David Andrew Whiten, known as Andrew Whiten (born 1948), is a British zoologist and psychologist, Professor of Evolutionary and Developmental Psychology, and Professor Henry Wardlaw Emeritus at University of St Andrews in Scotland.[ Professor Andrew Whiten. britac.ac.uk][ Professor Andrew Whiten has been awarded the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Senior Prize and Medal for Public Engagement . st-andrews.ac.uk, April 17, 2015] He is known for his research in social cognition, specifically on social learning, tradition and the evolution of culture, social Machiavellian intelligence, autism and imitation, as well as the behavioral ecology of sociality.[ Professor Andrew Whiten: Osman Hill Memorial Lecturer, 2010 . In: Primate Eye. Primate Society of Great Britain. No. 102. October 2010. p. 3-4] In 1996, Whiten and his colleagues invented an artificial fruit that allowed them to study learning in apes and humans.[A. Whiten et al.: Imitative learning of artificial fruit processing in children (Homo sapiens) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), 1996. In: Journal of comparative psychology 110 (1), 3. ][Ludwig Huber: Social learning affects object exploration and manipulation in keas, Nestor notabilis. In: Animal Behaviour, 2001, 62, 945–954 ]
Personal life and education
Whiten was born in 1948 in
Grimsby,
England.
[Bruce Gilchrist: The descendants of Charles Gilchrist and Catherine Robinson: married in Boston, Lincolnshire, 1798. Gateway Press, 2004] He graduated with a degree in
zoology from the University of Sheffield and achieved a
PhD in
Psychology at the University of Bristol.
Career
Whiten started reading and lecturing at the University of St Andrews in 1970, joined the Department of Psychology in St Andrews in 1975, and became professor of evolutionary and developmental psychology in 1997.
Whiten was co-founder of the Scottish Primate Research Group.
In 2003, he founded the Centre for Social Learning and Cultural Evolution at the University of St Andrews.
He was the founder and first director of the primate research centre Living Links to Human Evolution (short:
Living Links) that opened 2008 in
Edinburgh Zoo and draws more than 250,000 visitors per year.
[ Edinburgh becomes heart of monkey study business. The Guardian, November 9, 2004]
Research
Whiten conducted long-term research on cultural evolution in chimpanzees and other primates and is noted for his contributions to this field. He has demonstrated the existence of traditions in primate culture in areas such as foraging, tool use and courtship. He has also shown that it is possible to introduce new traditions, by teaching primates in different groups different methods for getting a treat from a box. The first two chimps taught others, who almost always learned the method used first in their group. In another study,
vervet monkeys which had learned to avoid grains of corn of a particular color (flavored by a bitter taste) relearned their color preferences for food once they became part of another group with different preferences.
Such transmission chain studies have shown cultural learning between individuals in at least 20 different species. The ability to learn from others is particularly important for adaptability under changing conditions such as climate change.
Fellowships
Whiten is member of the following
Learned society:
-
British Academy since 2000
-
British Psychological Society since 2000
-
Royal Society of Edinburgh since 2001
-
Cognitive Science Society since 2013
He was member of the Editorial Board of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences, from 2008 to 2013.[ Andrew Whiten at royalsociety.org] He additionally chaired the Research Awards Committee of the British Academy from 2011 to 2013.
Awards and honors
Whiten was awarded the Delwart International Scientific Prize by the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium in 2001,
[ News of Members. In: The Psychologist. Vol 15, No 2. February 2002] the Rivers Memorial Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI), and the Osman Hill Medal of the Primate Society of Great Britain in 2007. He is the first and only scientist who was awarded both, the Sir James Black Medal (in 2014) and the Senior Prize and Medal for Public Engagement (in 2015) by the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
[ Andrew Whiten: Prizes. st-andrews.ac.uk]
He was awarded an honorary doctor of the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh in 2015, of the University of Stirling in 2016, and of the University of Edinburgh in 2016/2017.[ Heriot-Watt University Honorary Graduates since 1966. hw.ac.uk][ Honorary Graduates of the University of Stirling - Emeritus Professor Andrew Whiten. stir.ac.uk][ Honorary graduates 2016/17. ed.ac.uk]
Selected works
-
A. Whiten, Richard W. Byrne (ed.): Machiavellian intelligence. Social expertise and the evolution of intellect in monkeys, apes, and humans, 1988.
External links
