This is the fourth post in a series introducing some of the members of the Signal Patterns Scientific Advisory Board. These leading psychologists and researchers work with Signal Patterns to bring their work to the public in the form of various mobile and online applications.
David Buss, PhD is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Buss is the author of more than 200 scientific articles and has won many awards. He is the author of a number of publications and books, including The Evolution of Desire, The Dangerous Passion, and most recently, The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and The Murderer Next Door, which introduces a new theory of homicide from an evolutionary perspective. He is also the author of Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind which is currently in its third edition and was released in 2007 (Wikipedia).
David, what’s your research focus?
Human mating strategies, sexual motivations, personality and sexual strategies, and the evolution of personality.
What are the applications for your work?
There are many POTENTIAL applications of my work on human mating strategies.
What are you reading?
In addition to scientific articles, I enjoy books on travel [Paul Thereaux, for example], and books on true crime.
What are good books for the lay person to understand your area?
The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating
and Why Women Have Sex [due out in October]
How is the internet/online applications impacting your work?
My lab does a lot of studies on line these days. Makes life easier in many ways.
What do you always get asked? What do your students want to know?
Students want to know what women want in a mate, and why men and women seem to get into so much conflict.
How would you like to bring your work to the public?
Through my books.
What’s the biggest misperception of your field?
That evolutionary psychology is “genetic determinism.”
What’s the ‘holy grail’ for your work?
Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species.”
What’s wrong with psychology?
It is insufficiently infused with the most important theory that unified all of the life sciences–evolution by natural selection.
