Satoshi Kanazawa

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Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa (born November 16, 1962) is an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics. His research uses evolutionary psychology to analyze social sciences such as sociology, economics, and anthropology. [1] In 2003, in an article in the Journal of Research in Personality, he showed that scientists generally made their biggest discovery before their mid-30s, and compared this productivity curve to that of criminals.[2]

In 2006 he published an article in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, claiming that attractive people are 26% less likely to have male offsring.[3][4] However, flaws were later identified in the statistical analysis, with the number actually estimated to be 8%, which due to the multiple comparisons problem, could not be regarded as statistically significant.[5]

Professor Kanazawa has co-written three books with Alan Miller: "Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire—Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do", Why Men Gamble and Women Buy Shoes: How Evolution Shaped the Way We Behave and Order by Accident: The Origins and Consequences of Conformity in Contemporary Japan. He also writes a blog entitled The Scientific Fundamentalist for Psychology Today.

Kanazawa is credited with coining the Savanna principle or the idea that the environment the human mind developed in is drastically different than today's industrial society.

Commenting on the criticism directed against some evolutionary psychology theories, Kanazawa has stated that "The only responsibility that scientists have is to the truth, nothing else. Scientists are not responsible for the potential or actual consequences of the knowledge they create."[6] This position, in turn, was criticized as "irresponsible"[7]

Commenting on the War on Terror, Kanazawa claimed that "there is one resource that our enemies have in abundance but we don’t: hate. Hatred of enemies has always been a proximate emotional motive for war throughout human evolutionary history." He then offers the following thought experiment: "Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost. Yes, we need a woman in the White House, but not the one who’s running [ Hillary Clinton]".[8]


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[edit] References

  1. ^ Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, LSE, retrieved 6 September 2006
  2. ^ Satoshi Kanazawa (August 2003). "Why productivity fades with age: The crime–genius connection". Journal of Research in Personality 37 (4): 257–272. doi:10.1016/S0092-6566(02)00538-X. 
  3. ^ Beautiful people have girls, News.com.au, 2 August 2006
  4. ^ Kanazawa, Satoshi (January 7, 2007). "Beautiful parents have more daughters: A further implication of the generalized Trivers-Willard hypothesis (gTWH)" (PDF reprint). Journal of Theoretical Biology 244 (1): 133–140. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2006.07.017. 
  5. ^ Gelman, Andrew (April 7, 2007). "Letter to the editors regarding some papers of Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa" (PDF Reprint). Journal of Theoretical Biology 345 (3): 597–599. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2006.11.005. 
  6. ^ Psychology Today : "If the truth offends, it’s our job to offend", 2008
  7. ^ Ionian Enchantment : "Crazy Kanazawa", 2008
  8. ^ Psychology Today : "Why we are losing this war", 2008