John H. Shaver
@johnhshaver.bsky.social
Evolutionary Anthropologist/Human Behavioral Ecologist at Baylor University.
Reposted by John H. Shaver
Interested in doing a PhD with Baylor Anthropology? This week we’ll be showcasing our faculty starting with John, Julie and Duncan (That’s me!).
We’ve prepared info sheets with contact info and research specialisms. Any further questions, please drop us an email.
We’ve prepared info sheets with contact info and research specialisms. Any further questions, please drop us an email.
December 10, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Interested in doing a PhD with Baylor Anthropology? This week we’ll be showcasing our faculty starting with John, Julie and Duncan (That’s me!).
We’ve prepared info sheets with contact info and research specialisms. Any further questions, please drop us an email.
We’ve prepared info sheets with contact info and research specialisms. Any further questions, please drop us an email.
Reposted by John H. Shaver
Excited to get this paper published! 🌟
We argue that men exaggerate patriarchal beliefs in an effort to signal conformity to others, which in turn fuels misperceptions about peers - making patriarchal norms resistant to change.
royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...
We argue that men exaggerate patriarchal beliefs in an effort to signal conformity to others, which in turn fuels misperceptions about peers - making patriarchal norms resistant to change.
royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...
December 4, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Excited to get this paper published! 🌟
We argue that men exaggerate patriarchal beliefs in an effort to signal conformity to others, which in turn fuels misperceptions about peers - making patriarchal norms resistant to change.
royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...
We argue that men exaggerate patriarchal beliefs in an effort to signal conformity to others, which in turn fuels misperceptions about peers - making patriarchal norms resistant to change.
royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...
Reposted by John H. Shaver
📣 New BBS preprint out now! 📣
"Models casting egalitarian societies as crucibles of equality perpetuate the factually uninformed notion that foragers are somehow more noble. Critiques portray egalitarianism as romantic fantasy. Neither characterization is wholly justified."
doi.org/10.1017/S014...
"Models casting egalitarian societies as crucibles of equality perpetuate the factually uninformed notion that foragers are somehow more noble. Critiques portray egalitarianism as romantic fantasy. Neither characterization is wholly justified."
doi.org/10.1017/S014...
Egalitarianism is not Equality: Moving from outcome to process in the study of human political organisation | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core
Egalitarianism is not Equality: Moving from outcome to process in the study of human political organisation
doi.org
November 18, 2025 at 8:05 AM
📣 New BBS preprint out now! 📣
"Models casting egalitarian societies as crucibles of equality perpetuate the factually uninformed notion that foragers are somehow more noble. Critiques portray egalitarianism as romantic fantasy. Neither characterization is wholly justified."
doi.org/10.1017/S014...
"Models casting egalitarian societies as crucibles of equality perpetuate the factually uninformed notion that foragers are somehow more noble. Critiques portray egalitarianism as romantic fantasy. Neither characterization is wholly justified."
doi.org/10.1017/S014...
Reposted by John H. Shaver
🚨 🐍 Our new paper on the consequences men face when countering patriarchal norms in rural Tanzania 🐍.🚨
We carried out focus groups and detailed interviews with a whopping 172 women and men about their perceptions of men who support women's empowerment... 📝 1/5
We carried out focus groups and detailed interviews with a whopping 172 women and men about their perceptions of men who support women's empowerment... 📝 1/5
“A snake with no teeth”: Urbanization shifts perceptions of men who support women’s empowerment in Northwestern Tanzania
Achieving gender equality requires the support of all genders, but efforts to engage men in women’s empowerment initiatives have been fraught with res…
www.sciencedirect.com
November 14, 2025 at 6:45 PM
🚨 🐍 Our new paper on the consequences men face when countering patriarchal norms in rural Tanzania 🐍.🚨
We carried out focus groups and detailed interviews with a whopping 172 women and men about their perceptions of men who support women's empowerment... 📝 1/5
We carried out focus groups and detailed interviews with a whopping 172 women and men about their perceptions of men who support women's empowerment... 📝 1/5
Reposted by John H. Shaver
"Modeling Uncertainty around Free-list Cultural Salience Scores" by @rcc-au.bsky.social's @djsmith90.bsky.social and @bgpurzycki.bsky.social OnlineFirst up now at Field Methods journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... #AnthroTools #quantethnography
October 21, 2025 at 10:15 AM
"Modeling Uncertainty around Free-list Cultural Salience Scores" by @rcc-au.bsky.social's @djsmith90.bsky.social and @bgpurzycki.bsky.social OnlineFirst up now at Field Methods journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... #AnthroTools #quantethnography
Reposted by John H. Shaver
If one man marries two women, another man must go unmarried, right? No. Demography matters. If sex ratios are skewed towards women, then polygyny can exist alongside universal marriage for men (who want to marry women). If only more people understood demography 😊
🚨 The Economist has been telling you for years that polygamy causes civil war by locking men out of marriage. A new article with @rebeccasear.bsky.social and @anthrolog.bsky.social explains that the demography of marriage markets doesn't actually work that way. 🧵
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
High rates of polygyny do not lock large proportions of men out of the marriage market | PNAS
There is a widespread belief, in both the scholarly literature and the popular press,
that polygyny prevents large numbers of men from marrying by ...
