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Oliver Scott Curry

University of Oxford, Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, Faculty Member

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University of Oxford, Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, Faculty MemberUniversity of Oxford, Human Sciences, MemberLondon School of Economics, Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, Research Associate |

Evolution of Morality

Oliver Scott Curry is a Departmental Lecturer at the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Oliver completed his Ph.D. in 2005 in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. His thesis argued that morality could be seen as the product of a suite of 'adaptations for cooperation' that evolved to solve the problems of cooperation and conflict recurrent in the lives of our ancestors. He is currently engaged in a number of empirical projects testing evolutionary theories of human social behaviour, including work on cooperation, coordination, friendship and coalition formation.
Address: Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology
University of Oxford
64 Banbury Road
Oxford, OX2 6PN

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480 Followers | 70 Following | 7 Co-authors | —Total Views

Papers

Curry, O. S., Mullins, D. A., & Whitehouse, H. (accepted). Is it good to cooperate? Testing the theory of morality-as-cooperation in 60 societies.

Current Anthropology

What is morality? And to what extent does it vary around the world? The theory of morality-as-coo... more What is morality? And to what extent does it vary around the world? The theory of morality-as-cooperation argues that morality consists of a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation and conflict recurrent in human social life. By using nonzerosum game theory to identify distinct problems of cooperation and their solutions, morality-as-cooperation exhibits a theoretical precision, explanatory scope and predictive power, exceeding that of previous atheoretical accounts of morality. For example, morality-as-cooperation predicts that specific forms of cooperative behaviour - helping kin, helping your group, reciprocating, being brave, deferring to superiors, dividing disputed resources, and respecting prior ownership - will be considered morally good wherever they arise, in all cultures. We test this prediction by investigating the moral valence of these cooperative behaviours in the ethnographic records of 60 societies. We find that, as predicted, their moral valence is uniformly positive. We find also that the majority of these cooperative moral values appear in the majority of cultures, in all regions of the world. We conclude that morality- as-cooperation could at last provide the unified theory of morality that anthropology has hitherto lacked.

Curry, O. S., Rowland, L., Van Lissa, C. J., Zlotowitz, S., McAlaney, J., & Whitehouse, H. (revised and resubmitted). Happy to Help? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of performing acts of kindness on the well-being of the actor.

by Oliver Scott Curry, Caspar J. van Lissa, and Sally Zlotowitz

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Do acts of kindness improve the well-being of the actor? Recent advances in the behavioural scien... more Do acts of kindness improve the well-being of the actor? Recent advances in the behavioural sciences have provided a number of explanations of human social, cooperative and altruistic behaviour. These theories predict that people will be ‘happy to help’ family, friends, community members, spouses, and even strangers under some conditions. Here we conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the experimental evidence that kindness interventions (for example, performing ‘random acts of kindness’) boost subjective well-being. Our initial search of the literature identified 489 articles; of which 24 (27 studies) met the inclusion criteria (total N=4,045). These 27 studies, some of which included multiple control conditions and dependent measures, yielded 52 effect sizes. Multi-level modelling revealed that the overall effect of kindness on the well-being of the actor is small-to-medium (δ = 0.28). The effect was not moderated by sex, age, type of participant, intervention, control condition or outcome measure. There was no indication of publication bias. We discuss the limitations of the current literature, and recommend that future research test more specific theories of kindness: taking kindness-specific individual differences into account; distinguishing between the effects of kindness to specific categories of people; and considering a wider range of proximal and distal outcomes. Such research will advance our understanding of the causes and consequences of kindness, and help practitioners to maximise the effectiveness of kindness interventions to improve well-being.

Curry, O. S., Jones Chesters, M., & Van Lissa, C. (submitted). Mapping Morality with a Compass: Testing the theory of ‘morality as cooperation’ with a new questionnaire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

What is morality? What explains its content and structure? And how is it best measured? The theor... more What is morality? What explains its content and structure? And how is it best measured? The theory of morality-as-cooperation (MAC) argues that morality consists of a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation and conflict recurrent in human social life. MAC uses evolutionary biology and nonzerosum game theory to identify seven distinct types of cooperation – helping family, helping group, reciprocating, hawkish displays of dominance, dove-ish displays of submission, dividing disputed resources, and respecting property. And MAC predicts that each type of cooperation will be considered relevant to morality, be judged morally good, and will constitute a distinct moral domain. The present study tests MAC’s predictions by developing a new self-report measure of moral values, examining its psychometric properties on a sample of UK adults (Study 1: N=1,392), and comparing them to the properties of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ; Study 2: N=1,042). The results provide strong support for MAC’s predictions; the MAC questionnaire outperforms the MFQ on every criterion. Our results suggest that morality-as-cooperation has the potential to provide the rigorous and systematic theoretical footing that the study of morality has hitherto lacked.

