#120 Michael Bang Petersen: Evolution, Emotions, Groups, and Politics

------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter ------------------Follow me on--------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT 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!   -- 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 -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS: KARIN LIETZCKE, ANN BLANCHETTE, JUNOS, SCIMED, PER HELGE HAAKSTD LARSEN, LAU GUERREIRO, RUI BELEZA, MIGUEL ESTRADA, ANTÓNIO CUNHA, CHANTEL GELINAS, JIM FRANK, JERRY MULLER, FRANCIS FORD, AND HANS FREDRIK SUNDE! I also leave you with the link to a recent montage video I did with the interviews I have released until the end of June 2018: https://youtu.be/efdb18WdZUo And check out my playlists on: PSYCHOLOGY: https://tinyurl.com/ybalf8km PHILOSOPHY: https://tinyurl.com/yb6a7d3p ANTHROPOLOGY: https://tinyurl.com/y8b42r7g