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Episode 33: Monkeys, Smurfs, and Human Conformity (With Laurie Santos)

Very Bad Wizards

The Mystery of Hysteria

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I think this is going to have pretty widespread implications Particularly in cases where like the beliefs are about these things for which I have no evidence, right? So so I think it could potentially be powerful But nobody knows but there are all these curious phenomena that like are just waiting to be looked at me one of these crazy cases of what's always Epidemic hysteria. It's like a social psychology study makes people Right it makes people look dumber than apes.

Special guest Laurie Santos (Psychology, Yale) joins us to talk about what animal cognition can tell us about human nature. Why are other primates better at resisting the misleading influence of others than humans? Is conformity a byproduct of our sophisticated cultural learning capacities? Are we more like Chimpanzees or Bonobos? Why does Dave spend so much time writing Smurf fan fiction? [Smurf you, Tamler. -dap]. Also, Dave and Tamler talk about a scathing review of Malcolm Gladwell's new book, and Eliza Sommers poses the question of the day. This was a fun one.

Links

Comparative Cognition Laboratory [yale.edu]
Laurie Santos and Jesse Bering on The Mind Report [bloggingheads.tv]
Buy Jesse Bering's latest book "Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us" [amazon.com affiliate link]
Philospher's Pipe (a directory of podcasts related to philosophy) [philosopherspipe.com]
Smurfette [wikipedia.org]
Horner, V., & Whiten, A. (2005). Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and children (Homo sapiens). Animal cognition, 8(3), 164-181.
KovÃ¡cs, Ã. M., TÃ©glÃ¡s, E., & Endress, A. D. (2010). The social sense: Susceptibility to othersâ€™ beliefs in human infants and adults. Science, 330(6012), 1830-1834.
True Bonobo Love [youtube.com]
Bonobos vs. Chimps [youtube.com]
What does the fox say? [youtube.com]
"The Trouble With Malcolm Gladwell." by Christopher Chabris [Slate.com].
"Christopher Chabris Should Calm Down" by Malcolm Gladwell [Slate.com]

Special Guest: Laurie Santos.

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