Cognitive migration describes when our imagination guides us through potential futures. It’s a process through which we work out the emotional, cognitive and social problems of traveling to a new location by putting ourselves in a future time and space.
Are dance and lullabies hardwired into humans? A UC Davis study challenges the idea that they are universal, using 43 years of research with the Northern Aché to explore cultural variation in human behavior.
UC Davis anthropologist Manvir Singh explores the enduring relevance of shamanism in his new book, revealing how ancient rituals still shape modern life. The book offers a sweeping analysis of shamanic practices across time
and cultures, reframing them through cognitive science and modern human behavior.
The U.S. government’s recent shift to a non-cooperative negotiating strategy has used the tactic of threatening to increase the costs of not agreeing to U.S. terms, according to a UC Davis expert in international negotiations. While non-cooperation is far from unprecedented in international negotiations, it could make U.S. negotiations in the future much more challenging.
Psychology Ph.D. student Zachary Oakland, a military veteran, is developing a new understanding of social anxiety. What drives him, he said, is a need to understand post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a debilitating condition that many veterans bring home.
Of the 8.7 million species on Earth, why are human beings the only one that paints self-portraits, walks on the Moon and worships gods? For decades, many scholars have argued that the difference stems from our ability to learn from each other. But extensive data has emerged suggesting that other animals, including bees, chimpanzees and crows, can also generate cultural complexity through social learning.
In her recent book Primate Socioecology: Shifting Perspectives, Lynne A. Isbell presents a new way of classifying primate social organizations. Primates are unusual among mammals in having a wide diversity of social organizations, including living alone, in pairs, in small cohesive groups, in large cohesive groups, and in groups whose members split up and come back together repeatedly.
Over the past few years, there have been extensive changes in content moderation policy on social media platforms. As companies like X and Meta loosen these policies, users have reported an increase in hate speech. So what caused this shift? Professor Cuihua (Cindy) Shen, who specializes in computational communication, provided insight into the evolving policies of major social media platforms, the rise of hate speech, and the role of algorithms in its spread.
Historian Lisa Materson’s book, Radical Solidarity: Ruth Reynolds, Political Allyship, and the Battle for Puerto Rico's Independence (UNC Press, 2024), tells the story of an unlikely activist and radical pacifist from South Dakota who followed her conscience to Puerto Rico in the 1940s to join the independence movement.
How do pilgrimages and rituals arise? How do people become convinced to try something new? What makes a place so special that it persists through time, drawing people to it again and again? UC Davis anthropologists Cristina Moya and Nicolas Restrepo Ochoa are answering these questions at the ground floor.
