Dr Roy Baumeister Ph. D
Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida, USA

Roy F. Baumeister is the Francis Eppes Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from Princeton in 1978. He has nearly 400 publications and over 20 books. His laboratory is currently funded by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the Templeton Foundation. In 2007, his works were cited over a thousand times in the
scientific research literature.

Human Nature, Meaning, and Social Life:
What the Human Mind is Designed To Do
Keynote Address
8:30 - 9:30am, Sunday, July 27th, 2008

This talk explores the roots of human nature from the perspective that culture shaped evolution. The distinctively human traits involve being capable of participating in culture, understood as an advanced social system based on information. Using meaning is thus central to what makes us human. The benefits of culture as a biological strategy are explored, as well as the psychological requirements for participation in such a system.

Educational Objectives: To gain a broad, functional understanding of the human mind and how culture and nature combined to create the distinctive attributes that make us human. To understand how the ability to process meaning (with language, logic, mathematics, and identity) has been vital for enabling the progress of human history.

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