Douglas Kenrick

Douglas T. Kenrick is author of over 160 scientific articles, books, and book chapters, the majority applying evolutionary ideas to human behavior and thought processes. At a theoretical level, his work integrates three great syntheses of the last few decades: evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, and dynamical systems theory. Much of that work has been funded by NIMH and NSF and has been reported in journals, including Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Psychological Review, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Evolution and Human Behavior. Kenrick has edited several books on evolutionary psychology, contributed chapters to the Handbook of Social Psychology and the Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, and been an author of two multi-edition textbooks (Social Psychology: Goals in Interaction, with Steve Neuberg and Bob Cialdini, is now going into its 5th edition).

Kenrick comes not from an educated family but from a shoddy lot of hard-drinking shanty-town Irish trouble-makers, with a father and brother who both served time in Sing-Sing, and a sharp-dressing uncle who was reputed to be a mobster, among other non-academic familial distinctions. He himself appeared to be on the same track during his teenage years, during which he was expelled from two high schools and had to appeal a possible expulsion from college (after showing up drunk to class and heckling his first psychology professor). But although he has shamed his family by never getting his name in the papers for any criminal activity, he has done sometimes shocking research (on topics such as homicidal fantasies and one-night stands), which has been covered in national media, including Newsweek, New York Times, and many other newspapers and popular magazines. And although never featured as a perpetrator on Cops, Kenrick has appeared in several BBC and Discovery Channel documentaries on sexual attraction and evolution, and on the Oprah Winfrey show. He is currently working on a book titled Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life (due for publication in fall 2010).

His PT blog is Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life