Fall 2005 Course on Infant and Child Development 

 
Academic Background 

1996  St. Thomas University, B.A. Honors Thesis "Evolution of Moral Sentiments" Supervisor: Dr. Boris Palameta (Cantab.)

1998  Dalhousie University,  M.Sc. Thesis "Encoding and Decoding of Altruism" Supervisor: Dr. Chris Moore (Cantab.)

2003  Dalhousie University, Ph.D. Thesis "Altruist Detection in Humans" Supervisor: Dr. Chris Moore (Cantab.)

Research Interests

Jamaican Symmetry Project; Altruism; Nonverbal Behavior; Emotion; Sensory Exploitation; Cultural Transmission; Lateral Gene Transfer; Genomic Imprinting;  Experimental Economics / Game Theory 

Teaching Interests

Evolution; Social Behavior; Development; Cognition; Emotion and Motivation

Previous Courses: (a) Principles of Biology for Social Science Students; (b) Lifespan Human Development; (c) Introductory Psychology; (d) Genomic Imprinting and Social Behavior; (e) Motivation and Emotion Class Psychology 364

Representative Publications
 

Brown, W.M., Cronk, L., Grochow, K., Jacobson, A., Liu, K., Popović, Z., & Trivers, R. (in press). Dance reveals symmetry especially in young men. Nature.

Brown, W.M., Consedine, N.S., & Magai, C. (2005). Altruism relates to health in an ethnically diverse sample of older adults. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 60B, P143-P152. (DOWNLOAD PREPRINT)

Brown, W.M., &  Consedine, N.S. (2004). Just how happy is the Happy Puppet? An emotion signalling and kinship theory perspective on the behavioral phenotype of Angelman syndrome children. Medical Hypotheses, 63, 377-385. (DOWNLOAD REPRINT) 

Brown, W.M. (2004). Evolved Cognitive Architecture Mediating Fear: A Genomic Conflict Approach. In P.L. Gower (Ed.) The Psychology of Fear. New York: Nova Science Publishers, pp. 171-182.  (DOWNLOAD CHAPTER)

Brown, W.M., Palameta, B. & Moore, C. (2003). Are there nonverbal cues to commitment? An exploratory study using the zero-acquaintance video presentation paradigm.  Evolutionary Psychology: An International Journal of Evolutionary Approaches to Psychology and Behavior, 1, 42-69. (EMPIRICAL STUDY DOWNLOAD)         

Brown, W.M., & Moore, C. (2003). Fluctuating asymmetry and romantic jealousy.  Evolution and Human Behavior, 24, 113-117. (EMPIRICAL STUDY DOWNLOAD)

Brown, W.M. (2002). Development: The missing link between exaptationist and adaptationist accounts of organismal design. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 509-510.

Brown, W.M., & Moore, C. (2002). Smile asymmetries and reputation as reliable indicators of likelihood to cooperate: An evolutionary analysis. In S.P. Shohov (Ed.) Advances in Psychology Research, 11, 59-78. New York: Nova Science Publishers (EMPIRICAL PAPER DOWNLOAD)

Brown, W.M. (2001). Natural selection of mammalian brain components. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 16, 471-473. (DOWNLOAD REPRINT)

Brown, W.M. (2001). Genomic imprinting and the cognitive architecture mediating human culture. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 1, 251-258. (DOWNLOAD REPRINT)

Brown, W.M. (2001). Genomic imprinting and culture in mammals. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 328-329.

Brown, W.M., & Moore, C. (2000). Is prospective altruist-detection an evolved solution to the adaptive problem of subtle cheating in cooperative ventures? Supportive evidence using the Wason selection task. Evolution and Human Behavior, 21, 25-37. (EMPIRICAL PAPER DOWNLOAD)

Adamo, S.A., Brown, W.M., King, A.P., Mather, D.L., Mather, J. A., Shoemaker, K.L. & Wood, J.B. (2000). Agonistic and reproductive behaviours of the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis in a semi-natural environment. Journal of Molluscan Studies, 66, 417-419.

Palameta, B., & Brown, W.M. (1999). Human cooperation is more than by-product mutualism. Animal Behaviour, 57, F1-F3. (DOWNLOAD REPRINT)
   

Favorite Quote

  “Perhaps the most interesting thing to come out of the realization of possible conflict within the genome is a philosophical one. We see that we are not even in principle the consistent wholes that some schools of philosophy would have us be.”    

W.D. Hamilton FRS (1936-2000)

Figure 1. The phenomenon of genomic imprinting (i.e. differential gene expression depending upon parent-of-origin of allele).
 
 

William Michael Brown M.Sc. Ph.D. Center for Human Evolutionary Studies
Department of Anthropology Rutgers University New Brunswick New Jersey USA

PhD Student Opportunity Evolutionary Psychology Behavioural Ecology Brunel University West London

APPLICATION DEADLINE: 21st November 2005

Start Date January 2006

contact Dr. WM Brown wmbrown at rci.rutgers.edu