Tamás Dávid-Barrett

At Trinity, I teach first year micro-economics.

I am a behavioural scientist, asking what traits allow humans to live in large and culturally complex societies. My work focuses on how the structure of social networks changes during falling fertility, urbanization, and migration, as well as how social networks vary over the human life-course. My current projects also include: the origins of inequality regulation; why the behavioural rules between men and women vary so much across cultures; and the evolutionary foundations of sharing behaviours. 

You can find out more about my work here, and about the Structural Microfoundations theory specifically here.

David-Barrett, T. (2023) Human Group Size Puzzle: Why It Is Odd That We Live in Large Societies. Royal Society Open Science 10:8

David-Barrett, T. (2023) Clustering Drives Cooperation on Reputation Networks, All Else Fixed. Royal Society Open Science 10:4

David-Barrett, T., S. Diaz, C. Rodriguez-Sickert, C., I. Behncke, A. Rotkirch, J., Kertész, and L. Bravo (2023) In A Society of Strangers, Kin Is Still Key: Identified Family Relations in Large-Scale Mobile Phone Data, arXiv 2307.03547

David-Barrett, T. (2022) Kinship Is a Network Tracking Social Technology, Not an Evolutionary Phenomenon, arXiv 2204.02336

David-Barrett, T. (2022) World-wide Evidence for Gender Difference in Sociality, arXiv 2203.02964.

David-Barrett, T. (2020) Herding Friends in Similarity-Based Architecture of Social Networks. Scientific Reports 10, 4859.

David-Barrett, T. (2019) Network Effects of Demographic Transition, Scientific Reports 9:2361

David-Barrett, T., and R.I.M. Dunbar, (2017) Fertility, Kinship, and Evolution of Mass Ideologies, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 417 pp. 20-27

David-Barrett, T., J. Kertesz, A. Rotkirch, A. Ghosh, K. Bhattarcharya, D. Monsivais, K. Kaski, (2016) Communication with family and friends across the life course, PLOS ONE  11:11

David-Barrett, T., A. Rotkirch, J. Carney, I. Behncke, J. Krems, D. Townley, E. McDaniell, A. Byrn-Smith, and R.I.M. Dunbar (2015). Women Favour Dyadic Relationships, but Men Prefer Clubs: Cross-Cultural Evidence from Social Networking. PLoS ONE 10(3): e0118329.

David-Barrett, T., and J. Carney (2015), The Deification Of Historical Figures And The Emergence Of Priesthoods As A Solution To A Network Coordination Problem. Religion, Brain and Behavior.