🚨PREPRINT🚨 Excited to share my new theory paper w/ Dan Balliet accepted to Psych Review, “Fitness Interdependence Underlies Cooperation across Human Ecologies” osf.io/preprints/osf/…

Enjoyable punting around Cambridge with friends with similar tastes (in outfit) Loving settling into the city, and thanks to Works in Progress for coinciding their issue launch party with my birthday!

Theories explaining individual differences in personality traits by recourse to noise or randomness are insufficient, we have no 'single' theoretical understanding of their real cause. Further, such causes will be interactive (e.g. frequency dependant & niche specialisation)

'Adaptive reactions to stressful environments to maximise fitness are expected.' One promising consequence of increasing welfare - 'nastier' personality types optimised for difficult conditions where selfishness is necessary may become less prominent

Whenever the BBC does a social media moral panic story it always sounds like a rejected Brass Eye bit

LinkedIn really out here reporting on 'happiness recessions' like it's an economic indicator. What's next, a bull market in good vibes? A bear market in smiles?

Despite mental health being such a global concern, it's strange to me that so little work on non-industrialised populations has been conducted to help direct evolutionary hypotheses. Something our group in Cambridge and others in the 'MAPPING Mental Health' network will address!

Humans seem uniquely able, among animals, to 'consciously' notice and reward useful abilities in others. Animals may evolve mutually beneficial strategies, but humans seem to have the ability to select for them w/o requiring 'genetic updates'

The 6th International Evolutionary Psychiatry symposium of the Royal C Psychiatrists held in London on 22 November with a stellar lineup of speakers reg link & prog email.rcpsych.ac.uk/cr/AQil4woQ2PK… Derek Tracy Adam Hunt Agnes Ayton 💙 Royal College of Psychiatrists Muzaffer Kaser Reem Abed C A Soper

What would the effects be of diagnostic labels if we lived in a world which thought evolutionarily about mental health? (We'll be researching this in the next couple of years...)

You've heard of lab grown meat, but how about lab grown diamonds? They're now purer, cheaper, more ethical, and even more beautiful than natural diamonds. We have a new piece on how they're grown in the latest Works in Progress: worksinprogress.co/issue/lab-grow…

Did you know that lab-made and lab-grown diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and about three times cheaper than mined diamonds? worksinprogress.co/issue/lab-grow…

New evolutionary psychiatry video resources now on YouTube! A two day pre-meeting for #ISEMPH2024 with discussions on depression, hunter-gatherers, and what evolution means to psychiatry. Robin Dunbar, Daniel Nettle Randy Nesse speaking, among others! youtube.com/playlist?list=…

Thank you Adam! A great additional free educational resource for evolutionists worldwide! Please share widely Derek Tracy Henry O'Connell Gurjot Brar C A Soper Simon Baron-Cohen Muzaffer Kaser Laith Al-Shawaf ليث الشواف Femi Oyebode Geoff Lawrence-Smith

Evolutionary theory predicts that altruistic behaviour would evolve to the degree that an altruistic actor and their recipient are related -- which seems borne out in nature, with animals regularly giving freely to their off-spring. Altruism towards strangers much rarer!

Once again thinking about the greatest tweet of all time

Evolutionary explanations for morality and committed relationships are a huge advance. Are they useful for psychiatry? I share my hopes and hesitations in this 30 min. video. Thanks to Adam Hunt Riadh Abed ISEMPH HBES youtu.be/gVJ88CTMQbQ?si…

The sharing of information enabled by language have placed humans in the unique 'cognitive niche': our ability to feed ourselves depends far more on our use of intelligence, our reasoning, and the cultural abilities passed on, than any raw physical ability.

The importance of hunting in the early evolution of our genus is often underestimated. There is a strong case that hunting provided the selective crucible for our outstanding capability at strategic coordination. And once this was in place, we could apply it to anything. 2