Division Of Labor, Polygyny, And Personality Across Societies w/ Michael Gurven

Hello, everybody! Today, I am releasing an interview with Dr. Michael Gurven. He is a Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, chair of the Integrative Anthropological Sciences Unit, and also head of the Evolutionary Anthropology and Biodemography Research Group. He is an evolutionary anthropologist aiming to explain behavior and physiological systems as adaptive solutions to competing demands of limited resource allocation. He employs ethnographic field settings as laboratories for testing hypotheses about human variation in behavior, psychology and physiology. Currently his research focuses on two broad, inter-related areas: biodemography of human health, lifespan and aging; and transitions in social and economic behavior. 

In this episode, we first talk about limited resource allocation, and how people have to make trade-offs when investing their material and time resources. Then we discuss how we can use economic games to study human behavior. We talk about marriage and the sexual division of labor, and also mate preferences. We also cover a recent study about the relationship between wealth inequality and polygyny. Finally, we discuss human personality, the problems with the apparent lack of universality of the Big Five, and the niche diversity hypothesis of personality. 

https://youtu.be/p1DRuvoRQdg

Link to podcast version (Anchor): http://bit.ly/2Q8CFht