Very Bad Wizards

Episode 33: Monkeys, Smurfs, and Human Conformity (With Laurie Santos)



October 14th, 2013  •  57 mins 9 secs  •  Download (28 MB)  •  Link with Timestamp

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Special guest Laurie Santos (Psychology, Yale) joins us to talk about what animal cognition can tell us about human nature. Why are other primates better at resisting the misleading influence of others than humans? Is conformity a byproduct of our sophisticated cultural learning capacities? Are we more like Chimpanzees or Bonobos? Why does Dave spend so much time writing Smurf fan fiction?