I am interested in emotions, including their phylogeny and ontogeny, their use as mechanisms of social control, their role in cooperative behavior, and the relationship between emotion, culture, and social structure. More specifically, I explore shame, pride, and disgust as they relate to conformity, prestige seeking, risk taking, and sexual behavior (particularly inbreeding/incest). Other interests include culturally shaped time preferences, socially distributed willpower, the timing of sexual maturation, third party influence in mate selection, and grandparenting. Oh, and I like dogs.

Evolutionary psychology; evolutionary medicine; emotions; cooperation; aggression; social control; risk-taking; ingestive and reproductive behaviors; morality; cultural evolution; Indonesia

• Daniel Fessler on NPR – August 29, 2010
• Research on representations of relative formidability by Dan Fessler, Colin Holbrook, and Jeff Snyder covered by LA Times, NPR, and The Economist. – April 17, 2012
• Dan Fessler interviewed about disgust on WBEZ’s Clever Apes series – April 26, 2011
• Dan Fessler discusses the origins of sex differences in risk taking; cultural transmission; and negatively-biased credulity on Maz Jobrani’s latest Back to School podcast – May 20, 2019