Geoffrey Miller

This article is about the psychologist Geoffrey Miller. For US General Geoffrey Miller, see Geoffrey D. Miller .

Geoffrey Franklin Miller (* 1965 in Cincinnati , Ohio ) is an American psychologist and evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico .

Life

He graduated from Columbia University and received his PhD in cognitive psychology from Stanford University . He then worked at various research institutions and universities, including the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research in Munich , the Universities of Sussex and Nottingham and the Center for Economic Learning and Social Evolution at University College London . He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico .

Miller lives with science journalist Rosalind Arden and has a daughter.

"The Mating Mind"

In his book "The Mating Mind" Miller explains the high intelligence and creative abilities of humans in the sense of evolutionary psychology as a result of sexual selection .

The human brain is clearly oversized in its size and with its performance for the abilities that humans needed to survive under prehistoric conditions, so it cannot be explained by natural selection alone . Just like the oversized tail feathers of the peacock, the oversized human brain arose from the fact that the female specimens of our ancestors preferred those male specimens that were more entertaining due to their intelligence and creativity.

Referring to Ronald Fisher , who appeared in his 1930 book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin coming, but first a little rezipierte idea of sexual selection has studied mathematically, Miller assumes that it becomes a self-perpetuating process (runaway process) come: On the one hand, the above-average brain of the male prehistoric man, who through this had a higher number of offspring, is not only transferred to the male but also to his female offspring; On the other hand, after a few generations, most male people with an above-average brain also carry genes inherited from their mother on which the sexual preference for such men is stored and which they can pass on to their daughters even if they are with a female Have mated people who have not yet carried this gene. In this way, both properties spread to the entire population.

See also: 37% rule

Works

• Geoffrey Miller: The mating mind, how sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature . Anchor, New York 2001, ISBN 978-0-385-49517-2 (translated into numerous languages, German edition: The sexual evolution, choice of partner and the emergence of the mind , Heidelberg 2001, ISBN 3-8274-1097-5 ).

• Glenn Geher (Editor), Geoffrey Miller (Editor): Mating Intelligence: Sex, Relationships, and the Mind's Reproductive System . Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8058-5749-8 .

• Geoffrey Miller: Spent. Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior . Viking Adult, 2009, ISBN 978-0-670-02062-1 .

Web links

• Miller's website for the University of New Mexico