Professor Robert Hinde CBE, FRS, FBA

rah15@cam.ac.uk

My work with non-human primates in the sixties and seventies led me to an interest in the nature and dynamics of relationships between individuals, and I moved to studies of relationships within human families and between peers. I also have a long-term interest in the extent to which one can understand complex human behaviour in terms of pan-cultural psychological characteristics which are presumably Darwinian and are or have been biologically adaptive. Earlier this involved analyses of mother/child and other personal relationships, and various forms of aggressive behaviour. In the last few years I have tried to show how far a biological/psychological approach can help us to understand the ubiquity of religious systems, and the similarities and differences between the moral codes of different cultures. In that way I hope to strengthen the links between biology and the social sciences. More recently I have been concerned with how the incidence of war can be reduced.

Selected Publications
Hinde, R.A. (1991). A biologist looks at anthropology. Man (now Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute), 26, 583-608. 12(3): 150-159

Hinde, R.A (1997). Relationships: a dialectical perspective. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.

Hinde, R.A. (1997). War: some psychological causes and consequences. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 22, 229-245.

Hinde, R.A. (1999, 2nd ed. 2011). Why gods persist: a scientific approach to religion. London: Routledge.

Hinde, R.A. (2002). Why good is good. London: Routledge.

Hinde, Robert & Rotblat, Joseph. (2003) War no more: eliminating conflict in the nuclear age. London: Pluto Press.

Hinde, R.A. (2007). Bending the Rules: morality in the modern world from relationships to politics and war. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hinde, R.A. (2011). Changing how we live: society from the bottum up. Nottingham: Spokesman.

- Behavioural neuroscience
- Neural mechanisms of learning and memory
- Behavioural inhibition in young children
- Alternative modes of development: plasticity and epigenesis
- Comparative cognition
- Cognition and culture in the wild