Christophe Heintz’s blog

Isn't it remarkable that evolved human cognition produces scientific, economic and political stuff?

Does Prospect Theory explain Trump and Brexit votes?

The quantity of votes in favor of the Brexit and in favor of Trump surprised most of us. We were surprised that Brexit and Trump voters would reject pretty safe options—remain in the EU and

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Why do mathematicians always agree?

Science is a lively social activity, with many claims being lively debated. What about mathematics? The cliché about mathematicians being poor at managing social relations is quite strong and

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How cultural is cultural epidemiology? 2. Cultural embedding

This is the second part of Christophe's series of posts on what culture does to culture (the first post is here). *** Most cultural phenomena are embedded in other cultural phenomena. For one thing,

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How cultural is cultural epidemiology? 1. Enculturation

When discussing about cultural epidemiology with informed colleagues, I often come to think that they tend to underplay the extent to which cultural epidemiological accounts can integrate encultura

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Politics and the psychology of irrational decisions

In my previous post (Cases of institution that make us smart), I have been considering a proposal about increasing taxes on junk food and decreasing taxes on fruits and greens. The proposal differed

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Cases of institutions that make us smart

Evolutionary psychologists assert that our genetically driven cognitive endowment has evolved during the Pleistocene. As a consequence, our innate cognitive mechanisms are adapted to the environment

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