Sarah Brosnan

Scientist

Sarah Brosnan is Distinguished University Professor of psychology, philosophy and neuroscience at Georgia State University, co-director of the Language Research Center and a member of the Brains and Behavior program and the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience. She researches the mechanisms underlying cooperation, reciprocity, inequity and other economic decisions in nonhuman primates in order to address these issues from an evolutionary perspective. She focuses on the decisions individuals make -- including how they make them, how social or ecological environments affect decisions and interactions, and under what circumstances they can alter behavior depending on these conditions. Brosnan's book, Cooperation and Conflict: The Interaction of Opposites in Shaping Social Behavior, coedited with Walter Wilczynski, will be published in 2021.

As other primates shows us, humans evolved to care about fairness because we depend on cooperation, and if you can’t find partners who treat you fairly, cooperation just doesn’t pay.

capuchin monkeys, chimpanzees, comparative economics, cooperation, decision-making, evolution of behavior, fairness, primatology