Keith Jensen
Short biography
Keith Jensen is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Psychology at the University of Manchester, working on the evolution and psychological underpinnings of sociality and the nature of other-regarding concerns in governing our social behaviour. To investigate how people come to know and care about the welfare of others, he uses ideas from game theory and methods from experimental economics, as well as standard psychological approaches, to study nonhuman primates and children.
Uniquely prosocial human other-regarding concerns
The fact that humans cooperate with non-kin is something we take for granted, but this is an anomaly in the animal kingdom. Our species’ ability to behave prosocially may be based on human-unique psychological mechanisms. The motivational and emotional substrates that scaffold prosocial – and antisocial – behaviours that typify human sociality begin to emerge in childhood. However, the evidence for their evolutionary antecedents in extant species is equivocal. Empathy and other-regarding concerns align individuals with each other and with their groups. Experimental evidence from children and chimpanzees will be used to suggest that alignment mechanisms allow humans to engage in large-scale cooperation, and misalignment can lead to large-scale competition.
