Club EvMed: How evolutionary behavioural sciences can help us understand behaviour in a pandemic

How evolutionary behavioural sciences can help us understand behaviour in a pandemic

Thursday, October 14th at 11am EDT/17:00 CEST

Join us for a conversation with Ruth Mace, Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London, Emily Emmott, Lecturer in Anthropology at University College London, and Gul Deniz Salali, Lecturer in Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London. Prof. Mace will outline the main conclusions from taking a behavioural ecological approach to understanding the diversity of responses to behavioural responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Emmott will outline her research on how the pandemic disrupted social networks, focusing on mothers of young babies and the risk of depression. Dr. Salali will present the findings from her ongoing project that tackles vaccine hesitancy (a delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines) using predictions from cultural evolution theory.

Attendees are encouraged to read Arnot et al. 2020, “How evolutionary behavioural sciences can help us understand behaviour in a pandemic,” Myers and Emmott 2021, “Communication across maternal social networks during England’s first national lockdown and its association with postnatal depressive symptoms,” and Salali and Uysal 2021, “Effective incentives for increasing COVID-19 vaccine uptake.” Sign up here for the meeting link.