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Note: This symposium was jointly held with GCOE "Center for the Sociality of Mind".
Date: September 19, 2008 (Friday), 13:00-15:00
Location: Hokkaido University, Center for Research and Development in Higher Education
Speakers: Prof. Kavin McCabe (George Mason University), Masayuki Takana (Kyoto University), Toshio Yamagishi (Hokkaido University)
Chair：Toshikazu Hasegawa (Tokyo University)
Abstract:
Now social sciences reach a turning point. In the 20th century, some social scientists, economists for a typical example, have developed the mathematical model approach while others like anthropologists and sociologists have deepened interpretive approach. However, both approaches couldn’t achieve a logical and scientific understanding on human nature. Psychologists are expected to provide a more realistic concept of human than “economic man” or “political man”, but they couldn’t meet the expectations. Therefore, a new trend of social science moves from the experimental economics to “neuroeconomics” without having any interest in works by psychology. In this symposium, we invited Prof. Kavin McCabe, as a leader of the recent movement toward neuroeconomics, to give a talk on why economists head for neuroeconomics, what are the expectations he has from neuroeconomics, and so on. Prof. Kavin McCabe has conducted joint research for years with Prof. Vernon L. Smith who awarded Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 for his pioneering work in experimental economics. His research interests include how to incorporate the humanity of altruism or reciprocity in economic model. To investigate how society with cooperation developed from evolutional perspective, many social scientists started to collaborate with neuroscientists, evolutionary psychologists, and primatologist. In the symposium, Prof. Masayuki Tanaka, who is a primatologist studying ape’s reciprocity and cooperation, presented the latest research on ape’s cooperative behavior. Also, Prof. Toshio Yamagishi, the host of the symposium, talked about differences between experimental study conducted by economists and the one by social psychologists. And he provided his view on what psychologists can learn from other approaches of social sciences and contribute to it.
 
 
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