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Hurricane changed ‘rules of the game’ in monkey society
A group of rhesus macaques sits amidst the bare, leafless trees of their hurricane-impacted habitat.

For more than 17 years, PIK Professor Michael Platt and his collaborators have followed a free-ranging colony of rhesus macaques in the Puerto Rican Island of Cayo Santiago who, in 2017, experienced the devastation of Hurricane Maria. The team showed that the macaques who invested in relationships had higher survival rates, findings that can provide insights into human social behavior and health in the face of environmental change.

(Image: Courtesy of Lauren J. Brent) 

Hurricane changed ‘rules of the game’ in monkey society

PIK Professor Michael Platt and collaborators from the University of Exeter find Hurricane Maria transformed a monkey society by changing the pros and cons of their interpersonal relations.
How unflagged, factual content drives vaccine hesitancy
Many hands holding smartphones and other sources of information about COVID-19.

Image: iStock/zubada

How unflagged, factual content drives vaccine hesitancy

A new paper from computational social scientist Duncan Watts examines how factual, vaccine-skeptical content on Facebook has a greater overall effect than “fake news,” discouraging millions from the COVID-19 shot.

From Penn Engineering Today

More than two hearts beat as one
A person in a suit and button-down shirt sitting on a stairwell landing, smiling. The intricate white stairwell and a brick wall behind it are to the person's right.

Penn Integrates Knowledge professor Michael Platt holds appointments in the Department of Psychology in the School of Arts & Sciences, the Department of Neuroscience in the Perelman School of Medicine, and the Marketing Department in the Wharton School.

More than two hearts beat as one

PIK Professor Michael Platt and collaborators studied how physiologic measures like cardiac synchrony can guide decision making in groups. Their study found that heart rate synchrony was a much better predictor than standard questionnaire-based surveys.
What predicts human behavior and how to change it
Decision making concept.

Image: iStock/VectorMine

What predicts human behavior and how to change it

In the largest quantitative synthesis to date, Dolores Albarracín and her team dig through years of research on the science behind behavior change to determine the best ways to promote changes in behavior.

Hailey Reissman

Addressing declining fertility
Artist rendering of fertility decline. Depopulation, demographic crisis. Baby bottles in the form of graph and down arrow.

In a recent paper, PIK Professor Michael Platt and the Perelman School of Medicine’s Peter Sterling posit that the underlying mechanism of the looming concern of human fertility declines is the epidemic of despair.

(Image: iStock / TanyaJoy)

  • Q&A

    • Addressing declining fertility

    In a Q&A with Penn Today, Michael Platt talks about the socioeconomic and emotional factors leading to plummeting fertility rates.