Michael Muthukrishna
Professor of Economic Psychology, London School of Economics and Political Science
I’m Professor of Economic Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. I am also Affiliate of the Developmental Economics Group at STICERD and of the Data Science Institute. I work on human evolution and cultural evolution. I am a 2024 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. My research focuses on answering three broad questions: Why are humans so different to other animals? What are the psychological and evolutionary processes that underlie culture and social change, and how is information transmitted, maintained, and modified How can the answers to these questions be used to tackle some of the challenges we face as a species?
EXPs by Michael Muthukrishna
One of the enduring questions for humanity is what makes humans so different from other animals. The answer to that question is that we discovered a new source of information to guide our behavior that untethered us from mere genes, or just what information we could acquire in our lifetimes.
Innovations are not the product of innovators per se any more than your thoughts are the product of a particular neuron. Innovators sit in a social network, in a collective brain, where ideas are flowing around, recombining and reconnecting.
We need a deeper understanding of human psychology, behavior and social change. We really need a theory of everyone.