The Dissenter #120 Michael Bang Petersen: Evolution, Emotions, Groups, and Politics
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Dr. Michael Bang Petersen is Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University, in Denmark. He also directs The Politics and Evolution Lab (PoNE Lab) there. He investigates how the adaptive challenges of human evolutionary history shape the way modern citizens think about mass politics.
In this episode, we talk about evolutionary political psychology. We discuss what is to be understood as political behavior; the emotions, heuristics and biases that are more relevant to understand people’s political behavior (and also in other animals); the deservingness heuristic; the biological bases of our progress from small-scale hunter-gatherer societies to modern states, and the expansion of group identities; the cues that lead people to support the welfare system more easily; intentionality; how to tackle issues of political polarization; and also the benefits that politicians can take from learning more about evolutionary psychology, and how human psychology generally works.
Time Links:
00:37 What is evolutionary political psychology?
02:58 What is political behavior?
08:27 Emotions in politics
11:19 Heuristics and biases
14:06 The deservingness heuristic
20:05 How to we go from small-scale groups to modern societies?
24:38 The expansion of group identities
26:32 Danes, Americans, and the welfare system
32:21 How to promote support for the welfare state
33:25 The importance of intentionality
34:46 Men with greater upper-body strength are less in favor of economic redistribution
39:23 People and their relationship with their political parties
44:20 How societies might have expanded
47:20 Can people with different group identities cooperate?
53:15 Political animals that do not understand much about political systems
58:43 Trying to avoid political polarization
1:01:49 How to educate better politicians
1:04:09 Follow Dr. Bang Petersen’s work!
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Follow Dr. Bang Petersen’s work:
Faculty page: https://tinyurl.com/y83euhwj
The Politics and Evolution Lab (PoNE Lab): https://tinyurl.com/y7xwfuw7
Articles on Researchgate: https://tinyurl.com/ycp5oxj6
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