Evolutionary psychology | EPFL Graph Search

Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evolved to solve. In this framework, psychological traits and mechanisms are either functional products of natural and sexual selection or non-adaptive by-products of other adaptive traits. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and the liver, is common in evolutionary biology. Evolutionary psychologists apply the same thinking in psychology, arguing that just as the heart evolved to pump blood, and the liver evolved to detoxify poisons, there is modularity of mind in that different psychological mechanisms evolved to solve different adaptive problems. These evolutionary psychologists argue that much of human behavior is the output of psychological adaptations that evolved to solve recu

Reward biases spontaneous neural reactivation during sleep

Maximilien Catsiyannis, Dimitri Nestor Alice Van De Ville

Sleep favors the reactivation and consolidation of newly acquired memories. Yet, how our brain selects the noteworthy information to be reprocessed during sleep remains largely unknown. From an evolutionary perspective, individuals must retain information that promotes survival, such as avoiding dangers, finding food, or obtaining praise or money. Here, we test whether neural representations of rewarded (compared to non-rewarded) events have priority for reactivation during sleep. Using functional MRI and a brain decoding approach, we show that patterns of brain activity observed during waking behavior spontaneously reemerge during slow-wave sleep. Critically, we report a privileged reactivation of neural patterns previously associated with a rewarded task (i.e., winning at a complex game). Moreover, during sleep, activity in task-related brain regions correlates with better subsequent memory performance. Our study uncovers a neural mechanism whereby rewarded life experiences are preferentially replayed and consolidated while we sleep. Sleep is known to promote memory consolidation, but the extent to which this is dependent on the memory's relevance remains unclear. Here, the authors use a brain decoding approach to show that neural representations of rewarded experiences undergo a privileged reactivation during sleep, favouring their consolidation.

NATURE RESEARCH2021

The diversity of moral preferences: Evolutionary foundations and some implications in environmental economics

Boris Thurm

Empirical evidence suggests that there exists substantial heterogeneity in individuals' social preferences. However, there is little theoretical basis supporting this observation and economic models often assume that all individuals are identical. Hence, the aim of this thesis is to provide theoretical foundations for the observed heterogeneity of social preferences and to derive its implications for environmental policy. We first extend the framework of evolutionary game theory introducing the concepts of evolutionarily stable population and an assortment matrix to study the evolution of preferences in assortatively matched interactions between heterogeneous individuals. We show that there exists a heterogeneous evolutionarily stable population composed of both fully-selfish and fully-moral individuals for some but not all games and assortment structures. Therefore, the preferences that are favored by evolution depend on the socio-economic environment. In particular, our analysis highlights the key role played by the assortment structure in the existence and the robustness of heterogeneous evolutionarily stable populations. We then design a model with heterogeneous moral individuals involved in a social dilemma. Our framework sheds light on many empirical findings explaining why some individuals are willing to voluntarily engage in costly pro-environmental actions even though the impact of their efforts on environmental externalities is negligible. Investigating how individuals' beliefs can alter their behaviors and hinder cooperation, we demonstrate why financial incentives can fail to foster pro-environmental behaviors in some cases while non-financial incentives such as nudges and educational campaigns could be successful. Consequently, better accounting for the social motives behind individuals' decisions in economic models could help policy makers design more effective policies.

EPFL2019

Fluid Dynamics and Outliers

Bernard André Vincent Calisti

The current craze for unicorns and other hyper growth companies brings a novel interest in what makes the exceptional performance of a firm. Literature about technological innovation explains the bond between the performance level reached by a company and its ability to promote radical innovations. But if the theory of disruption enables to validate various levels of innovation, it faces difficulties to define more accurately the drivers of hyper growth. This thesis comprises five main moments to better understand what drives fast growing young technological companies. To survey this question we have defined one single scientific field, namely microfluidics, focusing on active clusters and spinoffs from the same parent in this sector. The first phase aims at highlighting evolutionary prospects about scientific enhancements in microfluidics leading to successful innovations. It shows that there is no innovation âdue to succeedâ and that technical innovations do not make progress as linearly as usual technological trees found in academic literature could suggest. That leads to a kind of rewriting in the evolution of inkjet technology. The second phase intends to explore performance among groups of spinoffs from the same parent. We consider the 2 European clusters in microfluidics. It appears that all these firms are developing, but they do not reach the same degree of performance. From far, yet, the differences in performance do not clearly appear. To explain variations, we study each spinoffâs growth during the 5 first years after launching before comparing with the growth during the 5 first years of the mother company. We have to look in details to the European clusters, to see also technology variants. A fractal approach is thus enabling to understand that performance of firms is like hidden in technology layers. The third moment elaborates on the relationship between a superior technology and an outstanding performance level. In the case of spin off performance we are not at a stage where we could put the phenomenon under equation! That is why it was appropriate to survey the scientific and technological clusters in Europe from a case study perspective. It appears then that seemingly similarly disrupting technologies do not end up capturing similar value. In fact, slight differences in the technologies used are leading to massive differences in performance. We discover in the end that one single variable is rooting Outstanding Performance. In a fourth phase we restate the initial question to better understand what makes Outliers and Outstanding Performance. Where we show that exceptional value capture is coming from exceptionally fitting of the technology considered to a very specific application. Outstanding Performance is thus attached to an extraordinary EBITDA. The last moment of the dissertation is devoted to ultimately check findings. The whole checking process eventually led to the conclusion that outliers and outstanding performance are permanently referring to a kind of âuniquenessâ embedded in the various cases of exceptional value capture. Such a unique feature, qualifying outliers among technological startups, makes by itself a research topic. As more and more attention is given to specific statistical populations, not only could this research contribute to improve the knowledge about hyper growth companies but it could also impact methods in statistics; and beyond methods: statistics themselves as a discipline.

EPFL2017