Project Members
The Human Generosity Project is a cross-disciplinary project co-directed by Lee Cronk and Athena Aktipis, with project members spanning the disciplines.
By working closely together, our team of anthropologists, psychologists and computer scientists capitalize on important synergies. Together we build models, design experiments and develop plans for fieldwork to better understand the conditions that facilitate human generosity.
MATTHEW GERVAIS
Role:
Anthropologist, assistant director, Fiji field site supervisor
Institution:
Rutgers University,
Arizona State University
Matthew Gervais is Assistant Director of the Human Generosity Project, coordinating fieldwork protocols across sites and gathering comparative data in the Fiji Islands. Currently Matt is a Postdoctoral Associate at Rutgers University, as well as a Visiting Researcher in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at ASU. Matt received a PhD in Anthropology from UCLA in 2013, after a BS in Psychobiology and Philosophy, with a certificate in Evolutionary Studies (EvoS), from Binghamton University in 2006. Matt’s research is broadly concerned with the evolution of human social relationships and the proximate psychological mechanisms that support them. Mixing methods from cognitive anthropology, behavioral ecology, social psychology, and experimental economics, Matt conducts research in villages on Yasawa Island, Fiji. This work has focused on the structure of Yasawan affect concepts, the interpersonal functions of affect, and the social-relational contexts of cooperation and punishment. This work includes the development of novel “RICH” economic games that tap norms and sentiments within enduring social relationships. In addition to this fieldwork, Matt conducts naturalistic lab research in the US, focusing on subclinical psychopathy as a model of strategic social behavior. Matt is an accomplished ethnographic photographer, having earned Top Selections from the American Anthropological Association in 2012 and 2013.