Today's interview in the series "On the Origin of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society" is David Buss, Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. David is one of the founders of evolutionary psychology but initially made significant contributions to personality psychology. He is perhaps best known for groundbreaking work in human sex differences and mating including jealousy, cross-cultural mate preferences (as he discusses from 17:21-28:50) and the strategies people use to capture and retain a mate. Oftentimes his discoveries come with their own snappy nomenclature like "mate poaching" and exploitability. David professes he is especially interested in the "dark side" (e.g.) of human nature. Many of the initial forays David made into new territory have spawned whole new lines of research.
I'd be remiss to not mention many of David's more colorful qualities as recounted by myself and his other former graduate students. David is a self-described "hyperadaptationist"; he sees psychological adaptations everywhere. Once, during a seminar at his house David mentioned to us that his puppy, Dexter Darwin, sleeping in his lap was "parasitizing his parental mechanisms". Similarly, David also takes a keen interest in how evolutionary psychology principles manifest in real life. At parties you'll often see him asking questions and listening avidly while people describe their romantic lives, relationship dissolutions and aggressive interactions. It's not just David's scientific perspective but his charm that have led him to have such an impact on the field and the wider public. A feminist friend of mine told me that meeting and talking with David reversed her negative preconceived notions about evolutionary psychology and psychologists. David's incisive understanding of mating psychology is only rivaled by his difficulty with modern technology. Once, during a lecture attended by hundreds of students a mobile phone began ringing loudly and continuously. After a few tense minutes David finally realized the sound was emanating from his briefcase which he put outside after unsuccessfully trying to silence the phone!
Some highlights of this interview include David's rebellious roots and how an early hypothesis about dominance was purely designed to upset one of his teachers (1:00), how he began to acclimatize to John Tooby and Leda Cosmides' night owl schedule when they became fast friends at Harvard (13:00-13:43), the advice he would give to graduate students (32:00) and the way he demonstrates how to derogate a rival male on his interviewer and former graduate student Barry X. Kuhle, maybe a little too effectively (21:00). ~written by Diana Fleischman
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