Evolutionary theory postulates that altruistic behavior evolved for the return-benefits it bears
the performer. For return-benefits to play a motivational role, however, they need to be …

Human infants as young as 14 to 18 months of age help others attain their goals, for
example, by helping them to fetch out‐of‐reach objects or opening cabinets for them. They …

Winner of the William James Book Award “Magisterial... Makes an impressive argument that
most distinctly human traits are established early in childhood and that the general …

Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the
wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters …

Michael Tomasello offers the most detailed account to date of the evolution of human moral
psychology. Based on experimental data comparing great apes and human children, he …

In this pithy two-part essay, Marshall Sahlins reinvigorates the debates on what constitutes
kinship, building on some of the best scholarship in the field to produce an original outlook …

Modern theories of the evolution of human cooperation focus mainly on altruism. In contrast,
we propose that humans' species-unique forms of cooperation—as well as their species …

Proactive, that is, unsolicited, prosociality is a key component of our hyper-cooperation,
which in turn has enabled the emergence of various uniquely human traits, including …

Somewhere in Africa, more than a million years ago, a line of apes began to rear their young
differently than their Great Ape ancestors. From this new form of care came new ways of …

New York Times bestselling author Sam Harris's first book, The End of Faith, ignited a
worldwide debate about the validity of religion. In the aftermath, Harris discovered that most …