University of Utah Anthropology Department

Richard McElreath

Associate Professor

101B Stewart
801-581-6747

Courses

Personal webpage

Areas of Specialization

Cultural evolution and cultural transmission, behavioral ecology, evolutionary theory, E. Africa, Faroe Islands

Research

I am an evolutionary ecologist who studies humans. My main interest is in how the evolution of fancy social learning in humans accounts for the unusual nature of human adaptation and extraordinary scale and variety of human societies. Humans are more widespread and successful than any other vertebrate. Simultaneously, humans are unlike any other animal in that we cooperate in very large groups of unrelated individuals. I and my colleagues use formal evolutionary models, experiments and ethnographic fieldwork to address these puzzles.

I also have strong interests in general evolutionary ecology, especially the evolution of social behavior.

Selected Publications

See the full list on my personal webpage.

McElreath, R., & Strimling, P. (2008). When natural selection favors learning from parents. Current Anthropology, 49, 307-316.

McElreath, R., & Boyd, R. (2007). Mathematical Models of Social Evolution: A Guide for the Perplexed. Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press.

Henrich, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Ensminger, J., Barrett, C., & Bolyanatz, A., et al. (2006). Costly punishment across human societies. Science, 312, 1767-1770.

McElreath, R. (2004). Social learning and the maintenance of cultural variation: An evolutionary model and data from East Africa. American Anthropologist, 106(2), 308-321.

Henrich, J., & McElreath, R. (2003). The evolution of cultural evolution. Evolutionary Anthropology, 12, 123-135.

McElreath, R., Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (2003). Shared norms and the evolution of ethnic markers. Current Anthropology, 44(1), 122-129.