David Buss

The primary topics of his research include male mating strategies, conflict between the sexes, social status, social reputation, prestige, the emotion of jealousy, homicide, anti-homicide defenses, and—most recently—stalking. All of these are approached from an evolutionary perspective. Buss is the author of more than 200 scientific articles and has won many awards, including an APA Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in 1988 and an APA G. Stanley Hall Lectureship in 1990.

Attempts to state the conditions that constitute a certain personality trait and attempts to exhaustively list all the acts that identify a bearer of a trait have not been very successful in providing exact definitions for trait-related terms (such as "creative", "humorous", and "ambitious"). The question of what exactly defines an individual as being—for example—courageous is an open one. Another difficulty is measuring how strongly a trait is pronounced in an individual.

David Buss and colleagues conducted a study that attempted to uncover where priorities lie—concerning determinants of attractiveness—in short- and long-term mating strategies. In order to do this, participants' mating strategies were determined using the SOI, labeling each participant as favoring either a short- or a long-term mating strategy. Each individual was then given the choice to reveal either the face or body from a portrait of a person of the opposite gender. David Buss and his colleagues found that sociosexual orientation or favored mating strategy influenced which part of the portrait was revealed. Men who favored a short-term mating strategy chose to reveal the woman's body, whereas men who favored a long-term mating strategy chose to reveal the woman's face. David Buss and his colleagues found that favored mating strategies in women had no correlation with which part of the portrait was revealed but had to do with utilitarian aspects that make sense in terms of supportive and dependable resources, health and stamina. Attractiveness, from a male's perspective, seems to be based on facial cues when seeking a long-term relationship, and bodily cues when seeking a short-term relationship because they cue healthiness and reproductive capacity. They also found men showed more retardation in long term mating strategy than women and in short term strategy for women, their individuality, perceptions of benefit and demand of mate switching influenced. This findings add to David Buss' field of research by demonstrating differences in mating strategies across preferred relationship type.

Buss is the author of a number of publications and books, including The Evolution of Desire, The Dangerous Passion, and The Murderer Next Door, which introduces a new theory of homicide from an evolutionary perspective. He is also the author of Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, whose fourth edition was released in 2011. In 2005, Buss edited a reference volume, The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. His latest book is Why Women Have Sex, which he coauthored with Cindy Meston.

Schmitt & Buss in 2001 defined mate poaching as a behavior designed to lure someone who is already in a romantic relationship, either temporarily for a brief sexual liaison or more permanently for a long-term mating. In empirical studies men showed higher propensity in mate poaching than women. Tactics involved befriending, waiting for an opportunity, driving a wedge in existing relationship, etc.

Buss earned his PhD in psychology at University of California, Berkeley in 1981. Before becoming a professor at the University of Texas, he was assistant professor for four years at Harvard University and a professor at the University of Michigan for eleven years.

As a solution to these problems of defining and measuring traits, Buss and K. H. Craik (1980) proposed to introduce prototype theory into personality psychology. First, a group of people is asked to list acts that a person bearing the trait in question would show. Next, a different group of people is asked to name from that list those acts that are most typical for the trait. Then the measurement is conducted by counting the number of times (within a given period of time) a proband performs the typical acts.

David Michael Buss (born April 14, 1953) is an American evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, theorizing and researching human sex differences in mate selection.