In primates and humans alike, the number of social relationships an individual can have is constrained in part by its social cognitive competences and in part by the time available to invest in face-to-face interaction. I will show that time, in particular, has a significant effect on the quality...

Tooby and deVore argued that hominin evolution hinged on the exploitation of a unique 'cognitive niche'. We propose that a diversity of evidence indicates this was fundamentally a socio-cognitive niche. Analysis of hunter-gatherer ethnologies confirms unprecedented levels of egalitarian...

I will review recent research in neuroimaging and computation neuroscience, and present a new paradigm for studying decision making in pairs. Results from this paradigm demonstrate that discussion between the partners is necessary and sufficient for creating an advantage for the group decision...