit their practices and their clients.

And since we look at markets and investing through a behavioral finance lens, we provide insights that differ from what clients might read or hear from the media. This unique perspective can be helpful to advisers when trying to explain market moves to their clients.

When you asked about why we are interested in behavioral finance, I think it all boils down to caring about people. There are a lot of things you can do today without human interaction including investing. But we also understand that investment decision-making is a function of recognizing that we're all human and that we must adapt to our own irrationality. Advisers play a key role in that process.

To learn more about Charles Schwab Investment Management's BiagnosticsTM behavioral finance program for advisers, visit csimfunds.com/biagnostics.

(0517-Z7F5)

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What behavioral finance can teach us about markets and ourselves - InvestmentNews

(MENAFN Editorial)

Human Behavior and Cognition Expert, Tony J. Selimi, Featured on FOX

Tony J. Selimi, Human Behavior and Cognition Expert, Speaker, Educator and Internationally Published Author, was recently seen on ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX network affiliates around the country as a guest on The Brian Tracy Show

London, England May 17, 2017 Tony J. Selimi, Human Behavior and Cognition Expert, was recently a featured guest on The Brian Tracy Show. The show was hosted by Best-Selling Author and one of the country's leading business minds, Brain Tracy, and features business leaders and experts from around the world. Tony J. Selimi was one of Brian Tracy's recent guests, discussing his five step method to maximize human awareness and awaken people's innate healing faculties, the TJS Evolutionary Method.

Selimi's expertise and specialization in helping people realize their full potential led to an invite to the set of The Brian Tracy Show to tell the revolutionary story on how he went from living homeless on the streets of London to becoming a thought leader. His work has changed the lives of his clients by helping them align their highest values to their daily lives, build iconic ethical businesses, co-loving relationships, achieve work-life balance, and find inner peace and attain ultimate health. His feature has been seen by viewers across the country, and has undoubtedly inspired many.

The Brian Tracy Show, filmed in San Diego, California, is produced by Emmy Award-winning Director and Producer, Nick Nanton, Esq. and Emmy Award winning Producer, JW Dicks, Esq., Co-Founders of America's PremierExperts and The Dicks and Nanton Celebrity Branding Agency. The episode featuring Selimi recently aired on NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX affiliates across the country.

Watch Selimi's appearance on The Brian Tracy Show here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyeYlGrASdw

About Tony J. Selimi:

Tony Jeton Selimi went from being a teenage victim of war feeling hopeless, impoverished, and abandoned on the streets of London, to graduating with honors from one of London's most prestigious engineering universities UCL. He build a very successful IT career before following his hearts calling to follow the entrepreneurial path that led him to become No.1 Amazon bestselling and award-winning author, key note speaker, co-creator of Living My Illusion Documentary Series and the founder of TJS Cognition, a service educational institution dedicated to unravelling, advancing, and elevating human potential.

He specializes in assisting businesses owners from all market sectors and people from all professions find solutions to their personal and business problems, accelerate their learning, and achieve excellence in all of the eight key areas of life: Spiritual, Mental, Emotional, Physical, Business, Money, Relationship and Love.

Like a transparent mirror, Tony is known for his ability to see through people' problems, unconscious behaviors, thought patterns, skewed perceptions, and dis-empowering beliefs that prevent them from creating and delivering astronomical visions and living the lifestyle they dream about. He helps them break free from shame, guilt, expectations, control, fears, trauma, addictions and other mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual blockages by upgrading their 'cognitive operating system and teaching them how to tap into the infinite wisdom of their interstellar existence.

As a business consultant he globally provides answers to questions and practical solutions to life's challenges in talks, workshops, one to one coaching, mastermind groups, retreats, articles, radio and TV interviews as well as through his books and online downloads of Audio Books and the TJS Evolutionary Meditation Solutions.

His clients are entrepreneurs, leaders, and people from all walks of life who seek his help to manifest their highest vision, to be more healthy, wealthy, wise, spiritual and influential. They range from Coaches, #Sports Personalities, Musicians, Celebrities, MPs, Dr's, Scientists, to CEO's and Managers of FTSE 100 companies such as Microsoft, SAP, Bank of America, E & Y, Gayacards, Vandercom and Deutsche Bank.

Tony appeared in various national magazines including Soul and Spirit, Global Women, Science to Sage, Hitched, Migrant Women, Accelerate Your Business, Changing Careers Magazine, Consciousness Magazine, Your Wellness, Time Out, Pink Paper, Gay Star News, Key Person Influence, and Soul Mate Relationship World Summit.

Some of his recent TV appearance include Digging Deep Show for SKY TV, Top Channel, Klan Kosova, AlsatM, Jeta KohaVision, RTM, MTV2, Kanal 21, and Shenja.

Tony's unique wisdom is sought regularly by various radio broadcasters to inspire their listeners including Hay House Radio, Voice of America, Radio Macedonia, Radio Kosova, Beyond 50, Knowledge for Men, Love and Freedom, Empty Closet, Donna Sebo Show, News for the Soul, Channel Radio, Untangled FM, Self-Discovery, and Spirit Radio.

He loves travelling, consulting, researching, teaching, speaking, and coaching clients globally. Tony loves using his creative flair and in partnership with the owners of Vandercom, a leading telecommunication and IT service Provider Company, he is co-creating inspiring films and documentaries that share his clients' real life breakthrough stories that are emotionally engaging, mind illuminating, and heart awakening to move people into action.

He is known for creating amazing transformation and leaving his clients feeling revitalized, energized, and with a sense of inner peace.

