A TED talk by Laurie Santos who studies primate psychology and looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in “monkeynomics”, problems in human psychology tested on primates, shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too. As such, monkeys have many of the same predictable irrationalities as we do.

Professor Laurie Santos led a discussion at Tilde Café called “The Origins of Irrationality” on January 23, 2010 (as a 9-part playlist below):

Finally, an interview with her from June 2010 can be found at Big Think:

Update 20110801: To Err Is Primate (Edge)