Explore the true nature of humans—selfish animals that strategically weigh the costs and benefits of their behaviors, critically about the selective pressures that regulate theft, adultery, deception, and murder.

1.1  Are People Fair or Selfish?: Learn that people behave selfishly when no one is watching.

• Natural Selection Promotes Alleles, Not Groups
• Video: Me, Myself, and I
• Video: One for You, Two for Me
• Quiz: Sharing Money When Being Watched
• Video: What You Don’t Know Won’t Hurt Me
• Quiz: The Dictator Game
• Charity: A Real-life Dictator Game
• Tipping: A Real-life Dictator Game

1.2  How Cooperation Evolves: Humans cooperate because of kinship, reciprocity, and reputation.

• Societies Emerge from Cooperation Among Individuals
• Video: Selfishly Cooperative
• Video: I’m No Better than Two of My Brothers
• Video: Tit for Tat
• Quiz: Maintaining Cooperation
• Children Learn to Reciprocate
• Quiz: The Most Common Strategy in A Successful Group
• Video: Team Player
• Case: Why Life Cooperates
• Quiz: Multicellular Organisms
• Critical Thinking: Reality Check

1.3 Why We Punish: The threat of punishments maintains cooperation in groups of unrelated people.

• Punishment Deters Selfishness
• Video: This is Gonna Hurt Me More than It Hurts You
• Quiz: Average Offer in A Dictator Game
• Video: Uniquely Human
• Quiz: Punishment for Unfair Offers
• Video: Play Fair
• A Sense of Justice
• Case: Are Chimpanzees Fair?
• Criminal Justice Deters Selfish Behaviors
• Case Study: Fines Keep Drivers from Speeding
• Video: The Limits of Justice
• Countermeasures Undermine the Threat of Punishment

1.4  Protect your Reputation: Every society tracks the reputations of its members to know which
people behave fairly and which do not.

• Cooperators Stick Together
• Video: Peer Pressure
• Even Children Care about Reputation
• Video: Herd Mentality
• Quiz: Oxytocin and Trust
• Humans Societies Track Reputation in Many Ways
• Quiz: Strategy to Choose a Biology Lab Partner
• Video: Rich Enough Not to Care
• Critical Thinking: When Feeling Bad is Good

1.5 What Makes Someone Antisocial?: Both genes and environment contribute to variation in behavior among people.

• Video: The Antisocial Brain
• Video: Nature or Nurture?
• Personal Application: Human Genetics
• Video: Blame It on my Genes
• People Develop Social Strategies According to Culture
• Culture Influences One’s Concern for Fairness
• Gene-Environment Interactions
• Video: Bringing Sexy Back

Explore the mating strategies of humans to understand why some people cheat on their partners.

2.1 Differences Between the Sexes: Men and women differ in their desires for sex and attitudes toward adultery.
● Video: Slick Willy and Genghis Khan
● Video: Men are from Mars
● Quiz: Number of Sexual Partners
● Video: Do Women Lie to Conform?
● Quiz: Responses to Sexual Experience Questions
● Case: Out with the Old, In with the New
● Quiz: Age Preferences
● Video: Variety is the Spice of Life
● Quiz: Number of Sex With Same Partner

2.2 Sexual Conflict:Men and women have conflicting goals created by the fact that men produce many, small gametes while women typically produce one large gamete.

● Video: Sperm is Cheap (but Life is Expensive)
● Quiz: Relationship Between Mates and Offspring
● Case: How Animals Mate
● Video: What is our Natural Mating System?
● Case: Promiscuous Apes
● Quiz: Female Chimpanzee and Sex Partners
● Mating Systems of Nonhuman Primates
● Video: Big Balls and Long Shafts
● Quiz: Species with Smallest Testicles
● Critical Thinking: Why Should A Women Be Polyandrous?

