An Interview with William von Hippel

I’m a professor who studies evolutionary social psychology, which means that I’m interested in using information about how we evolved to better understand how we are today.

I start my typical day with a cup of coffee as I respond to about a jillion emails that came in overnight (being in Australia means that the world works while I sleep). I then head into the office where I meet with PhD students and colleagues to design experiments, discuss data analyses and articles we’ve read, etc. I sneak in a few hours of writing at some random point, ideally on articles but also on grant applications, and try to get to the climbing gym for an hour or two. If this typical day is during the semester then I might also lecture for a few hours and meet with undergraduates, and if I’m unlucky I might spend a few hours in administration.

I’m finishing up several books: Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker, The Origins of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama, Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance, and Moral Origins by Christopher Boehm.

I can’t, but I do remember reading all the biographies in my elementary school library. They were mostly about figures in American history.

I used to be a folder and now I’m a marker, but only because I read on the iPad.

My junior year in college. I was 2/3 of the way through my psychology major when it occurred to me that I didn’t want to be a lawyer after all.

There was no point in gifting myself anything important at age 16 – I was such an obnoxious and unfocused person that it would have been a waste of a good book. At age 25 I wish I could have read The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker. That would have been an awesome curative to the psychology that was being taught at the time; we were told there was no such thing as inborn character or human nature and that all of our traits and proclivities were created by our environment, socialization, culture, etc.

The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker – same reason I cited above; Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman – a great integration of cognitive and social psychology and behavioural economics by one of the best thinkers of our time; The Gap by Thomas Suddendorf – a superb exploration of how we differ from and are similar to other animals.

William James – he was an absurdly intelligent and thoughtful student of human nature; Jane Austen – I’d love to meet her and see what she would think of today’s world; Mark Twain – he would be incredibly entertaining; J K Rowling – with her imagination I’d want her to be part of this conversation; Maya Angelou – I love her autobiographies and would want her in the conversation as well.

The Book of Why by Dana Mackenzie and Judea Pearl – I’m interested in how to infer cause and effect from the everyday data that surround us.

The exposure to other people’s minds and what they have spent a lifetime learning, particularly when those other people are no longer around so we don’t have any other access to their thoughts.

Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz – I thought it was going to be a bit silly based on the title, but it was a tour de force of what can be inferred from people’s google searches.

I’m not entirely sure what this question means, but I guess it means that I’d be able to participate in the creation of the book. If so, then I’d love to be part of Noble Savages by Napoleon Chagnon – I’m super curious about what it was like to work with the Yanomamö and then contend with other anthropologists in the ensuing fights over what actually happened.

That’s a tough one. It’s such a huge field now that there is a lot of competing advice that could be offered. I would suggest that the most important goal is to try to develop your own perspective on human nature. Once you have a sense of what makes people tick, it leads to all sorts of interesting hypotheses, and it also gives you a overarching perspective on what can seem like piecemeal findings from different sub-disciplines.

I know it’s a cop-out, but I can’t think of such an impactful single book.

The work I’m most excited about in psychology right now is primarily the interdisciplinary research that links psychology with biology, anthropology, neuroscience, economics, and/or genetics. I think this is the work that is having the biggest impact on our understanding of humanity.

Tons! In no particular order:

Hierarchy in the Forest by Christopher Boehm, War before Civilization by Lawrence Keeley, The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham, A Primate’s Memoir by Robert Sapolsky, Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, Dispatches from Pluto by Richard Grant, The Hadza by Frank Marlowe, Empire of the Summer Moon by S. C. Gwynne, and Endurance by Alfred Lansing.

And I’m probably forgetting more than I’m remembering.

I’m really looking forward to reading Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich. The study of ancient DNA is a great new tool in helping us understand who we are today – sometimes confirming hypotheses, sometimes upending them, and sometimes just giving the pot a vigorous stir.