Paul L Hooper

Hooper's research seeks to understand and explain human social structure. On the one hand, this means understanding the evolutionary origins of those features of human sociality that stand out among primates and other mammals, such as cooperative pair-bonds, extensive parental and grandparental support, and high levels of cooperation between both related and unrelated individuals. On the other hand, it also means understanding variation in social structure and inequality across human societies, from mobile hunter-gatherers to complex urban civilizations. His research asks, to what extent can major patterns in social organization across history be explained by a finite set of evolutionary and ecological principles?