Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society: The Wisdom of Frans de Waal

There is a popular belief about Nature that we live in a dog-eat-world of brutish survival of the fittest. If such a pessimistic world view ever makes you depressed, primate psychologist Frans de Waal offers an optimistic counterpoint. He found striking evidence that animals other than humans have empathy and a sense of fair play, as well as cognition. Dr. Michael
Sullivan will discuss de Waal’s counterintuitive findings from the uplifting The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society. These include the ways that empathy has evolved in animals as a widespread adaptive trait, underscoring the intelligence of animals which is often dismissed.