Psychology Colloquium: Professor Robert Seyfarth

Mon, February 22 2010

Psychology Colloquium: Professor Robert Seyfarth, University of Pennsylvania

Title: Baboon Metaphysics

Abstract: We study nonhuman primates to help understand the evolution of human thought, language, and behavior. Sixteen years’ fieldwork on baboons in the Okavango Delta of Botswana reveals a complex society, organized around a core of adult females who form a hierarchy of ranked, matrilineal families. Survival and reproduction depend on social skills. Through field playback experiments, we show that baboons have a mind that is specialized for observing social life, computing social relations, and predicting other animals’ behavior. Through studies of stress and its alleviation, we show that female baboons – like modern humans – experience the greatest stress from events like predation and infanticide that are unpredictable and difficult to control. They alleviate stress by broadening and extending their social relationships with others. Finally, through long-term data we provide new evidence that the offspring of females who form strong social bonds with other females survive at higher rates and live significantly longer than the offspring of females who form weaker social bonds. These survival benefits are independent of maternal dominance rank and number of kin and extend into offspring adulthood.

3:30PM in Stiteler Hall room B21. Refreshments will be served at 3:00PM in Stiteler Hall's Silverstein Forum.