Sznycer, D., Al-Shawaf, L., Bereby-Meyer, Y., Curry, O. S., De Smet, D., Ermer, E., . . . Tooby, J. (2017). Cross-cultural regularities in the cognitive architecture of pride. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi:10.1073/pnas.1614389114

by Oliver Scott Curry, Laith Al-shawaf, Daniel Sznycer, Maria Florencia Lopez Seal, and Sznycer, Sznycer

Pride occurs in every known culture, appears early in development , is reliably triggered by achi... more Pride occurs in every known culture, appears early in development , is reliably triggered by achievements and formidability, and causes a characteristic display that is recognized everywhere. Here, we evaluate the theory that pride evolved to guide decisions relevant to pursuing actions that enhance valuation and respect for a person in the minds of others. By hypothesis, pride is a neurocomputational program tailored by selection to orchestrate cognition and behavior in the service of: (i) motivating the cost-effective pursuit of courses of action that would increase others' valuations and respect of the individual, (ii) motivating the advertisement of acts or characteristics whose recognition by others would lead them to enhance their evaluations of the individual, and (iii) mobilizing the individual to take advantage of the resulting enhanced social landscape. To modulate how much to invest in actions that might lead to enhanced evaluations by others, the pride system must forecast the magnitude of the evaluations the action would evoke in the audience and calibrate its activation proportionally. We tested this prediction in 16 countries across 4 continents (n = 2,085), for 25 acts and traits. As predicted, the pride intensity for a given act or trait closely tracks the valuations of audiences, local (mean r = +0.82) and foreign (mean r = +0.75). This relationship is specific to pride and does not generalize to other positive emotions that coactivate with pride but lack its audience-recalibrating function. pride | valuation | decision-making | emotion | culture

Curry, O. S., Buhrmester, M., & Whitehouse, H. (submitted). Brexiteers are not more British, just less European. PLoS ONE.

What role did national identity play in Britain's decision to leave the European Union? Previous ... more What role did national identity play in Britain's decision to leave the European Union? Previous research has found a negative correlation between national and European identity: people who identify more strongly with their nation identify less strongly with Europe as a whole. This suggests that UK citizens who identify more strongly with the United Kingdom will identify less strongly with the European Union, and that UK citizens voting to leave the EU will identify more strongly with the UK than citizens voting to remain. In other words, Leave voters will be more 'nationalistic' or 'patriotic' than Remain voters. We tested this prediction using well-established (social identity) and novel (identity fusion) psychological measures of national and European identity, on a sample of UK voters (N=212) in the run up to the EU Referendum. Contrary to previous research, we found no consistent correlation between UK and EU identity, on either measure. And we found no substantial differences in the strength of UK identity between Leave and Remain voters. The strength of British identity did not predict a Leave vote; only identification and fusion with Europe (and age) emerged as significant predictors. These results: indicate that British and European identities are not necessarily opposed to one another, but can vary independently; cast doubt on the theory that the Brexit vote was caused by an excess of nationalism; and suggest that the results of future referenda in other countries will depend on the strength of European, as opposed to national, identity.

Curry, O. S. (2016). Morality as Cooperation: A Problem-Centred Approach. In T. K. Shackelford & R. D. Hansen (Eds.), The Evolution of Morality (pp. 27-51): Springer International Publishing.

