Section: Staff Profiles

Dominic Johnson

Name
Dr Dominic Johnson
Title
Reader
Organisation
Politics and International Relations, School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh
Address
4.24 Chrystal Macmillan Building 15a George Square Edinburgh UK EH8 9LD
Telephone
+44 (0)131 650 3937
E-Mail
URL
http://www.pol.ed.ac.uk/staff_profiles/johnson_dominic
DomJohnsonPhoto

Website

dominicdpjohnson.com

Office Hours

Thursdays 1pm - 3pm.

Qualifications

  • PhD, MA, Political Science (Geneva University)
  • DPhil, MSc, Biology (Oxford University)

Biography

Dominic has held fellowships in the Society of Fellows at Princeton University (2004-07), the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University (2003-04), and the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University (2002-03). Dominic was also the recipient of a Society in Science Branco Weiss Fellowship (2004-09), a program based at ETH Zurich supporting interdisciplinary researchers working on the intersection between science and society.

Research

Drawing on his background in both biology and politics, Dominic aims to improve our understanding of global conflict and cooperation via new scientific knowledge about human nature. Human nature was long the domain of philosophers. Today, however, human nature is also a science. New research from evolutionary biology, psychology, neurobiology, and experimental economics have uncovered systematic human predispositions that allow us to better predict human behaviour, and force us to rethink assumptions lying at the heart of international relations theory. These insights are of no small importance. The key security challenges of the 21st century are as much about psychological biases, ethnic hatred, religious beliefs, and individual tyrants as about anything else. The minds and motivations behind contemporary security threats are ultimately the key to predicting and avoiding them. Dominic’s long-term research agenda is to identify ways to promote cooperation and conflict resolution in international politics by channeling, rather than defying, our evolutionary legacy of psychological biases, cognitive constraints, and propensities for conflict and cooperation. His most recent research revolves around the role of evolutionary dynamics, evolutionary psychology and religion in human cooperation and conflict.

Project on the Origins of Religion (based in Edinburgh 2008-2011)

Project on Evolution and Human Nature (based in Princeton, 2012-2013)

Project on Natural Security (based in Arizona, 2005-ongoing) 

Publications (citation metrics)

Books


Articles


Book Chapters

  • Price, ME & Johnson, DDP (in press) “The Adaptationist Theory of Cooperation in Groups: Evolutionary Predictions for Organizational Cooperation”, in Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences, Saad, G (ed), Springer.
  • Johnson, DDP (In Press) The uniqueness of human cooperation: cognition, cooperation and religion. In: Evolution, Games and God: The Principle of Cooperation, Nowak, MA and Coakley, S (eds), Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Hardie, I, Johnson, DDP & Tierney, DR (2011) Psychological Aspects of War, in The Handbook on the Political Economy of War, Coyne, CJ & Mathers, RL (ed), pp. 72-92, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
  • Johnson, DDP (2009) The error of God: Error management theory, religion, and the evolution of cooperation. In: Games, Groups, and the Global Good SA Levin (ed), pp. 169-180. Berlin: Springer.
  • Van Vugt, M, Johnson, DDP, Kaiser, RB & O’Gorman, R (2008) Evolution and the social psychology of leadership: The mismatch hypothesis. In: Leadership at the Crossroads: Leadership and Psychology, vol. 1, CL Hoyt, GR Goethals & DR Forsyth (eds), pp. 267-282. New York: Praeger.
  • Johnson, DDP (2008) Gods of War: The Adaptive Logic of Religious Conflict. In: The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques, J Bulbulia, R Sosis, C Genet, R Genet, E Harris, and K Wyman (eds), Santa Margarita, CA: Collins Foundation Press.
  • Johnson, DDP, Price, M & Takezawa, M (2008) Renaissance of the Individual: Reciprocity, Positive Assortment, and the Puzzle of Human Cooperation. In: Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology: Ideas, Issues and Applications, C. Crawford and D. Krebs (eds), New York: Erlbaum.
  • Johnson, DDP & Madin, JS (2008) Population models and counterinsurgency strategies. In: Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World, RD Sagarin and T Taylor (eds), Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
  • Johnson, DDP & Madin, EMP (2008) Paradigm shifts in security strategy. Why does it take disasters to trigger change? In: Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World, RD Sagarin and T Taylor (eds), Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
  • Johnson, DDP & Tierney, D (2007) In the eye of the beholder: victory and defeat in U.S. military operations, pp. 46-76, In: Understanding Victory and Defeat in Contemporary War, edited by J. Angstrom and I. Duyvesteyn, London: Routledge.
  • Macdonald, DW & Johnson, DDP (2001) Dispersal in theory and practice: consequences for conservation biology, In: Dispersal, Clobert, J et al. (eds), pp. 361-374, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Commentaries


Teaching

Dominic teaches (with Claire Duncanson and Juliet Kaarbo) the Honours and MSc course on International Security, and has previously taught courses on political psychology, cooperation, and religion.

Topics interested in supervising

Political psychology, international security, decision-making, modelling, evolutionary psychology, religion

This page was published on 11 February 2012


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