#151 Richard Wrangham: The Goodness Paradox, Human Self-Domestication and Aggression

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Dr. Richard Wrangham is Ruth B. Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and founded the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in 1987. He has conducted extensive research on primate ecology, nutrition, and social behavior. He is best known for his work on the evolution of human warfare, described in the book Demonic Males, and on the role of cooking in human evolution, described in the book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Together with Elizabeth Ross, he co-founded the Kasiisi Project in 1997, and serves as a patron of the Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP). He has also recently published the book The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution (2019).

In this episode, we focus on the main topics of Dr. Wrangham’s latest book, The Goodness Paradox. We talk about the differences between reactive aggression and proactive aggression, comparing ourselves to other primates, and also evidence that comes from studies with hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists and other traditional human societies. Then, we discuss self-domestication, starting with the changes that usually occur both at the physical and the behavioral levels in domesticated species, and also some aspects of our sociality that might have favored self-domestication in our species, with focus on the role that capital punishment has played. Finally, we talk about group selection at the genetic and cultural levels, and also speculate a bit on the possibility of some gene-culture coevolution processes that were set in place after the advent of agriculture having contributed for the further reduction of reactive aggression in humans. 

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Follow Dr. Wrangham’s work:

Faculty page: https://bit.ly/2TpMSZP

Articles of Researchgate: https://bit.ly/2NKQC1K

Books: https://amzn.to/2NSWdDr

The Goodness Paradox: https://amzn.to/2ER2JHH

Kibale Chimpazee Project: https://bit.ly/2H42OKq

Referenced books:

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human: https://amzn.to/2TjSODn

Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence: https://amzn.to/2ERDGEu

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined: https://amzn.to/2aY25WF

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress: https://amzn.to/2FRJrj5

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