Description:

Speaker:

Joshua Jackson, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Title:

The History of our Minds: Evidence for Co-Evolution of Cultural and Psychological Processes

Abstract: 

Biologically modern humans are more than 100,000 years old. Many scientists have devoted their lives to understanding how architecture, social structure, and language has changed over this history. Yet we know much less about the history of human minds. Behavioral science research has instead focused nearly exclusively on contemporary people, and psychological theories often draw from taxonomies which assume a culturally and historically stable structure to emotion, personality, morality, and other psychological processes. In this talk, I discuss new methods of studying the “psychological fossil record,” with emerging insights that challenge existing psychological taxonomies. Psychological change is often patterned and predictable based on cultural change, and general evolutionary principles may explain psychological changes in multiple domains. We now have the methodological and theoretical tools to build a more historically enriched science of human cognition and behavior, with a basic capacity to make foundational discoveries and an applied capacity to predict human futures.

Speaker Bio:

Joshua Conrad Jackson is an assistant professor of behavioral science at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He studies how culture has shaped the mind throughout human history, and how it continues to shape human futures. He has published over 50 papers examining how historical and contemporary changes in technology, conflict, and migration have influenced moral psychology, emotion, prejudices, and belief systems. Prior to joining Booth, Josh was a DRRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kellogg School of Management. He earned his PhD from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his BA from McGill University.  

Location:

In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/99952026190
Passcode: NICO2023

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.