What is morality, where does it come from, and how does it work? Scholars have struggled with the... more What is morality, where does it come from, and how does it work? Scholars have struggled with these questions for millennia. But we now have a scientific answer. The theory of ‘morality-as-cooperation’ uses the mathematics of cooperation – the theory of nonzerosum games – to identify the many distinct problems of cooperation and their solutions; and it predicts that it is the solutions employed by humans that constitute ‘morality’. Thus, morality turns out to be a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation and conflict recurrent in human social life. This theory generates a comprehensive taxonomy of moral values – a Periodic Table of Ethics – that includes obligations to family, group loyalty, reciprocity, bravery, respect, fairness, and property rights. And because morality-as-cooperation makes principled predictions about the structure and content of human morality, which can be tested against those of rival theories, it reveals that the study of morality is simply another branch of science.

Dunbar, R. I. M., Launay, J., & Curry, O. (2016). The Complexity of Jokes Is Limited by Cognitive Constraints on Mentalizing. Human Nature, 27(2), 130-140.

Pietraszewski, D., Curry, O. S., Petersen, M. B., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2015). Constituents of political cognition: Race, party politics, and the alliance detection system. Cognition, 140(0), 24-39.

Petersen, M. B., Aarøe, L., Jensen, N. H., & Curry, O. (2014). Social Welfare and the Psychology of Food Sharing: Short-Term Hunger Increases Support for Social Welfare. Political Psychology, 35(6), 757-773.

Do politically irrelevant events influence important policy opinions? Previous research on social... more Do politically irrelevant events influence important policy opinions? Previous research on social welfare attitudes has emphasized the role of political factors such as economic self-interest and ideology. Here, we demonstrate that attitudes to social welfare are also influenced by short-term fluctuations in hunger. Using theories in evolutionary psychology, we predict that hungry individuals will be greedier and take more resources from others while also attempting to induce others to share by signaling cooperative intentions and expressing support for sharing, including evolutionarily novel forms of sharing such as social welfare. We test these predictions using self-reported hunger data as well as comparisons of subjects who participated in relevant online studies before and after eating lunch. Across four studies collected in two different welfare regimes—the United Kingdom and Denmark—we consistently find that hungry individuals act in a greedier manner but describe themselves as more cooperative and express greater support for social welfare.

Curry, O. S., & Dunbar, R. I. M. (2013). Sharing a joke: The effects of a similar sense of humor on affiliation and altruism. Evolution and Human Behavior, 34(2), 125-129.

Cooperation requires that individuals are able to identify, and preferentially associate with, ot... more Cooperation requires that individuals are able to identify, and preferentially associate with, others who have compatible preferences and the shared background knowledge needed to solve interpersonal coordination problems. This body of shared knowledge constitute a substantial proportion of what is called ‘culture’. It has been argued that, for this reason, individuals prefer to associate with others who share their culture, and also that shared appreciation of humor provides a particularly effective means of identifying others with the relevant preferences and knowledge. The present experiment uses a ‘dummy rating procedure’ to compare the effects of sharing an appreciation of non-humorous (first lines of novels) and humorous (jokes) cultural stimuli on interpersonal affiliation, altruism and assessment. The results show that the degree of shared appreciation for both sets of stimuli had a positive effect on Affiliation; only humorous stimuli had an effect on Altruism; and neither effected the Assessment of others' personal traits. Thus, the results support the general theory that shared culture promotes affiliation, and provide evidence of the special role of humor in interpersonal relations.

Curry, O. S., Mullins, D. A., & Whitehouse, H. (accepted). Is it good to cooperate? Testing the theory of morality-as-cooperation in 60 societies.

Current Anthropology

What is morality? And to what extent does it vary around the world? The theory of morality-as-coo... more What is morality? And to what extent does it vary around the world? The theory of morality-as-cooperation argues that morality consists of a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation and conflict recurrent in human social life. By using nonzerosum game theory to identify distinct problems of cooperation and their solutions, morality-as-cooperation exhibits a theoretical precision, explanatory scope and predictive power, exceeding that of previous atheoretical accounts of morality. For example, morality-as-cooperation predicts that specific forms of cooperative behaviour - helping kin, helping your group, reciprocating, being brave, deferring to superiors, dividing disputed resources, and respecting prior ownership - will be considered morally good wherever they arise, in all cultures. We test this prediction by investigating the moral valence of these cooperative behaviours in the ethnographic records of 60 societies. We find that, as predicted, their moral valence is uniformly positive. We find also that the majority of these cooperative moral values appear in the majority of cultures, in all regions of the world. We conclude that morality- as-cooperation could at last provide the unified theory of morality that anthropology has hitherto lacked.

