Aurelio José Figueredo
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Aurelio José Figueredo (born December 27, 1955) is an American evolutionary psychologist. He is a professor of psychology, Family Studies and Human Development at the
University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...
, where he is also the director of the Ethology and Evolutionary Psychology Laboratory. He is also a member of the interdisciplinary Center for Insect Science at the University of Arizona. His major areas of research interest are the evolutionary psychology and behavioral development of life history strategy, cognition, sex, and violence in human and nonhuman animals, and the quantitative ethology and social development of insects, birds, and primates. He is known for his research on
personality Personality is the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that are formed from biological and environmental factors, and which change over time. While there is no generally agreed-upon definition of personality, m ...
, such as a 1997 study in which he and James E. King developed the Chimpanzee Personality Questionnaire to measure the
Big Five personality traits The Big Five personality traits is a suggested taxonomy, or grouping, for personality traits, developed from the 1980s onward in psychological trait theory. Starting in the 1990s, the theory identified five factors by labels, for the US English ...
in chimpanzees. In 2017, Figueredo was recognized as a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, of which he is a Charter Member, and in 2010 he received the George A. Miller Award for coauthoring the "Outstanding Recent Article on General Psychology" from the
American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
. Figueredo served for five years as the chair of the board of directors of the Western Comparative Psychological Association in 1992, was a member of the board of directors of the Evaluation Group for Analysis of Data also in 1992, and a member of the scientific advisory committee of the
Jane Goodall Institute The Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) is a global wildlife and environment conservation organization headquartered in Washington, DC. It was founded in 1977 by English primatologist Jane Goodall. The institute has offices in more than twenty-five coun ...
ChimpanZoo Project in 1994. Figueredo was Book Review Editor of the journal ''
Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences ''Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Psychological Association. It was established in 2007 as the ''Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology'', and obtained its ...
'' as of 2017. He has also served as an associate editor for the '' Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology'' and for ''
Evolutionary Psychology Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evol ...
'', as well as editor-in-chief of the '' Human Ethology Bulletin''. Figueredo has also reviewed papers for ''
Mankind Quarterly ''Mankind Quarterly'' is a peer-reviewed journal that has been described as a "cornerstone of the scientific racism establishment", a "white supremacist journal", and "a pseudo-scholarly outlet for promoting racial inequality". It covers phy ...
'', and has served on the editorial advisory board of the journal as of 2015. ''Mankind Quarterly'' has advocated for
scientific racism Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...
. Figueredo has disavowed eugenics and racial inferiority. As of 2018, Figueredo was identified by the
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...
as the only U.S. scientific researcher receiving funding from the
Pioneer Fund Pioneer Fund is an American non-profit foundation established in 1937 "to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences". The organization has been described as racist and white supremacist in nature. One of its first project ...
, a non-profit institute which promotes scientific racism and
eugenics Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior o ...
. A Pioneer Fund grant was given to the University of Arizona, and was used by Figueredo to attend the 2016
London Conference on Intelligence The London Conference on Intelligence (LCI) is an invitation-only conference for research on human intelligence, including race and intelligence and eugenics. In 2018, ''Times Higher Education'' called it "an annual conference on eugenics and inte ...
, where presentations on eugenics were given. A formal response to the controversy regarding the conference was co-signed by fifteen academic attendees, including Figueredo, and was published in ''Intelligence'' in 2018. The response stated that only a small proportion of the talks presented there were on eugenics or race differences. In 2009 Figueredo coauthored a paper for the journal '' Twin Research and Human Genetics'' with
J. Philippe Rushton John Philippe Rushton (December 3, 1943 – October 2, 2012) was a Canadian psychologist and author. He taught at the University of Western Ontario until the early 1990s, and became known to the general public during the 1980s and 1990s for resea ...
, the Pioneer Fund's president at the time, on the heritability of individual differences in life history. The paper was related to Rushton's differential K theory. Describing Figueredo's frequent citation of Rushton's work, ''
Inside Higher Education ''Inside Higher Ed'' is a media company and online publication that provides news, opinion, resources, events and jobs focused on college and university topics. In 2022, Quad Partners, a private equity firm, sold Inside Higher Education to Time ...
'' said that the Rushton's theory "was widely criticized as racist and based on shaky science".


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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Figueredo, Aurelio José 1955 births Living people 21st-century American psychologists Cuban emigrants to the United States Evolutionary psychologists Personality psychologists Race and intelligence controversy University of Arizona faculty University of California, Riverside alumni 20th-century American psychologists