Release date: Nov. 10, 2004
Contact: Beverly Cox Clark, Assistant Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-712-8780 or beverly.clark@emory.edu

Disciplines Cross in Emory Anthropologist's Studies of Human Behavior

Emory University anthropologist Joseph Henrich's study of human behavior has traveled across a wide range of disciplines and taken him around the globe, from Peru to the remote South Pacific island of Fiji.

Henrich is becoming known for his research on the psychology of economic behavior, cultural learning and thought processes, and for contributing to knowledge about ethnicity, the creation of social classes and the evolution of human social institutions. He recently received recognition for his work with a 2003 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the nation's top honor for professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.

His findings are creating new options for policy makers in developing more targeted interventions in fields as diverse as public health, agriculture and conservation, says George Armelagos, chairman of Emory's Department of Anthropology.

"Joe's ability to make anthropology relevant to everyday life is a valuable asset to anthropology and Emory, where he has become a role model to our undergraduate and graduate students as a scholar, teacher and researcher. He is a prolific researcher whose work epitomizes an interdisciplinary approach that is capturing the interest of anthropologists, psychologists, economists and business school faculty," Armelagos says.

Henrich's career award includes a 5-year National Science Foundation grant that he is using to develop an interdisciplinary program in culture and cognition to study how children learn and acquire their ideas, norms, beliefs, values and thought processes.

This work has taken him to the South Pacific, where he has built a field station on an island of Fiji to study the indigenous culture there. He also is developing an on-campus laboratory and series of courses for undergraduates and graduates to study psychological anthropology and culture.

He is specifically studying how Fijian children acquire the knowledge they need to become successful marine foragers—how to identify poisonous fish, when to harvest certain fish and what are the behavioral patterns of the fish they catch. It's knowledge that is passed down from generation to generation, and that method is what Henrich wants to uncover. He will return to Fiji next June and hopes to spend the following year in the field.

While his work touches on aspects of economics, psychology, sociology, environmental studies and education, at its core is the use of cultural and genetic evolutionary models to develop theories about psychology. It's an area he first explored in the 1990s as a graduate student when he visited the Amazon basin in Peru to study the Machiguenga tribe.

"I was interested in economic development," says Henrich, who joined Emory in 2002. "But when I started trying to do economic anthropology and thinking about how to improve approaches to economic development —stopping deforestation, things like that —I found that the theories were so poor that you couldn't do much. So I became more interested in theoretical development and how people make economic decisions, as well as how growing up in a particular place affects what goes into your economic decision-making."

A prime example of Henrich's research is a separate NSF-funded study that looks at the behavioral economics of 15 small-scale societies. He is a principal investigator and editor of a book on the project, "Foundations of Human Sociality: Ethnography and Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies," published by Oxford University Press this year.

Henrich also is working on another effort with postdoctoral student Sarah Brosnan that involves a comparison of social behavior in chimpanzees and human children. In addition, Henrich and his wife, Natalie, an adjunct assistant professor in anthropology, have just completed a book, "The Origins of Cooperation," to be published next year.

Running through it all is the wide range of disciplines that influences his work. In fact, after earning his doctorate, Henrich was offered faculty positions not only in anthropology but in economics and psychology as well.

"If you are building an interdisciplinary approach to human behavior, you can't be bound to one label," he says.

Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. For more than a decade Emory has been named one of the country's top 25 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, a comprehensive metropolitan health care system.

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