Daniel Fessler: Taboos, emotions and cultural evolution

Daniel M.T. Fessler
I am an evolutionary anthropologist whose principal focus is contemporary humans. Combining anthropological, psychological, and biological theories and methods, I approach a variety of aspects of human behavior, experience, and physiology from an integrative perspective in which humans are viewed as both the products of complex evolutionary processes and the possessors of acquired cultural idea systems and behavioral patterns. My research, itself an ever-evolving process, currently focuses on a number of domains including: emotions; disease avoidance; morality, conformity, and cooperation; violence and risk-taking; cultural transmission; food and eating; and sex and reproduction.