Curry, O. S., Rowland, L., Van Lissa, C. J., Zlotowitz, S., McAlaney, J., & Whitehouse, H. (revised and resubmitted). Happy to Help? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of performing acts of kindness on the well-being of the actor.

by Oliver Scott Curry, Caspar J. van Lissa, and Sally Zlotowitz

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Do acts of kindness improve the well-being of the actor? Recent advances in the behavioural scien... more Do acts of kindness improve the well-being of the actor? Recent advances in the behavioural sciences have provided a number of explanations of human social, cooperative and altruistic behaviour. These theories predict that people will be ‘happy to help’ family, friends, community members, spouses, and even strangers under some conditions. Here we conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the experimental evidence that kindness interventions (for example, performing ‘random acts of kindness’) boost subjective well-being. Our initial search of the literature identified 489 articles; of which 24 (27 studies) met the inclusion criteria (total N=4,045). These 27 studies, some of which included multiple control conditions and dependent measures, yielded 52 effect sizes. Multi-level modelling revealed that the overall effect of kindness on the well-being of the actor is small-to-medium (δ = 0.28). The effect was not moderated by sex, age, type of participant, intervention, control condition or outcome measure. There was no indication of publication bias. We discuss the limitations of the current literature, and recommend that future research test more specific theories of kindness: taking kindness-specific individual differences into account; distinguishing between the effects of kindness to specific categories of people; and considering a wider range of proximal and distal outcomes. Such research will advance our understanding of the causes and consequences of kindness, and help practitioners to maximise the effectiveness of kindness interventions to improve well-being.

Curry, O. S., Jones Chesters, M., & Van Lissa, C. (submitted). Mapping Morality with a Compass: Testing the theory of ‘morality as cooperation’ with a new questionnaire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

What is morality? What explains its content and structure? And how is it best measured? The theor... more What is morality? What explains its content and structure? And how is it best measured? The theory of morality-as-cooperation (MAC) argues that morality consists of a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation and conflict recurrent in human social life. MAC uses evolutionary biology and nonzerosum game theory to identify seven distinct types of cooperation – helping family, helping group, reciprocating, hawkish displays of dominance, dove-ish displays of submission, dividing disputed resources, and respecting property. And MAC predicts that each type of cooperation will be considered relevant to morality, be judged morally good, and will constitute a distinct moral domain. The present study tests MAC’s predictions by developing a new self-report measure of moral values, examining its psychometric properties on a sample of UK adults (Study 1: N=1,392), and comparing them to the properties of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ; Study 2: N=1,042). The results provide strong support for MAC’s predictions; the MAC questionnaire outperforms the MFQ on every criterion. Our results suggest that morality-as-cooperation has the potential to provide the rigorous and systematic theoretical footing that the study of morality has hitherto lacked.

Sznycer, D., Al-Shawaf, L., Bereby-Meyer, Y., Curry, O. S., De Smet, D., Ermer, E., . . . Tooby, J. (2017). Cross-cultural regularities in the cognitive architecture of pride. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi:10.1073/pnas.1614389114

by Oliver Scott Curry, Laith Al-shawaf, Daniel Sznycer, Maria Florencia Lopez Seal, and Sznycer, Sznycer

Pride occurs in every known culture, appears early in development , is reliably triggered by achi... more Pride occurs in every known culture, appears early in development , is reliably triggered by achievements and formidability, and causes a characteristic display that is recognized everywhere. Here, we evaluate the theory that pride evolved to guide decisions relevant to pursuing actions that enhance valuation and respect for a person in the minds of others. By hypothesis, pride is a neurocomputational program tailored by selection to orchestrate cognition and behavior in the service of: (i) motivating the cost-effective pursuit of courses of action that would increase others' valuations and respect of the individual, (ii) motivating the advertisement of acts or characteristics whose recognition by others would lead them to enhance their evaluations of the individual, and (iii) mobilizing the individual to take advantage of the resulting enhanced social landscape. To modulate how much to invest in actions that might lead to enhanced evaluations by others, the pride system must forecast the magnitude of the evaluations the action would evoke in the audience and calibrate its activation proportionally. We tested this prediction in 16 countries across 4 continents (n = 2,085), for 25 acts and traits. As predicted, the pride intensity for a given act or trait closely tracks the valuations of audiences, local (mean r = +0.82) and foreign (mean r = +0.75). This relationship is specific to pride and does not generalize to other positive emotions that coactivate with pride but lack its audience-recalibrating function. pride | valuation | decision-making | emotion | culture

Curry, O. S., Buhrmester, M., & Whitehouse, H. (submitted). Brexiteers are not more British, just less European. PLoS ONE.

