DySoC Journal Club: Our next journal club meeting will occur on Thursday, May 1, at the usual time and place: 2:45 PM, in Austin Peay 403.

At this particular meeting, we ask that each participant lay out the basic model of human behavior from the perspective of their discipline. This presentation can be as short as five minutes and can be relatively informal. For example, presentation slides are welcome but not required.

It is surprising how differently the social sciences approach human behavior. In psychology, for example, behavior is seen as the result of the interaction between internal factors (cognition, emotion, personality) and external factors like environment, culture, and other people. In anthropology, however, other people are central, with culture, history, and social underlying behavior in interaction with biology and environment. Philosophy often describes “human nature” in terms of ethics, logic, and reason. Sociology describes social structures that determine how behavior is learned, reinforced, and constrained by groups, institutions, norms, and power relations. Evolutionary science aims to explain and predict behavior in terms of the genetic and cultural evolutionary processes that have led to the relevant biological, cultural, societal and environmental structures. We will start with each participant’s statement about their discipline’s perspective and proceed to a discussion that explores how these disciplines complement and challenge each other, how their differences may be scale-dependent, and what a more unified approach might look like.

If you can attend, please RSVP to mlipatov@utk.edu and indicate if you can offer your discipline’s perspective at the meeting.

Questions? Please email Misha Lipatov: mlipatov@utk.edu