Thursday May 11th

19:45 live music by Troubagroove
20:15 speakers
Café Loburg

Altruistic or pro-social behaviour has long been a topic of study, due to the apparent individual disadvantages that it could have within the “survival of the fittest” paradigm. Yet, not only humans display such behaviour regularly: so do non-human primates. In the quest for the biological underpinnings of cooperative behaviour and the opposite tendency towards conflict, we asked Prof. Elisabeth Sterck from Utrecht University and prof. Alan Sanfey from the Donders Institute in Nijmegen to share with us the findings of their research. Prof. Sterck will tell us about the evolution of conflict resolution mechanisms and altruistic behaviour, with focus on non-human primates as well as human children. Prof. Sanfey will look at the psychosocial motivations driving such apparently disadvantageous behaviours, illustrating with brain images how these different motivations are represented neurally.