What role did national identity play in Britain's decision to leave the European Union? Previous ... more What role did national identity play in Britain's decision to leave the European Union? Previous research has found a negative correlation between national and European identity: people who identify more strongly with their nation identify less strongly with Europe as a whole. This suggests that UK citizens who identify more strongly with the United Kingdom will identify less strongly with the European Union, and that UK citizens voting to leave the EU will identify more strongly with the UK than citizens voting to remain. In other words, Leave voters will be more 'nationalistic' or 'patriotic' than Remain voters. We tested this prediction using well-established (social identity) and novel (identity fusion) psychological measures of national and European identity, on a sample of UK voters (N=212) in the run up to the EU Referendum. Contrary to previous research, we found no consistent correlation between UK and EU identity, on either measure. And we found no substantial differences in the strength of UK identity between Leave and Remain voters. The strength of British identity did not predict a Leave vote; only identification and fusion with Europe (and age) emerged as significant predictors. These results: indicate that British and European identities are not necessarily opposed to one another, but can vary independently; cast doubt on the theory that the Brexit vote was caused by an excess of nationalism; and suggest that the results of future referenda in other countries will depend on the strength of European, as opposed to national, identity.

Curry, O. S. (2016). Morality as Cooperation: A Problem-Centred Approach. In T. K. Shackelford & R. D. Hansen (Eds.), The Evolution of Morality (pp. 27-51): Springer International Publishing.

What is morality, where does it come from, and how does it work? Scholars have struggled with the... more What is morality, where does it come from, and how does it work? Scholars have struggled with these questions for millennia. But we now have a scientific answer. The theory of ‘morality-as-cooperation’ uses the mathematics of cooperation – the theory of nonzerosum games – to identify the many distinct problems of cooperation and their solutions; and it predicts that it is the solutions employed by humans that constitute ‘morality’. Thus, morality turns out to be a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation and conflict recurrent in human social life. This theory generates a comprehensive taxonomy of moral values – a Periodic Table of Ethics – that includes obligations to family, group loyalty, reciprocity, bravery, respect, fairness, and property rights. And because morality-as-cooperation makes principled predictions about the structure and content of human morality, which can be tested against those of rival theories, it reveals that the study of morality is simply another branch of science.

Dunbar, R. I. M., Launay, J., & Curry, O. (2016). The Complexity of Jokes Is Limited by Cognitive Constraints on Mentalizing. Human Nature, 27(2), 130-140.

Pietraszewski, D., Curry, O. S., Petersen, M. B., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2015). Constituents of political cognition: Race, party politics, and the alliance detection system. Cognition, 140(0), 24-39.

Petersen, M. B., Aarøe, L., Jensen, N. H., & Curry, O. (2014). Social Welfare and the Psychology of Food Sharing: Short-Term Hunger Increases Support for Social Welfare. Political Psychology, 35(6), 757-773.

Do politically irrelevant events influence important policy opinions? Previous research on social... more Do politically irrelevant events influence important policy opinions? Previous research on social welfare attitudes has emphasized the role of political factors such as economic self-interest and ideology. Here, we demonstrate that attitudes to social welfare are also influenced by short-term fluctuations in hunger. Using theories in evolutionary psychology, we predict that hungry individuals will be greedier and take more resources from others while also attempting to induce others to share by signaling cooperative intentions and expressing support for sharing, including evolutionarily novel forms of sharing such as social welfare. We test these predictions using self-reported hunger data as well as comparisons of subjects who participated in relevant online studies before and after eating lunch. Across four studies collected in two different welfare regimes—the United Kingdom and Denmark—we consistently find that hungry individuals act in a greedier manner but describe themselves as more cooperative and express greater support for social welfare.

Curry, O. S., & Dunbar, R. I. M. (2013). Sharing a joke: The effects of a similar sense of humor on affiliation and altruism. Evolution and Human Behavior, 34(2), 125-129.

