Joseph Henrich holds the Canada Research Chair in Culture, Cognition and Coevolution at the University of British Columbia

University of British Columbia

The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...

 where he is an associate professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 in the departments of psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 and economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

. He was previously on the faculty of Emory University

Emory University

Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...

.

Henrich earned a Master's degree and a doctorate in Anthropology from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1995 and 1999, respectively. He also holds bachelor degrees in anthropology and aerospace engineering from the University of Notre Dame, earned in 1991.

His research areas include:

• cultural learning, development and cognition, including their coevolutionary and social origins
• the evolution of cooperation, institutions, and societal complexity
  Complex society
  In anthropology and archaeology, a complex society is a social formation that is otherwise described as a formative or developed state. The main criteria of complexity are:...
  
  
• common-pool resource and public-good
  Public good
  In economics, a public good is a good that is non-rival and non-excludable. Non-rivalry means that consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce availability of the good for consumption by others; and non-excludability means that no one can be effectively excluded from using the good...
  
  s problems
• evolution of social stratification
• culture and cumulative adaptation
• integration of economic decision-making and preferences with cultural evolution
  Sociocultural evolution
  Sociocultural evolution is an umbrella term for theories of cultural evolution and social evolution, describing how cultures and societies have changed over time...
  
    and evolutionary psychology
  Evolutionary psychology
  Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
  
  
• coevolution of religious beliefs, rituals, and institutions over human history
• methodology.

Henrich is the (co-)author of a book and some forty scholarly articles.
He is also a reviewer for journals in general science, anthropology, archaeology, evolution, economics, business, psychology, sociology, and philosophy as well as for several academic publishers.

Selected publications

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• Joseph Henrich, 2000. "Does Culture Matter in Economic Behavior? Ultimatum Game Bargaining among the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon," American Economic Review, 90(4), pp. 973-979.
• _____ and Robert Boyd, 2001. "Why People Punish Defectors: Weak Conformist Transmission Can Stabilize Costly Enforcement of Norms in Cooperative Dilemmas," Journal of Theoretical Biology, 208(1), pp. 79-89 (close "Bookmarks"). Abstract.
• Joseph Henrich, 2001. "Cultural Transmission and the Diffusion of Innovations: Adoption Dynamics Indicate That Biased Cultural Transmission Is the Predominate Force in Behavioral Change," American Anthropologist, NS, 103(4), p p. 992-1013.
• Joseph Henrich et al., 2001. "In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies,", Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis and Richard McElreath American Economic Review, 91(2), pp. 73-78 (close "Bookmarks").
• Joseph Henrich and Francisco J. Gil-White, 2001. "The Evolution of Prestige: Freely Conferred Deference as a Mechanism for Enhancing the Benefits of Cultural Transmission," 22(3), pp. 165-196 Abstract.
• Joseph Henrich and Richard McElreath, 2003. "The Evolution of Cultural Evolution," Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 12(3), pp. 123-135.
• Joseph Henrich, 2004. "Demography and Cultural Evolution: How Adaptive Cultural Processes can Produce Maladaptive Losses: The Tasmanian Case," American Antiquity, 69(2), p p. 197-214.
• _____ et al., 2004. "Cultural Group Selection, Coevolutionary Processes and Large-Scale Cooperation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 53(1), pp. 3-35. Abstract.
• Joseph Henrich et al., ed., 2004. Foundations of Human Sociality. Oxford. Description and scroll to chapter-preview. links.
  • Larry Samuelson, 2005. "Foundations of Human Sociality: A Review Essay," Journal of Economic Literature, 43(2), pp. 488-497.
• Joseph Henrich et al., 2005. "'Economic Man' in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-scale Societies," Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(6), pp. 795-815. Abstract.
• Joan B. Silk, ..., Joseph Henrich, et al., 2005. "Chimpanzees Are Indifferent to the Welfare of Unrelated Group Members," Nature, 437, pp. 1357–1359. Abstract.
• Joseph Henrich et al., 2006. "Costly Punishment Across Human Societies," Science, 23:312,no. 5781, pp. 1767 - 1770 (close Bookmarks there). Abstract.
• Daniel J. Hruschka and Joseph Henrich, 2006. "Friendship, Cliquishness, and the Emergence of Cooperation, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 239(1), pp. 1-15. Abstract.
• John Henrich and Natalie Henrich, 2006. "Culture, Evolution, and the Puzzle of Human Cooperation," Cognitive Systems Research, 7, pp. 220-245 (close "Bookmarks").
• Joseph Henrich and Robert Boyd, 2008. "Division of Labor, Economic Specialization, and the Evolution of Social Stratification," Current Anthropology, 49(4), pp. 715-724.
• Herbert Gintis
  Herbert Gintis
  Herbert Gintis is an American behavioral scientist, educator, and author. He is notable for his foundational views on Altruism, Cooperation, Epistemic Game Theory, Gene-culture coevolution, Efficiency wages, Strong reciprocity, and Human capital theory. Gintis has also written extensively on...
  
  , Joseph Henrich, et al., 2008. "Strong Reciprocity and the Roots of Human Morality," Social Justice Research, 21(2), pp. 241-253 (close Pages tab).
• Joseph Henrich, 2009. "The Evolution of Costly Displays, Cooperation, and Religion," Evolution and Human Behavior, 30, pp. 244-260 (close "Bookmarks").
• _____ et al., 2010. "Markets, Religion, Community Size and the Evolution of Fairness and Punishment," Science, 327, pp. 1480–1484. Abstract.

External links

• Faculty profile, University of British Columbia