Homo ridens vs. Homo sapiens

Homo Socialis and Homo Sapiens

The assumption that individuals are behaving rationally can, at times, usefully constrain predictions of individual and collective behavior. However, success in predicting human and group behavior will often require relaxing this assumption of rationality, instead employing evolutionary, neural, and cognitive constraints. One particularly important form of neural and cognitive constraint is tha...

Homo Sapiens

From Homo Economicus to Homo Sapiens

R esponding to a request for a forecast is especially tricky for someone like me, who specializes in other people’s biases. Research in psychology suggests that certain biases are very likely to creep into my forecasts about the future of economics (or anything else). 1. Optimism (and wishful thinking). We all tend to be optimistic about the future. On the first day of my MBA class on decision-...

Managing Homo Sapiens

A The evolutionary process in general, and human evolution in particular, are basic to comprehending Homo sapiens. Human evolutionary heritage predisposes human behaviour, and that is what all management systems (including Total Quality Management) seek to affect via training, coordination, and motivation. The evidence of behavioural biology and evolutionary psychology points to two huma...

Who's afraid of Homo sapiens?

Understanding how humans differ from other animals, as well as how we are like them, requires comparative investigations. For the purpose of documenting the distinctive features of humans, the most informative research involves comparing humans to our closest relatives-the chimpanzees and other great apes. Psychology and anthropology have maintained a tradition of empirical comparative research...