2.3 Mating Systems: Humans participate in every possible type of mating system, ranging
from monogamy to promiscuity.

● Video: Not Just for the Birds
● Quiz: Natural Mating System of Humans
● Video: Show Me the Money
● Video: Why Arrange a Marriage?
● Quiz: Arranged Marriages
● Video: Why I Have Only One Wife
● Case: How Hunter-Gatherers Mate
● Quiz: Hunter-Gatherer Societies

2.4 Adultery: Both men and women commit adultery but usually for different reasons.

● Critical Thinking: How Men and Women View Infidelity
● Case: Do Men Cheat More than Women?
● Video: Testosterone Made Me Do It
● Social Conditions Regulate Testosterone
● Video: Women Cheat Too
● Case: Why Women Cheat
● Video: Costs of Adultery
● Critical Thinking: Cheating in Public

2.5 Virtual Polygamy: In modern societies, men use prostitutes and pornography to feel polygynous while remaining monogamous.

● Video: Virtual Polygamy
● World’s Oldest Profession
● Video: Cybersexual Selection
● Case: An Interview with a Prostitute
● Critical Thinking: Virtually Faithful

Explore the factors that determine when and how people will steal.

3.1 A Sense of Property: Stealing only occurs in species that behave as if they own the resources in their environment.

● Video: Kleptos of the Animal Kingdom
● Quiz: Human and a Sense of Property
● Video: Sneaky Monkeys, Mindful Apes
● Quiz: Monkey and a Sense of Property
● Case: Monkey Business
● Quiz: Stealing Nature of Alpha Chimpanzee
● Video: What’s Mine is Mine (What’s Yours is Partly Mine)
● Quiz: Sharing Money in the Dictator Game
● Critical Thinking: Hungry, Hungry Seagull

3.2 Economics of Theft: In any society, stealing will be a rational behavior for certain individuals.

● Video: Producers and Scroungers
● Quiz: Game Between Producers and Scroungers
● Video: Can’t Make an Honest Living
● Quiz: Condition which Encourage Stealing
● Video: Burglars Don’t Get Health Insurance
● Quiz: Benefit of Becoming a Burglar
● Quiz: Burglar Attacking a House

3.3 Everyone Steals: Everyone steals a little bit, especially when others are unlikely to notice or care.

● Video: The Fudge Factor
● Video: I’ve Got My Eyes on You
● Case: Campus Crime
● Critical Thinking: Have You Seen my Wallet

3.4 Neurobiology of Theft: When people steal, they take a risk calculated by the brain.

● Video: Risky Business
● Video: Blame it on My Parents
● Case: Stealing on the Brain
● Critical Thinking: Give Us Today Our Daily Bread

3.5 Future of Theft: Thieves have shifted their focus from physical resources guarded by home security to electronic resources guarded by internet security.

● Case: Cybertheft
● Video: Does Wall Street have more Thieves than a Prison?
● Video: Just Business, Nothing Personal
● Video: Virtual Pick-pocketing

Learn why people kill other people, whether the killers be relatives, competitors, psychopaths, or soldiers.

4.1 What is Murder?: Murder is a label for intentionally killing someone in your social group.

● Video: Murdering Apes
● Video: Calculus of Death
● Quiz: Moral Dilemma
● Video: No Two Lives Are Equal
● Quiz: Greatest Reproductive Value
● Video: We Killed Them, They Murdered Us
● Quiz: Sacrifices Life to Save Another
● Critical Thinking: Lost at Sea

4.2 Domestic Homicides: Most domestic homicides involve men killing wives, in-laws, or
Stepchildren.

● Video: Who Killed Whom
● Quiz: Women and Murder Rate
● Video: Beware Stepdad
● Quiz: Killer Stepdads
● Video: Why Would Anyone Kill Her Baby?
● Case: Why A Hunter-Gatherer Might Kill Her Baby
● Quiz: Risk of Infanticide

4.3 Crimes of Passion: Testosterone raises the risk of homicide by promoting aggression and
violence in men.

● Video: Blind Rage
● Quiz: Level of Aggression Associated with Hormones
● Video: One of Us Had to Die
● Quiz: Less Chances of Murdering Wife
● Video: A Matter of Honor
● Quiz: Why A Man Kills An Unrelated Man
● Critical Thinking: LA Becomes Less Violent

4.4 Cold-Blooded Killers: Because psychopaths lack empathy, some will kill strangers for
pleasure or gain.

● Video: In Cold Blood
● Video: A Lust for (Taking) Life
● Video: Killer Genes

4.5 Organized Murder: Modern societies have outsourced aggression to militaries that
monopolize the act of killing competitors from other societies.

