Culture and Intelligence

Date: Tuesday 12 April 2016
Time: 6.30-8pm
Venue: Old Theatre, Old Building
Speaker: Professor Richard Nisbett
Discussants: Dr Hyun-Jung Lee, Dr Michael Muthukrishna
Chair: Dr Bradley Franks

Are humans getting smarter? Are some groups smarter than others? Are some groups getting smarter faster than others? What are the possibilities for increasing the rate of growth of human intelligence? Hint: Science, mathematics, logic and philosophy have generated concepts in the past 150 years of great power which have yet to escape into the reasoning toolkits of laypeople.

Richard Nisbett is Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished Professor of Social Psychology and Co-director of the Culture and Cognition program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He is the author of Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking. "The most influential thinker, in my life, has been the psychologist Richard Nisbett. He basically gave me my view of the world." – Malcolm Gladwell

Hyun-Jung Lee is Assistant Professor in Organisational Behaviour in the Department of Management, LSE. Her research is on multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism and cross-cultural management.

Michael Muthukrishna (@mmuthukrishna) is an Assistant Professor of Economic Psychology. His research focuses on the evolution of humans and human culture and the many implications of these psychological and evolutionary processes.

Bradley Franks is Associate Professor at LSE.

The Department of Social Psychology (@PsychologyLSE) is a leading international centre dedicated to consolidating and expanding the contribution of social psychology to the understanding and knowledge of key social, economic, political and cultural issues.

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