Manvir Singh, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, recently published an essay in The New Yorker titled "Don't Believe What They're Telling You About Misinformation." 

"Experts who write fearfully about misinformation often depict humans as gullible saps whose zombie mind are infected by lies spread by social media," Singh wrote about his essay on X. "These writers get something fundamentally wrong (about) how beliefs work."  

Singh directs the Integrative Anthropology Lab, "which combines evolutionary, cognitive and sociocultural methods and theory to understand the nature and origins of human behavior, particularly ubiquitous sociocultural traditions such as shamanism, witchcraft, story and music." His research interests also extend to ancestral social organization, drug use and mystical experiences, and evolutionary approaches to mental health.   

Learn More About Singh's Research

Sourcing songs from across the globe, Singh and his fellow researchers found that people from different types of societies can successfully identify a song’s type by how it sounds, regardless of the language of its words.