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Avi Tuschman is an American evolutionary anthropologist, political psychologist, political advisor, speaker, and author. His 2013 book Our Political Nature proposed the first comprehensive evolutionary theory of human political orientation that links measurable personality traits to quantitative measurements of fitness.

Early Life and Education

Tuschman was born in Stanford, California on November 17, 1979. He is the son of photographer Mark Tuschman and artist Jana Tuschman. Tuschman attended high school at Menlo School in California. He was admitted as a President's Scholar to Stanford University, where he was later awarded the Robert M. Golden Medal for Excellence in the Humanities and Creative Arts, and the Robert Bayard Textor Award for Creativity in the Anthropological Sciences. He graduated in 2002 and relocated to Peru for his first job after college. Tuschman returned to Stanford in 2004 for a Ph.D. in evolutionary anthropology.

Career

In Peru, Tuschman worked as an operations executive for a political-risk consultancy serving the largest foreign investors in the country. Working in conflict areas in the wake of the Shining Path insurgency exposed him to ideological extremism, which sparked his interest in political orientation. While in Peru, Tuschman also worked for first lady Eliane Karp on indigenous peoples issues, becoming the youngest advisor in the government palace in Lima. He was later recruited to serve as senior writer and advisor to President Alejandro Toledo (Peru, 2001-2006). In 2009, Tuschman worked with eighteen former heads of state in writing a regional policy agenda on democratic governance, which garnered praise from United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who said it was historically unprecedented.

Our Political Nature

Tuschman's book, Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us (published by Prometheus / Random House, 2013) was the first book to propose a comprehensive evolutionary theory of human political orientation that links the distribution of personality traits in a population to quantitative measurements of fitness. It is also “the first book . . . to tell the natural history of the left-right spectrums that run through countries around the world.”

Our Political Nature theorizes that political leanings are evolutionary adaptations that arise primarily from three clusters of measurable personality traits. These clusters pertain to tribalism, tolerance of inequality, and perceptions of human nature. As evidence, Our Political Nature synthesizes studies from the fields of political science, genetics, neuroscience, and primatology, including data on evolutionary fitness from Icelandic, Danish, Turkish, and worldwide populations. The book also offers a psychological explanation for why economic stress tends to broaden the divide between political factions. In interviews with Forbes and the Georgetown Public Policy Review, Tuschman said that the book offers new tools that can be used to measure public opinion: "In today’s world, public opinion is more important than ever; collective attitudes put greater and greater constraints on leaders, even in societies that are currently less democratic. So being able to accurately measure and predict these forces is an increasingly important task for political analysts."

Several writers and political scientists have noted that the book has clear implications for current global politic conflicts. In the Huffington Post, David Miles said that Tuschman's book speaks directly to the forces at play in the Scottish independence referendum. National Public Radio cited the book as challenging the myth that wealth correlates in a meaningful way with political orientation. And New York Natives found Our Political Nature interesting in the context of the 2013 United States federal government shut down.

Our Political Nature has been extensively reviewed by publications in the United States. The reviews generally agree that the book is ambitious, ground breaking, and exhaustively researched. The Washington Monthly credited the book with "a feat that those of us monitoring the emerging science of politics have long been waiting for—explaining the now well-documented psychological, biological, and genetic differences between liberals and conservatives with reference to human evolution and the differential strategies of mate choice and resource allocation that have been forced on us by the pressures of surviving and reproducing on a quite dangerous planet." Political Science Quarterly reported that the book "makes a unique and important contribution to the field." And Americas Quarterly called Our Political Nature among "the best new books on policy, economics, and business in the hemisphere."

Random House featured the book in its list of new and recommended books for course adoption in the political science discipline with praise from political thinkers Francis Fukuyama, Jerrold M. Post, and Moises Naim. About.com named Our Political Nature as one of the top five evolution books of 2013.

External links

Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us

References

1. ^ Baer, Sheri (22 October 2013). "Avi Tuschman returns home to Menlo Park to shed insight into Our Political Nature". InMenlo. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
2. "Fifteen students honored with Golden Medal; 27 receive Firestones". Stanford Report. Standford University. 19 June 2002. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
3. "2002 undergraduate awards". Stanford Daily. Stanford University. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
4. ^ "INTERVIEW: AVI TUSCHMAN ON "OUR POLITICAL NATURE"". Georgetown Public Policy Review. Georgetown University. 3 March 2014. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
5. Alvarez, Joshua (22 August 2014). "Flying in the face of consensus". Palo Alto Weekly. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
6. "Avi Tuschman". Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Georgetown University. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
7. ^ Tuschman, Avi (29 September 2013). "The science of political orientation". Fair Observer. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
8. Edsall, Thomas (24 September 2013). "How did conservatives get this radical?". New York Times. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
9. "Nature or nurture? How DNA may guide our vote". NBCnews.com. National Broadcasting Corporation. 14 October 2013. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
10. "Three questions for Avi Tuschman". Ulrich Boser. Retrieved 24 April 2015.
11. Sharpe, Courtney (9 October 2013). "Reviewing "Our Political Nature"". Gatherthejews.com. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
12. Muhammad, Cedric (29 October 2013). "Why Are We Liberal Or Conservative? -- Q and A With Dr. Avi Tuschman, Author, "Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins Of What Divides Us"". Forbes. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
13. Miles, David. "Scottish independence and our political natures". Huffington Post. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
14. Weeks, Linton (9 October 2014). "Wrong! 3 recent reports that may surprise you". NPR.org. National Public Radio. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
15. "We're reading". New York Natives. 4 October 2013. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
16. Mooney, Chris (May 2014). "The Origin of Ideology". Washington Monthly. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
17. Hibbing, John (Fall 2014). "Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us". Political Science Quarterly. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
18. Perez Garcia, Nancy (Fall 2013). "First Look". Americas Quarterly. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
19. "Political Science: New and recommended books for course adoption" (PDF). Random House. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
20. Scoville, Heather. "5 Evolution Books Published in 2013". About.com. Retrieved 23 April 2015.

• 1979 births
• Living people
• American science writers
• Evolutionary psychologists
• Stanford University alumni
• Evolutionary biologists
• Human evolution theorists
• Psychology writers
• American scientists
• American political scientists
• American political writers
• Anthropology
• Human evolution