Dr Michael Price
Senior Lecturer in Psychology

Research area(s)

• Evolutionary social and moral psychology
• The biological and biocultural evolution of religio-spirituality
• Universal Darwinism (the anti-entropic power of Darwinian selection across all domains of nature)
• The origins of moral beliefs
• The evolution of leadership, organizational behaviour, and group cooperation

Research Interests

My past research has focused mainly on evolutionary moral psychology, including investigations of:

1. The relationship between moral orientation and bodily condition (usually drawing on anthropometric data, collected via 3D body scanner)
2. The relationship between male parental investment and cultural attitudes about sexual morality
3. Whether leader-follower relations represent a form of evolved n-person reciprocity
4. Evolved solutions to the free-rider problem in collective actions

More recently, my primary research interests have been:

1. The biological and biocultural evolution of religio-spirituality: Why is human nature predisposed towards religious/spiritual belief, and how is the expression of this predisposition shaped by cultural evolution?
2. 'Universal Darwinism', which investigates the anti-entropic, creative power of Darwinian selection across all natural domains, from physics to biology to culture

Grants

Project details

Anthropometric predictors of moral orientation: September 2009 - Michael E. Price (PI)

Male parental investment and attitudes about sexual behaviour: May 2011 - Michael E. Price (PI)

Completed:

Modelling the evolution of reciprocity in groups: August 2005 - January 2010 Michael E. Price (CI)

Motion capture and body scanner studies of altruistic disposition: August 2006 - August 2008 Michael E. Price (CI)