Research Sites

Research Interests

  • The evolutionary psychology of human sexuality, mate choice, person perception, and social cognition, including ovulatory cycle influences on women’s sexual strategies and mate preferences

  • Human mental traits (e.g. language, intelligence, creativity, music, art, humor, and moral virtues) as fitness indicators (costly, reliable signals of phenotypic condition and genetic quality) shaped by sexual selection and social selection

  • Clinical applications of fitness indicator theory to understand the evolutionary genetics, phenotypic symptoms, and demographics of schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, autism, personality disorders, and sexual dysfunctions

  • Evolutionary consumer psychology, including conspicuous consumption, consumer preferences, product design, marketing, advertising, branding, consulting, and social policy issues

  • The behaviour genetics, evolutionary genetics, and genetic architecture of intelligence, personality, and psychopathology

  • Behavioral economics, adaptive judgment and decision-making, strategic behavior, adaptive unpredictability, and evolutionary game theory

  • Moral psychology, the origins and functions of human moral virtues, effective altruism, ethical investment, business ethics, conspicuous charity, virtue-signaling

  • The control problem and existential risks of strong AI; evolutionary approaches to artificial intelligence and autonomous adaptive behavior (genetic algorithms for neural network design, evolutionary robotics, artificial life); computer simulations of evolution, including models of mate choice, runaway sexual selection, sympatric speciation, biodiversity, co-evolution, and protean behavior

Research Impact Measures (as of Aug 2024, from Google Scholar)

  • Total citations: 20,568

  • i10-index: 110

  • h-index: 62

Press coverage

  • Print coverage: Nature, Science, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, New Scientist, Science News, SEED magazine, Psychology Today, Experience Life, Details, Allure, Cosmopolitan, Fast Company, BusinessWeek.com, CNB.com, Time.com, The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Der Spiegel (Berlin), Aftonbladet (Sweden), South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), Veja (Rio de Janeiro), and the UK newspapers The Observer, The Financial Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Express, The Mail on Sunday, The Irish Times, etc.

  • Radio: BBC World Service, BBC Radio channels 3, 4, and 5, National Public Radio (US), Air America Radio, South African National Radio, Australian National Radio, Canadian National Radio, Radio New Zealand, etc.

  • TV science documentaries: CNN, PBS, Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, National Geographic Channel, BBC, Channel 4 (UK), Dutch TV, and Japanese TV.

Professional society memberships (past and present)

  • American Marketing Association (AMA)

  • American Psychological Association (APA)

  • Animal Behavior Society (ABS)

  • Association for Consumer Research (ACR)

  • Association for Psychological Science (APS)

  • Behavior Genetics Association (BGA)

  • Heterodox Academy (HdxA)

  • Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES)

  • International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR)

  • International Society for the Study of Individual Differences (ISSID)

  • National Association of Scholars (NAS)

  • Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP)

  • Society for Judgment and Decision-Making

  • Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP)

  • Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE)