Key topics

• Evolution of cooperation, conflict, and prosociality
• Cultural transmission and innovation
• Kinship, inheritance, and social organization in prehistory
• Cognitive and emotional drivers of cultural change

Example Projects

• Modeling cultural group selection and warfare
• Emotional synchrony and shared reality in cultural groups
• Prehistoric transitions in kinship and inheritance systems
• Evolutionary dynamics of cooperation and inequality

Selected Publications

• Gavrilets, S. (2024). Collective action, inequality, and the emergence of despotism. PNAS Nexus, 3(4), pgae093.
• Gavrilets, S. (2023). Origins of social complexity: Integrating models of collective action and warfare. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 378(1879), 20220076.
• Gavrilets, S., Richerson, P. J. (2022). Collective action and the evolution of social norms. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 377(1859), 20200321.
• Shteynberg, G., Bentley, R. A., et al. (2020). Global psychological synchrony and cultural evolution. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 24(5), 343–356.
• Shteynberg, G., Apfelbaum, E. P., Kim, J., et al. (2019). Shared attention and the mind. Psychological Bulletin, 145(6), 523–548.
• Lipatov, M., Brown, C., Feldman, M. W., et al. (2011). The evolution of cooperation in fluctuating environments. PLoS Computational Biology, 7(8), e1002021.
• Bentley, R. A., Carrignon, S., Gaydarska, B., et al. (2024). Modelling cultural responses to disease spread in Neolithic Trypillia mega-settlements. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 21(219), 20240313.
• O’Brien, M. J., Vidiella, B., Duran-Nebreda, S., Bentley, R. A., Valverde, S. (2025). Archaeology and the construction of artifact lineages: From culture history to phylogenetics. Biological Theory, 1–23.
• Bentley, R. A., O’Brien, M. J. (2024). Cultural evolution as inheritance, not intentions. Antiquity, 98(401), 1406–1416.

Research Themes