Press attention

What they say about us.

Early years…

Center for Evolutionary Psychology named “Red Hot Center of Genius” by Esquire Magazine The Center for Evolutionary Psychology was identified as one of 26 “Centers of Genius” in the U.S. in the November 1999 issue of Esquire magazine. Other centers included Cal Tech, Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon (as research institutions), MIT’s Media Lab, Xerox PARC, the Santa Fe Institute, the Whitehead Institute, IBM’s Watson labs, the National Center for Superconducting at Illinois, Gehry Associates, and Ideo. Esquire article / Esquire text only

John Tooby, author profile in Nature 2007 

“Making the paper” Click here for more…

Leda Cosmides wins 2005 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award

UCSB Release … Pioneer Awardees … NIH Announcement… Science article

Cosmides with NIH Director Elias Zerhouni Class of 2005

Some early articles

Newsweek 1989 “How the mind was designed” by Geoffrey Cowley

The Economist 1992 “A critique of pure reason” by Matt Ridley

The Economist 1993 “Just folks” ‘Review of The Adapted Mind 1/9/93 vol 326, issue 7793, p. 86

U.S. News & World Report 1993 “How the modern mind evolved: Stone age priorities” by William Allman

Time 1999 “Where anthropology meets psychology” in issue on the 100 Greatest Thinkers of the 20th Century

New York Times 2000 ‘Evolutionary psychology: The landscape’, in “Born or made?” by Erica Goode

The Economist 2001 “Them” by Geoffrey Carr

Economist 2012 ‘Political strength: A man’s muscle power influences his beliefs’ in “Body and mind”‘

Interviews

La Tercera, Paula Magazine (Chile) June 2018 (Cosmides) Instinto Ancestral en la era digital (Ancestral Instinct in the Digital Age)

Psychology Today, August 2013. Doug Kenrick: An interview with a founder of evolutionary psychology: Leda Cosmides on the birth of evolutionary psychology.

El Mercurio (Chile) October 2001. Alvaro Fischer and Roberto Araya interview Leda Cosmides

Generosity and the evolution of cooperation:

  • The Economist 2011 – Welcome, stranger: The human impulse to be kind to unknown individuals is not the biological aberration it might seem 7/30/2011 vol 400 issue 8744
  • Reason.com 2011 – Why Are People “Irrationally” Generous to Strangers?
  • The Boston Globe 2011 – Why we’re so darn nice by Joshua Rothman
  • The Daily Mail 2011 – Kindness is in our genes
  • Science Codex 2011 – UCSB scholars study the evolution of human generosity
  • Science Daily 2011 – Evolution of Human Generosity
  • Psych Central 2011 – Cooperation Trumps Payback in Evolution of Generosity
  • The American 2011 – The Origins of Envy
  • CNN 7/27/11 – Tipping your waiter may be in your genes
  • Fast Company 7/27/11 – Is Generosity An Evolutionary Trait?
  • KCSB 8/30/11 – Radio Causeway: Are Humans Too Generous?
  • UCSB Press Release 2011 – UCSB Scholars Study the Evolution of Human Generosity 

Spatial cognition: Adaptations for gathering, female advantage

  • New Scientist 9/1/07 – Modern women are excellent gatherers
  • The Daily Telegraph 2007 – Males may excel at map reading but they have an evolutionary inability to find items in the supermarket, say scientists by Roger Highfield
  • The Economist – 8/27/07 – Sex, shopping and thinking pink: The brains of men and women are, indeed, different. vol 384, issue 8543
  • Science 2007 – Born to Shop

Coalitional psychology (the psychology of “us versus them” and race)

Reasoning about social exchange 

(and cheater detection– the cognitive foundations of economics)

  • Los Angeles Times 2002 “An innate ability to smell scams” by Emily Singer (on cheater detection and reasoning about social exchange)
  • Nature 2002 “Brains sniff out scam artists” by Kendall Powell
  • New Scientist 2002 “Brain’s ‘cheat detector’ is revealed”
  • Reuters 2002 “People programmed to sniff out cheaters: Study” by Alison McCook
  • Cox News Service 2002 “Amazon indians match Harvard students in finding cheaters” by Jeff Nesmith
  • The Straits Times (Singapore) 2002 “Ability to spot cheats innate”
  • The Economist 1992 A critique of pure reason (text only)

Kin detection, altruism, and incest

On visual attention to animals

Formidability and anger

On shame as an evolved defense against being devalued by others

Pride

  • World Economic Forum –  2/2017 – Pride has a bad reputation, but here’s why it might be a good thing
  • Ars Technica –  2/2017 – Feeling proud is probably a sign that people think you’re great
  • UCSB Press Release –  2/2017 – Pride — Sin or Incentive?
  • La Nación (Argentina) –  3/2017 – La aprobación de los otros y la psicología de la sociabilidad
  • University of Oxford Press Release –  2/2017 – Is pride a sin or an incentive?
  • UCSB Press Release –  8/2018 – The value of pride
  • BBC (UK) –  10/2018 – Why we shouldn’t be too modest
    • BBC (Turkey) –  10/2018 – Neden fazla mütevazı olmamak gerek?
    • BBC (LatAm) –  1/2019 – Por qué no es bueno ser demasiado modesto
    • HuffPost (Brazil) –  8/2018 – Orgulho é mesmo um pecado? Estudo analisa como o sentimento impacta a evolução humana
    • UOL notícias (Brazil) –  11/2018 – O papel do orgulho na evolução humana
    • Dilema veche (Romania) –  5/2019 – Lauda de sine
    • World Economic Forum –  9/2018 – How pride actually benefits the greater good
    • Yahoo! –  8/2018 – Evolution Study Shows Why Feeling Proud Is Key to Human Survival
    • Université de Montréal Press Release –  10/2018 – Éviter la honte, chercher la fierté: un système universel
    • Radio KCLU – NPR for the California Coast –  8/2018 – South Coast Researchers Say Pride Is More Than Narcissism; They Call It Evolutionary Survival Tool

Are modern political views shaped by ancestral selection pressures?