David Buss

Biography

 Born on April 14, 1953 in Indianapolis, Indiana

 His father, Arnold H. Buss Sr. has a PhD in Psychology and works as a professor in some
universities while researching on aggression, psychopathology, self-consciousness, and social
anxiety.
 By age 17, he dropped out from high school and worked at a truck stop.
 Afterwards he realized that there must be a better way to make a living and got himself to finish
his high school education and was admitted to college, via random lottery pick, to the University
of Texas.
 He went on and got his PhD degree in personality psychology at the University of California.
 He became a professor at Harvard University where he had a collaboration with Leda Cosmides
and John Tooby and established the field of “evolutionary psychology”.

OVERVIEW

Charles Darwin laid the foundation for the modern theory of evolution. He explained how evolution
works namely through:

>Selection

-Natural selection – is a mechanism where certain traits are favored to nature for greater
survivability.

-Sexual selection – operates when the opposite sex find certain traits more appealing and
attractive than others.

>Chance – occurs mostly through random genetic mutation

 Artificial selection – occurs when humans select a particular desirable trait in a breeding species.

EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS’ THREE DISTINCT OUTCOMES

1. Adaptations – are evolved strategies that solve important survival and reproductive problems.

2. By-products – traits that happen as a result of adaptation but are not part of the functional design.

3. Noise – occurs when evolution produces random changes in design that do not affect function.
EVOLUTIONARY THEORY OF PERSONALITY

 Evolutionary theory
o Assumes that the true origins of traits reach far back in ancestral times.
o Personality is caused by an interaction between an ever changing environment and a
changing body and brain.
o The basic assumption of evolutionary psychology is that some psychological traits and
behaviors are advantageous for survival and thus must be evolutionary adaptations.

THE NATURE AND NURTURE OF PERSONALITY

In general, evolution is inherently an interaction between biology and environment (nature and
nurture). Neither can function without the other. Buss termed the tendency to assume that the
environment alone can produce behavior void of a stable internal mechanism to be a fundamental
situational error.

ADAPTIVE PROBLEMS AND THEIR SOLUTIONS

Mechanisms operate according to principles in different adaptive domains. They are complex
solutions to specific adaptive problems – survival and reproduction.

Main Classes of mechanism

1. Physical mechanism – physiological organs and systems that evolved to solve problems of survival
(food, danger, predation, etc.)

2. Psychological mechanisms – internal and specific cognitive, motivational, and personality systems that
solve specific survival and reproduction problems.

EVOLVED MECHANISM

Three main categories of psychological mechanism relevant to personality:

 Goals/drives/motives
 Emotions
 Personality traits

They are adaptive because they help solve problems of survival and reproduction.

BUSS’ MODEL of PERSONALITY

1. Surgency/ extraversion/ dominance

-involves the disposition to experience positive emotional states and to engage in one’s
environment and to be sociable and self-confident.

2. Agreeableness
 - marked by a person’s willingness and capacity to cooperate and help the group on the one
hand or to be hostile and aggressive on the other.

3. Emotional stability

Revolves around response to danger and threat. It involves one’s ability to handle stress or not.

4. Conscientiousness

- The core characteristic of conscientiousness is one’s capacity and commitment to work. It also
signals to others whom we can trust with tasks and responsibilities and whom we can depend on times
of need.

5. Openness

- Involves one’s propensity for innovation and ability to solve problems. It is closely aligned with
intellect but also a willingness to try new things.

ORIGINS of INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

Buss and Heidi Greiling proposed four distinct sources of individual differences.

1. Environmental Sources – Such as early experiential calibration which meant that childhood
experiences make some behavioral strategies more likely than others.

2. Heritable/ genetic sources – traits that is under genetic influence such as body type, facial
morphology, and degree of physical attractiveness.

3. Nonadaptive sources – some sources of individual that do not benefit survival or reproductive
success.

4. Maladaptive sources – are those that actively harm one’s chance for survival or decrease one’s sexual
attractiveness such as genetic defect and environmental trauma.