www.pnas.org
October 6, 2025 at 5:02 PM
If one man marries two women, another man must go unmarried, right? No. Demography matters. If sex ratios are skewed towards women, then polygyny can exist alongside universal marriage for men (who want to marry women). If only more people understood demography 😊
Reposted by John H. Shaver
Mary Shenk presented at the Evolutionary Demography Society conference in Oxford today, showing intriguing (and opposite) associations between women's fertility and allocare from either grandparents or children
September 23, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Mary Shenk presented at the Evolutionary Demography Society conference in Oxford today, showing intriguing (and opposite) associations between women's fertility and allocare from either grandparents or children
Reposted by John H. Shaver
New paper from the team, led by Radim Chvaja:
The role of parental religiosity in shaping paternal investment: evidence from Bangladesh and India
doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
The role of parental religiosity in shaping paternal investment: evidence from Bangladesh and India
doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
The role of parental religiosity in shaping paternal investment: evidence from Bangladesh and India | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Among humans, paternal investment has been shown to enhance both fertility and offspring
survival. While psychological and ecological influences on human paternal investment
are relatively well docume...
doi.org
September 23, 2025 at 11:28 AM
New paper from the team, led by Radim Chvaja:
The role of parental religiosity in shaping paternal investment: evidence from Bangladesh and India
doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
The role of parental religiosity in shaping paternal investment: evidence from Bangladesh and India
doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
Reposted by John H. Shaver
New paper led by @anushe.bsky.social on alloparenting in Tanzania. Child care assistance surely benefits child health, but we find little evidence that specific care arrangements are more resilient than others.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Children's Caregiving and Growth in Northwestern Tanzania: Limited Evidence That Support From Specific Caregivers Is Associated With Better Growth
Receiving care from individuals other than one's mother (i.e., allomothering) is a universal aspect of raising children, but whether and how such care impacts children's health remains subject to deb...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
March 27, 2025 at 4:26 PM
New paper led by @anushe.bsky.social on alloparenting in Tanzania. Child care assistance surely benefits child health, but we find little evidence that specific care arrangements are more resilient than others.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Reposted by John H. Shaver
Interested in examining culture, cultural models, and what people think, know, and believe? New book from RCC’s @bgpurzycki.bsky.social coming soon as part of Sage’s “Little Green Book” series!
collegepublishing.sagepub.com/products/eth...
collegepublishing.sagepub.com/products/eth...
February 1, 2025 at 7:24 AM
Interested in examining culture, cultural models, and what people think, know, and believe? New book from RCC’s @bgpurzycki.bsky.social coming soon as part of Sage’s “Little Green Book” series!
collegepublishing.sagepub.com/products/eth...
collegepublishing.sagepub.com/products/eth...
Reposted by John H. Shaver
Need To Know Basis is launched ! The team is now working on data collection in the Farafenni region of The Gambia. Thank you to the team for all their work in the field and for their sensitivity asking men and women about information sharing and FGC!
January 24, 2025 at 11:05 AM
Need To Know Basis is launched ! The team is now working on data collection in the Farafenni region of The Gambia. Thank you to the team for all their work in the field and for their sensitivity asking men and women about information sharing and FGC!
Reposted by John H. Shaver
“Social-science journals have a key role to play: they must prioritize transparency to improve the credibility and verifiability of published research” www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Religion, Brain & Behavior adopts stricter transparency standards
Published in Religion, Brain & Behavior (Vol. 14, No. 4, 2024)
www.tandfonline.com
December 24, 2024 at 8:43 AM
“Social-science journals have a key role to play: they must prioritize transparency to improve the credibility and verifiability of published research” www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Reposted by John H. Shaver
Also follow PI @johnhshaver.bsky.social as well as @lspake.bsky.social & @anushe.bsky.social, without whom that data would not exist! Here's a paper led by Laure and Anushé describing the process of data collection in our 5 main locations royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
A practical guide to cross-cultural and multi-sited data collection in the biological and behavioural sciences | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Researchers in the biological and behavioural sciences are increasingly conducting collaborative, multi-sited projects to address how phenomena vary across ecologies. These types of projects, however, pose additional workflow challenges beyond those ...
