Anne Campbell (academic)

Anne C Campbell is a British academic and author who specialised in evolutionary psychology. She was Professor of Psychology at Durham University.

Campbell’s research is largely concerned with differences between men and women in their aggressive behaviour. In the 1980s she studied female violence through ethnographic work with female gang members in New York. She subsequently investigated social representations of aggression: the different explanations that men and women offer for their own aggression. Campbell found that men are more likely than women to report that their aggression was a means to an end, while women are more likely to view it as a loss of control.

Campbell's 1999 'Staying Alive' paper proposed an evolutionary explanation for sex differences in aggression. She argued that, while competition is important for women as well as men, women's competition takes less direct and risky forms than men's because mothers are more critical to the survival of their offspring than fathers are. She went on to explore possible ways in which evolution might have shaped men's and women's psychology differently, in particular with regard to impulsivity and fear.

In total, Campbell authored and co-authored more than 80 scientific papers on a broad range of topics including: the role of in human behaviour, the measurement of life history strategies, aggression in intimate partnerships, the 'Dark Triad' of personality traits, competition between women, perceptions of one-night stands areas of dispute and agreement between feminism and evolutionary psychology, and even back pain.

In 2010 Campbell made a memorable appearance in the Norwegian documentary series Hjernevask ('Brainwash'), in which she argued forcefully against the gender theories of Norwegian social scientists. She also argued, however, that the effects of humans' evolved psychology are dependent on social context.

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