Robert Boyd
Appointment
Advisor
Institutions, Organizations & Growth
About
Robert Boyd is an evolutionary anthropologist whose research is focused on the evolutionary psychology of the mechanisms that give rise to human culture, and shape it; and on how these mechanisms interact with population dynamic processes to shape human cultural variation. He uses a combination of mathematical modelling, laboratory experiments and ethnographic fieldwork to address these questions.
Awards
- Leverhulme Visiting Professor, University of Cambridge, 2005–2006
- Invited fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, 2001–2002
- J. I. Staley Prize for Culture and the Evolutionary Process, 1989
- John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 1988–1989
Relevant Publications
Derex, M., and R. Boyd. “The foundations of the human cultural niche.” Nat. Commun. 6 (2015): 8398.
Boyd, R. et al. “The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation.” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108 (2011): 10918–10925.
Mathew, S., and R. Boyd. “Punishment sustains large-scale cooperation in prestate warfare.” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108 (2011): 11375–11380.
Perrault, C. et al. “A Bayesian Approach to the Evolution of Social Learning.” Evol. Hum. Behav. 33 (December 2011): 449–59.
Kline, M., and R. Boyd. “Population size predicts technological complexity in Oceania.” Proc. R. Soc. B 277 (2010): 2559–2564.
Richerson, P.J., and R. Boyd. Not by Genes Alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. (Translated into Korean and Italian.)
Henrich, J. et al. The Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic experiments and ethnographic evidence from fifteen small-scale societies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Boyd, R., and P.J. Richerson. Culture and the Evolutionary Process, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Support Us
CIFAR is a registered charitable organization supported by the governments of Canada, Alberta and Quebec, as well as foundations, individuals, corporations and Canadian and international partner organizations.