Cooperation requires that individuals are able to identify, and preferentially associate with, ot... more Cooperation requires that individuals are able to identify, and preferentially associate with, others who have compatible preferences and the shared background knowledge needed to solve interpersonal coordination problems. This body of shared knowledge constitute a substantial proportion of what is called ‘culture’. It has been argued that, for this reason, individuals prefer to associate with others who share their culture, and also that shared appreciation of humor provides a particularly effective means of identifying others with the relevant preferences and knowledge. The present experiment uses a ‘dummy rating procedure’ to compare the effects of sharing an appreciation of non-humorous (first lines of novels) and humorous (jokes) cultural stimuli on interpersonal affiliation, altruism and assessment. The results show that the degree of shared appreciation for both sets of stimuli had a positive effect on Affiliation; only humorous stimuli had an effect on Altruism; and neither effected the Assessment of others' personal traits. Thus, the results support the general theory that shared culture promotes affiliation, and provide evidence of the special role of humor in interpersonal relations.

Curry, O. (2007, 6 April 2007). Animal instincts set us on the moral path. THES.

Curry, O. (2006). One good deed. Nature, 444(7120), 683.

Curry, O. (2005). A change of mind? Nature, 435(7041), 425-426.

A review of: Buller, D. J. (2005). Adapting Minds: Evolutionary psychology and the persistent que... more

Curry, O. S. (2003). Review of A. J. Field, Altruistically Inclined? The Behavioral Sciences, Evolutionary Theory, and the Origins of Reciprocity. Quarterly Review of Biology, 78(1), 126-127.

Quarterly Review of Biology, 2003

Curry, O. S. (2003). Review of Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox edited by Gerd Gigerenzer and Reinhard Selten. Human Nature Review, 3(14 March), 163-165.

Curry, O. S. (2001). Review of J. M. G. van der Dennen, David Smillie, and Daniel R. Wilson (Eds.), The Darwinian Heritage and Sociobiology. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 37(4), 395-396.

Curry, O. (1998). Thinking on the past. New Scientist, 157(2127), 51.

Curry, O. (1998). Wet between the ears. New Scientist, 158(2139), 49.

New Scientist

Profiles in Evolutionary Moral Psychology: Oliver Scott Curry (2014)

Curry, O. S. (2016). "What do you consider the most interesting scientific news? Morality is Made of Meat". The 2016 Edge Question

Curry, O. S. (2014). "What scientific idea is in need of retirement? Associationism". The 2014 Edge Question

Curry, O. S. (2008). Selfish-gene theory. In M. J. Benton (Ed.), The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Natural World (pp. 113-115): Thames & Hudson.

Cronin, H., & Curry, O. (2008). Darwinism's fantastic voyage. The Lancet, 372, S5-S10.

The Lancet, 2008

Curry, O. (2004, 24 November). Rational choice theory in biology and economics. Working Paper. Workshop In Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Bloomington, IN.

Cronin, H., & Curry, O. (Eds.). (1998-2001). Darwinism Today. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Yale University Press.

Curry, O., Cronin, H., & Ashworth, J. (Eds.). (1996). Matters of Life and Death: The worldview from evolutionary psychology (Vol. 10). London: Demos.

Curry, O. (2005). Morality as Natural History: An adaptationist account of ethics. PhD, London School of Economics, London.

What are moral values and where do they come from? David Hume argued that moral values were the p... more What are moral values and where do they come from? David Hume argued that moral values were the product of a range of passions, inherent to human nature, that aim at the common good of society. Recent developments in game theory, evolutionary biology, animal behaviour, psychology and neuroscience suggest that Hume was right to suppose that humans have such passions. This dissertation reviews these developments, and considers their implications for moral philosophy. I first explain what Darwinian adaptations are, and how they generate behaviour. I then explain that, contrary to the Hobbesian caricature of life in the state of nature, evolutionary theory leads us to expect that organisms will be social, cooperative and even altruistic under certain circumstances. I introduce four main types of cooperation – kin altruism, coordination to mutual advantage, reciprocity and conflict resolution – and provide examples of ‘adaptations for cooperation’ from nonhuman species. I then review the evidence for equivalent adaptations for cooperation in humans. Next, I show how this Humean-Darwinian account of the moral sentiments can be used to make sense of traditional positions in meta-ethics; how it provides a rich deductive framework in which to locate and make sense of a wide variety of apparently contradictory positions in traditional normative ethics; and how it clearly demarcates the problems of applied ethics. I defend this version of ethical naturalism against the charge that it commits ‘the naturalistic fallacy’. I conclude that evolutionary theory provides the best account yet of the origins and status of moral values, and that moral philosophy should be thought of as a branch of natural history.

