#163 Sarah Brosnan: Morality, Reciprocity, Fairness, And Property in Primates

The Dissenter - A podcast by Ricardo Lopes

------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter SubscribeStar: https://www.subscribestar.com/the-dissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ------------------Follow me on--------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT Dr. Sarah Brosnan is a Professor in the departments of psychology and philosophy and the Neuroscience Institute at Georgia State University. She is also a member of the Brains & Behavior program and the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience. She directs the Comparative Economics and Behavioral Studies Laboratory (CEBUS Lab) and does research with nonhuman primates at both the Language Research Center of Georgia State University and the Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research of the University of Texas Anderson Cancer Center. She studies the mechanisms underlying cooperation, reciprocity, inequity, and other economic decisions in nonhuman primates from an evolutionary perspective. She looks at the decisions individuals make and how they make them, how their social or ecological environments affect their decisions and interactions, and under what circumstances they can alter their behaviors depending on these conditions. In this episode, we talk about biology, comparative psychology, and moral behavior. First, Dr. Brosnan tells us about the primates that she studies the most and the sorts of behaviors she’s most interested in. Then, we discuss how to properly do comparative psychology, and compare the behavior of humans to other species, particularly primates. We also talk about what is morality from a biological perspective and its functions. And very important to understand morality are the processes of kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and the contentious topic of group selection. After that, we talk about some specific moral behaviors, like inequity aversion and the sense of fairness, and the endowment effect and the sense of property, in nonhuman primates.  Time Links: 00:55 The primates Dr. Brosnan studies, and the types of behavior she’s most interested in 02:00 Morality and moral behavior            04:40 How to properly do comparative psychology     06:27 What is necessary to have moral behavior?         10:29 The functions of morality        12:13 On group selection          14:00 Reciprocal altruism      17:28 Inequity aversion and sense of fairness in primates    23:56 The evolutionary relevance of emotions  25:44 Philogeny and ontogeny, evolution and development  29:41 Economics games to study animal behavior 31:52 The endowment effect and a sense of property 40:13 Comparing humans to other primates in their cognition and morality 42:57 Should chimps make economic decisions for us? 44:10 Follow Dr. Brosnan’s work!    -- Follow Dr.