#105 - Are Humans Evolved for Cooperation and Kindness?: A Dialogue with Michael McCullough

Converging Dialogues

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Michael McCullough on cooperation and kindness with humans. They discuss his professional background and why he wrote his most recent book along with how one can understand kindness and cooperation. They discuss the four instincts of care, reciprocity, judgments, intentions, and character evaluation. They also discuss a taxonomy of emotions, compassion, empathy, and other emotions. They talk about the axial age and development of the golden rule. They also mention humanitarianism in the modern age, effective altruism and the future of compassion.

Michael McCullough is a Professor of Psychology and Director of the Evolution and Human Behavior Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego. He is an experimental psychologist whose work has been on forgiveness, revenge, empathy, and prosocial behavior. He has over 150 scientific papers to have appeared in publication such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Psychology, and Psychological Bulletin. He is the author of numerous books including his most recent, The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented A New Moral Code, which can be found here. You can also find his work at his website. Twitter: @me_mccullough

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