434 Part V Biological/Evolutionary Theories
Attractions, repulsions, mate competition, mate poaching, mate switching, and
sexual conflict permeated our social life beginning in sixth or seventh grade and
possibly earlier... Once I became enchanted by evolutionary theory, however,
mating became a natural. Differential reproductive success is the engine of
evolution. (2004, pp. 17–18)
As we have seen consistently throughout this book, the personality of the
theorist shapes his or her theory of personality. Buss seems to be no exception.
“Did these childhood experiences somehow create some causal vector that moti-
vated me to focus on mating in my professional life? Possibly, yet I doubt that my
experiences are unique” (D. Buss, 2004, p. 17).
Moreover, at the same time that David was an undergraduate in psychology
at the University of Texas at Austin, his father was in the same department as a
professor and published the first introductory psychology textbook with evolution
as the unifying theme, Psychology—Man in Perspective. The senior Buss opened
his book with the following statement:
The subject matter of psychology is so diverse as to bewilder the student. It
would help in bringing order out of chaos if there were a simple, all-
embracing theme that encompassed the various topics of psychology. The only
perspective that appears sufficiently grand in scope is that of evolution.
(A. Buss, 1973, p. 2)
The concept of evolution and its importance in human behavior, therefore,
was clearly ever-present in the Buss household, and David’s fascination with
explaining human behavior, especially sexual behavior, from this perspective, was
an obvious outgrowth of his family environment.
In contrast to his middle school and high school performance, as an under-
graduate in college David Buss excelled and developed a passion for psychology
and human behavior and went on to a PhD program in personality psychology at
the University of California at Berkeley from 1976 to 1981. At Berkeley he worked
with Jack and Jeanne Block, Richard Lazarus, and Harrison Gough, and yet his
most fruitful collaboration was with Ken Craik. Together with Craik, Buss devel-
oped a behaviorally based assessment to personality they dubbed the “act-frequency”
approach.
His first professorship position was at Harvard University, where he con-
tinued the act-frequency research but increasingly turned his attention to his
first love in psychology, evolutionary theory. While at Harvard Buss began a
collaboration with two graduate students—Leda Cosmides and John Tooby—
who, along with Buss, would go on to establish the field of “evolutionary
psychology.”
David Buss has garnered many awards over the course of his career,
including the Early Career Contribution to Personality Psychology by the Amer-
ican Psychological Association in 1988 and being elected Fellow to both the
American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society.
In addition, he has authored numerous books, including Evolutionary Psychol-
ogy (1999), The Evolution of Desire (2003), and The Murderer Next Door
(2005). Along with Randy Larsen he has also published a textbook, Personality
Psychology (2002).