Cross-Cultural Research on Moral Values (2014)

Moral Psychology Readings (M&C) March 2013

Behaviour and its Evolution: Animal and Human (Oxford, 2013)

Quantitative Research Methods (Statistics) (Oxford, 2013)

Evolutionary Psychology Tutorials (Oxford, 2011)

Evolutionary psychology is the search for adaptations in the human mind. Evolutionary theory sugg... more Evolutionary psychology is the search for adaptations in the human mind. Evolutionary theory suggests that organisms are bundles of adaptations, which can be thought of as phenotypic strategies designed by natural selection to propel genes into future generations. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, evolutionary psychologists try to match the adaptive problems that were present during human evolutionary history with the adaptive 'design features' apparent in our psychologies. As well as basic adaptations for 'feeding, fighting and fleeing', evolutionary theory predicts that humans will have sexually-dimorphic adaptations for mating and parenting, and a range of adaptations for cooperation. Some adaptations, such as 'theory of mind', seem to have been the key to innovations such as language, culture, and morality. However, critics allege that evolutionary psychologists overestimate the role of specially-designed adaptations, and that their methods are anyway inadequate to discover them. This course of tutorials will review the theoretical and empirical basis of evolutionary psychology, with a view to arriving at a considered judgement of its contribution to explaining human thought and behaviour.

Evolution and Human Nature (LSE, 2008)

Political Theory (NYU, 2008)

In conversation with George C. Williams (1995)

For anyone who thought 1966 was famous only for England's victory in the World Cup, it may come a... more For anyone who thought 1966 was famous only for England's victory in the World Cup, it may come as some surprise that the year also marked a major turning point in the history of ideas. The publication of Adaptation and Natural Selection finally killed off group-selection and set the foundations for three decades of progress in the evolutionary sciences. Considered by many to be one of Darwin's representatives on earth, George C Williams talked to the evolutionist about monkey morals, Stone Age slackers and his new book.

In conversation with David Buss (1996)

David Buss's 1995 book The Evolution of Desire put Darwin's theory of sexual selection to the hum... more David Buss's 1995 book The Evolution of Desire put Darwin's theory of sexual selection to the human test, and proved conclusively that there's more to sex than gender. the evolutionist spoke to him about the impact of his work, the alternative view of the swinging sixties, and the future of the evolutionary enterprise.

In conversation with Richard Dawkins (1997)

Richard Dawkins has been the acknowledged leader of the evolutionary pack since the publication o... more Richard Dawkins has been the acknowledged leader of the evolutionary pack since the publication of The Selfish Gene in 1976. the evolutionist spoke to him about the difficulties he has faced in getting the evolutionary message across, his views on evolutionary psychology, and how selfish humans really are.

In conversation with Steven Pinker (1998)

Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct provided the first and most comprehensive account of a majo... more Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct provided the first and most comprehensive account of a major area of human psychology as an adaptation designed by natural selection. He then took on the rest of the brain in his book How the Mind Works. the evolutionist caught up with him to ask him about the grey matter we all call home, the eternal problems of consciousness, and those things that shall ever remain beyond our understanding.

In conversation with John Maynard Smith FRS (1999)

John Maynard Smith FRS is one of the most respected evolutionary biologists this century. He is p... more John Maynard Smith FRS is one of the most respected evolutionary biologists this century. He is perhaps best known for his application of game theory to biology -- presented in his 1982 book Evolution and the Theory of Games -- which introduced such notions as the 'evolutionarily stable strategy', and paved the way for a more rigourous scientific analysis of interactions among living things. the evolutionist talked to him about his new book, The Origins of Life: From the birth of life to the origin of language, discussing such perrenial questions as: What is life? What was the first sexual act? and Did the egg really come before the chicken?