Richard Mcelreath

Biographic Data

ID627797
NAMERichard Mcelreath
GIVEN NAMESRichard
FAMILY NAMEMcelreath
SIGNATUREMCELREATH R
AFFILIATIONSMax Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
ORCID0000-0002-0387-5377
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS45
TOTAL CITATIONS402
AUTHOR COUNT45
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2001
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX9

  • Why Did the Gender Gap in Adolescent Life Satisfaction Grow? Evaluating Methodological and Demographic Explanations

    Open AccessJulia M Rohrer, Richard Mcelreath et al.ARTICLEJournal of Happiness Studies2026

    The city of Leipzig in Germany conducts large-scale school surveys of adolescents in secondary schools. While in 2010 and 2015 girls were somewhat less satisfied than boys, in 2023 this gender gap had doubled. Why? When asking such a reverse causal question, answers often focus on broad narratives, such as the psychological impact of social media. Here, we illustrate how to probe alternative explanations, such as demographic changes and methodolo…

  • IPDToolkit

    Open AccessC T Ro, Thomas G Fikes et al.ARTICLESocial Sciences & Humanities Open2025

    Recently, researchers have begun studying the role that third-party arbitration may play in the evolution of cooperation. Using the iterated prisoner’s dilemma (IPD), they show that arbitration can mitigate the negative effects of perception errors on the stability of cooperative strategies. Open questions, both theoretical and empirical, however, remain. To promote research on the role of third-party arbitration, we introduce an R package, IPDTo…

  • Machine culture

    Open AccessLevin Brinkmann, Fabian Baumann et al.ARTICLENature Human Behaviour2023Cited by: 5References: 160

  • The complex life course of mobility

    Open AccessNatalia Fedorova, Richard Mcelreath et al.ARTICLEEvolutionary Human Sciences2022References: 11

    Mobility is a major mechanism of human adaptation, both in the deep past and in the present. Decades of research in the human evolutionary sciences have elucidated how much, how and when individuals and groups move in response to their ecology. Prior research has focused on small-scale subsistence societies, often in marginal environments and yielding small samples. Yet adaptive movement is commonplace across human societies, providing an opportu…

  • Rates of ecological knowledge learning in Pemba, Tanzania

    Open AccessI Pretelli, M B Mulder et al.ARTICLEEvolutionary Human Sciences2022Cited by: 2References: 14

    Humans live in diverse, complex niches where survival and reproduction are conditional on the acquisition of knowledge. Humans also have long childhoods, spending more than a decade before they become net producers. Whether the time needed to learn has been a selective force in the evolution of long human childhood is unclear, because there is little comparative data on the growth of ecological knowledge throughout childhood. We measured ecologic…

  • Racial Disparities in Police Use of Deadly Force Against Unarmed Individuals Persist After Appropriately Benchmarking Shooting Data on Violent Crime Rates

    Open AccessC T Ro, B Winterhalder et al.ARTICLESocial Psychological and…2021

    Cesario et al. argue that benchmarking the relative counts of killings by police on relative crime rates, rather than relative population sizes, generates a measure of racial disparity in the use of lethal force that is unbiased by differential crime rates. Their publication, however, lacked any formal derivation showing that their benchmarking methodology has the statistical properties required to establish such a claim. We use the causal model …

  • Conformity decreases throughout middle childhood among ni-Vanuatu children

    Anne Sibilsky, H Colleran et al.ARTICLEDevelopmental Psychology2021Cited by: 1

    Multiple studies have shown that children conform to majorities in perceptual judgment tasks against their better knowledge. However, these studies report contradictory results about how conformity develops over age. Here, we study variation in conformity over the course of middle childhood: we examined potential informational and normative motivations underlying conformity, as well as intracultural variability in their age patterns. We measured …

  • Gendered movement ecology and landscape use in Hadza hunter-gatherers

    Open AccessB M Wood, Jacob A Harris et al.ARTICLENature Human Behaviour2021Cited by: 9References: 64

    Understanding how gendered economic roles structure space use is critical to evolutionary models of foraging behaviour, social organization and cognition. Here, we examine hunter-gatherer spatial behaviour on a very large scale, using GPS devices worn by Hadza foragers to record 2,078 person-days of movement. Theory in movement ecology suggests that the density and mobility of targeted foods should predict spatial behaviour and that strong gender…

  • Statistical Rethinking

    Richard McelreathBOOKStatistical Rethinking2020

    The Golem of Prague Statistical golems Statistical rethinking Tools for golem engineering Summary Chapter 2. Small Worlds and Large Worlds The garden of forking data Building a model Components of the model Making the model go Summary Practice Chapter 3. Sampling the Imaginary Sampling from a grid-appromate posterior Sampling to summarize Sampling to simulate prediction Summary Practice Chapter 4. Geocentric Models Why normal distributions are no…

