About
Dr. Joseph Henrich is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology and Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology. His research focuses on evolutionary approaches to psychology, decision-making, and culture. He investigates topics related to cultural learning, cultural evolution, culture-gene coevolution, human sociality, prestige, leadership, large-scale cooperation, religion, and the emergence of complex human institutions. Methodologically, he integrates ethnographic tools from anthropology with experimental techniques drawn from psychology and economics. His area interests include Amazonia, Chile, and Fiji. Dr. Henrich's work addresses fundamental questions about human evolution, such as what drove the evolutionary success of our species and how culture has shaped our genetic evolution, including physiology, anatomy, and psychology. He explores how evolutionary theory can be used to understand cultural transmission and learning, laying a foundation for a theory of cultural evolution. His research also examines human social status, the nature of prestige, and the unique characteristics of human sociality and cooperation. Additionally, he studies the role of war and intergroup conflict in human evolution, particularly regarding cooperation and sociality. He investigates how human societies expanded from small-scale hunter-gatherer bands to complex nation states within about 12,000 years, the drivers of innovation and cumulative cultural evolution, and how cultural…
Research topics
- Sociology
- Psychology
- Social psychology
- Political Science
- Cognitive psychology
- Cognitive science
- Anthropology
- Demography
- Law
- Epistemology
Selected publications
Psychological Science · 2020 · 673 citations
), a meaningful statistic in evolutionary theory, to the World Values Survey of cultural beliefs and behaviors. As the extreme WEIRDness of the literature begins to dissolve, our tool will become more useful for designing, planning, and justifying a wide range of comparative psychological projects. Our code and accompanying online application allow for comparisons between any two countries. Analyses of regional diversity reveal the relative homogeneity of the United States. Cultural distance pre…
The Origins and Psychology of Human Cooperation
Annual Review of Psychology · 2020 · 450 citations
1st authorCorrespondingHumans are an ultrasocial species. This sociality, however, cannot be fully explained by the canonical approaches found in evolutionary biology, psychology, or economics. Understanding our unique social psychology requires accounting not only for the breadth and intensity of human cooperation but also for the variation found across societies, over history, and among behavioral domains. Here, we introduce an expanded evolutionary approach that considers how genetic and cultural evolution, and the…
Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science
Trends in Cognitive Sciences · 2022 · 370 citations
Microbial transmission in the social microbiome and host health and disease
Cell · 2024-01-01 · 110 citations
reviewOpen accessNature Human Behaviour · 2023-11-20 · 103 citations
reviewOpen access
Frequent coauthors
- 1164 shared
Michal Bauer
- 1159 shared
Julie Chytilová
- 1157 shared
Edward Miguel
- 1154 shared
Tamar Mitts
Columbia University
- 843 shared
Christopher Blattman
University of Chicago
- 312 shared
Christopher Blattman
University of Chicago
- 94 shared
Ara Norenzayan
University of British Columbia
- 73 shared
Aiyana K. Willard
Brunel University of London
Labs
Education
- 1991
Ph.D., Sociology
University of British Columbia
- 1986
B.A., Economics
University of Alberta
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