The marriage penalty – how the church rewired cooperation networks | with Jonathan Schulz

In this episode we explore how historical kinship structures, shaped in part by decisions of the Catholic Church, may have fundamentally changed the way humans are able to cooperate on a large scale.

Using game theoretic concepts like reciprocity and network structure, we uncover how bans on cousin marriages and even modern Facebook data can help explain patterns of trust and cooperation today.

Jonathan Schulz is Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at George Mason University and Co-Principal Investigator of the interdisciplinary Historical Psychology Project. His research focuses on the historical and psychological roots of economic development, with a particular interest in how social networks and kinship structures influence cooperation.