  • The ethics and logistics of field-based genetic paternity studies

    Open AccessB A Scelza, Elizabeth G Atkinson et al.ARTICLEEvolutionary Human Sciences2020Cited by: 2References: 10

  • Biological constraints and socioecological influences on women's pursuit of risk and the sexual division of labour

    Open AccessKathrine E Starkweather, M K Shenk et al.ARTICLEEvolutionary Human Sciences2020Cited by: 6References: 10

  • Machine behaviour

    Open AccessIyad Rahwan, Manuel Cebrian et al.ARTICLENature2019

  • Patterns of paternal investment predict cross-cultural variation in jealous response

    Open AccessB A Scelza, Sean P Prall et al.ARTICLENature Human Behaviour2019Cited by: 8References: 27

  • The cognitive and cultural foundations of moral behavior

    Open AccessB G Purzycki, A C Pisor et al.ARTICLEEvolution and Human Behavior2018

  • Statistical Rethinking

    Richard McelreathBOOKStatistical Rethinking2018

    Statistical Rethinking: A Bayesian Course with Examples in R and Stan builds readers’ knowledge of and confidence in statistical modeling. Reflecting the need for even minor programming in today’s model-based statistics, the book pushes readers to perform step-by-step calculations that are usually automated. This unique computational approach ensures that readers understand enough of the details to make reasonable choices and interpretations in t…

  • Sustainability of minority culture when inter-ethnic interaction is profitable

    Open AccessJohn A Bunce, Richard McelreathARTICLENature Human Behaviour2018Cited by: 10References: 38

  • Interethnic Interaction, Strategic Bargaining Power, and the Dynamics of Cultural Norms

    Open AccessJohn A Bunce, Richard McelreathARTICLEHuman Nature2017Cited by: 5References: 44

    Ethnic groups are universal and unique to human societies. Such groups sometimes have norms of behavior that are adaptively linked to their social and ecological circumstances, and ethnic boundaries may function to protect that variation from erosion by interethnic interaction. However, such interaction is often frequent and voluntary, suggesting that individuals may be able to strategically reduce its costs, allowing adaptive cultural variation …

  • The natural selection of bad science

    Open AccessP E Smaldino, Richard McelreathARTICLERoyal Society Open Science2016

    Poor research design and data analysis encourage false-positive findings. Such poor methods persist despite perennial calls for improvement, suggesting that they result from something more than just misunderstanding. The persistence of poor methods results partly from incentives that favour them, leading to the natural selection of bad science. This dynamic requires no conscious strategizing—no deliberate cheating nor loafing—by scientists, only …

  • When are two tools better than one? Mortars, millingslabs, and the California acorn economy

    Open AccessNathan E Stevens, Richard McelreathARTICLEJournal of Anthropological…2015Cited by: 22References: 69

  • Strategic social learning and the population dynamics of human behavior

    Open AccessBret Beheim, Bret Alexander Beheim et al.ARTICLEEvolution and Human Behavior2014

  • Using Multilevel Models to Estimate Variation in Foraging Returns

    Open AccessRichard Mcelreath, Jeremy KosterARTICLEHuman Nature2014Cited by: 10References: 31

  • Dual-inheritance theory

    J Henrich, Richard McelreathCHAPTEROxford handbook of evolutionary…2012

    Humans learn, via observation of others. This article refers to this form of social learning, which may be particular to humans, as cultural learning. The combination of both the high fidelity and frequency of social learning in the lineage has generated cumulative cultural evolution, which may exist to any significant degree only in the lineage. Paleoarchaeology suggests that substantial cumulative cultural evolution has likely been occurring fo…

  • Modelling cultural evolution

    Richard Mcelreath, J HenrichCHAPTEROxford handbook of evolutionary…2012

    The key to explaining long-run change in nature, to explaining the origin of new species, of whole new types of organisms, and of life itself is to apply Charles Lyell's principle of uniformitarianism to populations. By keeping track of how the small events of everyday life change the composition of populations, one can explain great events over long time scales. Population models allow for an explanation and real causation at both levels (and mo…

  • The Behavioral Logic of Collective Action

    Open AccessOleg Smirnov, Christopher T Dawes et al.ARTICLEPolitical Psychology2010Cited by: 6References: 42

  • Pastoralism and Wealth Inequality

    M B Mulder, Ila Fazzio et al.ARTICLECurrent Anthropology2010Cited by: 52References: 50

    Pastoralist societies are often portrayed as economically egalitarian, reflecting the volatile nature of livestock herds and the existence of multiple institutions that allow for the redistribution of wealth as a form of insurance. Motivated by an interest in the role of intergenerational transmission in structuring persistent inequality, we examine the extent of intergenerational transmission of material wealth (four measures) and embodied wealt…