● Video: Cooperating to Kill
● Video: Ape Wars
● Video: Objects of Genocide

Learn why everyone lies and how to avoid being deceived.

5.1 Everyone Lies: All animals attempt to deceive their competitors, predators, and prey—but humans have taken lying to a new level.

● Video: Lies, Lies, and More Lies
● Quiz: In A Brief Conversation
● Video: What is a Lie?
● Quiz: Deceptions Vs. Lie
● Video: I Know That You Know
● Case: Does A Chimp Know What You’re Thinking?
● Quiz: Chimps Have A Rudimentary Theory of The Mind

5.2 How Does Deception Evolve?: Deception enhances fitness when most individuals signal honestly or when one cannot safely detect a lie.

● Video: The Lying Game
● Quiz: Detecting Vs Believing A Lie
● Video: The Real Deal
● Quiz: Handicaps Can Maintain Honesty
● Video: How to Take Dive
● Quiz: Dive of Soccer Players
● Critical Thinking: Lie for me

5.3 Truth in Advertising?: Both individuals and groups lie when advertising the quality of products or services.

● Video: Honest Advertising
● Video: Really Good Jerky
● Quiz: Benefits from Exaggeration in Advertising
● Video: Crafty Crayfish
● Critical Thinking: Reveal or Conceal?
● Video: Show Me You Can Grind
● Quiz: Qualities of A Skateboarder
● Video: Be Careful Who You Care For
● Quiz: Mother’s Tend to Exaggerate

5.4 How Brains Lie: To lie effectively, one must think quickly and speak carefully, without sending subconscious signals of stress.

● Video: This is Your Brain on Lies
● Case: How Hollywood Makes Us Believe its Lies
● Case: Catching Someone in A Lie
● Video: Can you Beat A Polygraph Test?
● Critical Thinking: How Do I Look?

5.5 Self-deception: The person you lie to the most is probably yourself.

● Video: How Do You Know You’re Honest?
● Case: Don’t Believe Your Own Bullshit
● Video: Does Delusion Give Us Hope?
● Video: Why Do We Deceive Ourselves?
● Critical Thinking: Do You Lie to Yourself?

Ponder the meaning of morality and whether people really have the free will to choose between right and wrong.

6.1 Morality is Relative: A person’s notions of right and wrong depend on where and when
they were raised.

● Video: What is Morality?
● Video: Who Decides What’s Right or Wrong
● Quiz: Is it An Immoral Action?
● Video: Becoming A Man in The Sambian Culture
● Quiz: Sambian Morality
● Case: What’s for Dinner?
● Quiz: Immoral Behaviour

6.2 The Illusion of Free Will: The concept of free will conflicts with our scientific understanding of
humans and the universe they live in.

● Video: No Degrees of Freedom
● Quiz: Objection on Free Will from Neurobiology
● Quiz: Independent Action for Free Will
● Case: No Choice in the Matter
● Quiz: Cashmore’s Arguments

6.3 How Should We Control Crime?: Science can inform criminal justice by replacing notions of absolute morality and free will with models that explain how to limit selfish behavior.

● Video: History of Criminal Justice in the United States
● Video: Why Should We Punish the Unlucky?
● Quiz: Free Will Vs. Threat from Society
● Video: Psychopaths Aren’t Evil
● Case: The Philosophy of Morality
● Quiz: The Philosophy of Morality
● Science Can Answer Moral Questions
● Video: Farewell from Your Professor