If you would like to learn more about Tony J. Selimi and his services, connect with him at: http://TonySelimi.com

###

Contact:

Christine Enberg

Dicks and Nanton Celebrity Branding Agency

Excerpt from:
Human Behavior and Cognition Expert, Tony J. Selimi, Featured on FOX - MENAFN.COM

OpenAI takes the robotic imitation of human behavior into a whole new level

OpenAI, anElon Musk-backed nonprofit artificial intelligence platform just announced a new milestone in training robots. They are working with a new algorithm known as one-shot imitation learning, which lets human being train a robot by demonstrating it first in virtual reality.

In the video below, a person is trying to teach a robotic arm how to stack a series of colored cube-shaped blocks by first performing it manually within a VR environment. The whole system is powered by two neural networks. The first one determines the objects spatial position to the robot by taking a camera image. However, the neural network was trained only with a host of simulated images, which means it knew how to cooperate with the real world before it ever actually met it. The second one emulates any task the demonstrator shows it by scanning through recorded actions and observing frames telling it what to do next.

Our robot has now learned to perform the task even though its movements have to be different than the ones in the demonstration, explains Josh Tobin, a member of OpenAIs technical staff. With a single demonstration of a task, we can replicate it in a number of different initial conditions. Teaching the robot how to build a different block arrangement requires only a single additional demonstration.

The model is currently a prototype, but this concept could help researchers in the long run. They could use this concept to teach the robots more complex tasks in future without using any physical elements at all. OpenAIs long term plan is to give the AI the ability to learn to adapt to unpredictable changes in the environment.

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OpenAI takes the robotic imitation of human behavior into a whole new level - The TechNews

There are few people in the design world more familiar with field research, and the extensive travel that goes with it, than Jan Chipchase. On May 6th, Jan launched what has turned out to be a very successful Kickstarter campaign to publish his most recent book,The Field Study Handbook. There's still time to pre-order a copy of what looks to be a fascinating read, even if field research in the Hindu Kush is not on your immediate list of things to do.

Jan is a researcher, writer and photographer whose work focuses on the intersection of design, tech, human behavior and culture. Over the years, he's led research teams investigating both mainstream and emerging markets for Nokia and frog design. In 2014, he founded Studio D, a research, design and innovation consultancy, and later used his extensive travel experiences to create an ultra-light luggage brand, SDR Traveller.

I had a chance to catch up with Jan to talk about the book launch and other recent adventures and activities, as well as ask for some travel advice.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Core77: In addition to Studio D and SDR Traveller, I see also that you run as service called The Fixer List. What is that all about? It seems mysterious.

JC: Fixers are a staple of field research, at least with the way I run projects. Each project includes a local crew that is usually led by someone I call a "fixer". They come from very diverse backgrounds, often speak multiple languages, have a very good sense of their home locale and know how to hustle. Over the years, many of these connections have stayed in touch.

The Fixer List is the Studio D list of unusual talent that we can draw on to run projects around the world. We receive a lot of applicants.

You spend a large percentage of your time on the road, traveling extensively across the world. What are some notable recent field trips you've taken?

JC: Saudi Arabia was interesting and challenging. We were there gathering insights to understand the value proposition of a new brand offering. The new service, Jawwy, went live last year. The team had to achieve a high level of understanding of the local culture and how it maps to a mobile service, in only a month. Many foreigners would struggle to achieve this level of understanding in a lifetime. All credit to our local team of ten people for getting us that far.

Last year I took a tough, 7,000km overland expedition through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan's GBAO region and China's western provinces. The trip was full of remote communities, dubious border crossings, permeable borders and lots of checkpoints. I learned a lot on that trip and wrote up my thoughts in a Medium post called 61 Glimpses of the Future.

Another interesting trip involved training a client's team on field research methods, including setting up a mountain retreat at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau to process the data. On every project we get to ask "Where is the best place to figure out x?" and "Where do we want to be today?"

Naturally, the Kickstarter includes expeditions as rewards, if you're up for A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.

In the Kickstarter video, you mention that the book is part of a mission to reframe the relationship between those that make things and those that consume them. Can you talk about this a bit?

JC: Increasingly, the impetus for creating new products will be based on the data analytics of mass consumption, feedback on marketing strategies, and optimized value engineering. The product creators are removed from their audience by several steps, and it is easy to lose touch with that actual audience. The ability to gather an over abundance of data only compounds the problem. As more data comes on stream, revealing what people are doing and how, there is a growing danger of people being treated as little more than lines in a database, stripped of personality and context, there solely to be mined and monetized.

Field research is defined by closeness and empathy. You get close to those you are studying, and in doing so, develop a deeper empathy for their lives and ways of living. You then take that empathy andin the best casesreflect it back on them through your work. In the right hands, it generates very rich, and very nuanced, data that is capable of answering why people do what they do. Understanding the motivations behind people's actions can lead to very different outcomes, if all you knew before was what people did and how.

I try (and usually fail) to not pack too much when I travel. As a seasoned traveller what are some of your suggestions and tips for packing?

JC: Everybody over packs. It's human nature! By packing less, you're actually more flexible and better able to alter your planned itinerary to react to interesting opportunities. My own preference is to use hand-held luggage (no wheels allowed!), make sure the bag can fit under an economy-class seat or a business class foot-well, and even with that small size, still leave room in your bag for things you might pick up along the way. I wrote about how the psychology of packing impacts the experience of the journey, and it still holds true.

Check out the book, and other rewards available for pre-order on the Kickstarter page forThe Field Study Handbook.

Article illustration, and book illustrations, by Lee Phillips (@leejohnphillips)

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Stuart Constantine is a co-founder of Core77. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, three children, a collection of bikes and guitars.

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How Understanding Human Behavior Can Open Up New Design Opportunities - Core77.com