John Tooby

John Tooby is an American anthropologist, who, together with psychologist wife Leda Cosmides, helped pioneer the field of evolutionary psychology. They have argued that humans have a "cheater detection module" within them in the context of the Wason selection task.

Tooby received his Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from Harvard University in 1989 and is currently Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

In 1992, together with Leda Cosmides and Jerome Barkow, Tooby edited The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Tooby and Cosmides also co-founded and co-direct the UCSB Center for Evolutionary Psychology.

Tooby is currently working on a book on the evolution of sexual reproduction and genetic systems.

Selected publications

Books