royalsocietypublishing.org
December 13, 2024 at 9:07 PM
Also follow PI @johnhshaver.bsky.social as well as @lspake.bsky.social & @anushe.bsky.social, without whom that data would not exist! Here's a paper led by Laure and Anushé describing the process of data collection in our 5 main locations royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
Reposted by John H. Shaver
We are 'The Evolutionary Dynamics of Religion, Family Size and Child Success' project, an international team investigating how religion impacts fertility and child wellbeing. Check out our website for more info, and follow us for updates on our activities 💙
evolutionarydemographyofreligion.org
evolutionarydemographyofreligion.org
Home - Evolutionary Dynamics of Religion, Family Size, and Child Success
evolutionarydemographyofreligion.org
December 13, 2024 at 8:54 PM
We are 'The Evolutionary Dynamics of Religion, Family Size and Child Success' project, an international team investigating how religion impacts fertility and child wellbeing. Check out our website for more info, and follow us for updates on our activities 💙
evolutionarydemographyofreligion.org
evolutionarydemographyofreligion.org
Reposted by John H. Shaver
Our project on the evolutionary dynamics of religion, family size and child success is now on bluesky 👇 Follow for updates on our cross-cultural research, which is getting to a particularly exciting stage of paper-writing 😊 (after a long slog of data collection in 6 countries!)
We are 'The Evolutionary Dynamics of Religion, Family Size and Child Success' project, an international team investigating how religion impacts fertility and child wellbeing. Check out our website for more info, and follow us for updates on our activities 💙
evolutionarydemographyofreligion.org
evolutionarydemographyofreligion.org
Home - Evolutionary Dynamics of Religion, Family Size, and Child Success
evolutionarydemographyofreligion.org
December 13, 2024 at 9:02 PM
Our project on the evolutionary dynamics of religion, family size and child success is now on bluesky 👇 Follow for updates on our cross-cultural research, which is getting to a particularly exciting stage of paper-writing 😊 (after a long slog of data collection in 6 countries!)
Reposted by John H. Shaver
The evolutionary demography of religion project is on bluesky! Give it a follow for content about religion, cooperation and prosociality, allomothering, and maternal and child outcomes 👇
bsky.app/profile/evod...
bsky.app/profile/evod...
bsky.app
December 13, 2024 at 8:29 PM
The evolutionary demography of religion project is on bluesky! Give it a follow for content about religion, cooperation and prosociality, allomothering, and maternal and child outcomes 👇
bsky.app/profile/evod...
bsky.app/profile/evod...
Reposted by John H. Shaver
Special issue of American Journal of Human Biology on 'The Influences of Religion and Spirituality on Human Biology' onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Introduction: The Influences of Religion and Spirituality on Human Biology
The objective of this special issue is to highlight the absence of religion and spirituality in the human biological enterprise. We have assembled a set of articles covering physiology, psychology, c...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
December 3, 2024 at 8:23 AM
Special issue of American Journal of Human Biology on 'The Influences of Religion and Spirituality on Human Biology' onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Reposted by John H. Shaver
Check out this episode of SoS! @johnhshaver.bsky.social speaks about his research and one of the papers from the Evolutionary Demography of Religion project: m.soundcloud.com/humanbiology...
SoS 224: Dr. John Shaver navigates religiosity, fertility, and family support
Play SoS 224: Dr. John Shaver navigates religiosity, fertility, and family support by Human Biology Association on desktop and mobile. Play over 320 million tracks for free on SoundCloud.
m.soundcloud.com
October 22, 2024 at 3:15 PM
Check out this episode of SoS! @johnhshaver.bsky.social speaks about his research and one of the papers from the Evolutionary Demography of Religion project: m.soundcloud.com/humanbiology...
Reposted by John H. Shaver
We all know that – alongside global warming, Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin and other evils – selection bias is one of the largest threats to humanity*
But how bad exactly is selection bias?
This is what we aimed to explore in our recent paper: doi.org/10.1080/2153...
*Perhaps a slight exaggeration…
But how bad exactly is selection bias?
This is what we aimed to explore in our recent paper: doi.org/10.1080/2153...
*Perhaps a slight exaggeration…
September 23, 2024 at 2:49 PM
We all know that – alongside global warming, Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin and other evils – selection bias is one of the largest threats to humanity*
But how bad exactly is selection bias?
This is what we aimed to explore in our recent paper: doi.org/10.1080/2153...
*Perhaps a slight exaggeration…
But how bad exactly is selection bias?
This is what we aimed to explore in our recent paper: doi.org/10.1080/2153...
*Perhaps a slight exaggeration…
Reposted by John H. Shaver
Blog from @johnhshaver.bsky.social @lspake.bsky.social & Radim Chvaja about our recent paper on associations between religiosity, fertility and childcare from fathers and others in the Gambia. Nice, clear summary of a complex set of analyses 😊
evolutionarydemographyofreligion.org/religion-in-...
evolutionarydemographyofreligion.org/religion-in-...
Religion in The Gambia scaffolds broad allomaternal support, but not from fathers or their relatives | The Evolutionary Dynamics of Religion, Family Size, and Child Success
evolutionarydemographyofreligion.org
August 24, 2024 at 9:09 AM
Blog from @johnhshaver.bsky.social @lspake.bsky.social & Radim Chvaja about our recent paper on associations between religiosity, fertility and childcare from fathers and others in the Gambia. Nice, clear summary of a complex set of analyses 😊
evolutionarydemographyofreligion.org/religion-in-...
evolutionarydemographyofreligion.org/religion-in-...