Glenn Wilson (psychologist)
| Glenn Wilson | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Glenn Daniel Wilson 29 December 1942 Christchurch, New Zealand |
| Residence | London, England |
| Education | University of Canterbury |
| Occupation |
Evolutionary psychologist Media commentator |
| Known for | Criminal profiling |
Glenn Daniel Wilson (born 29 December 1942) is a psychologist best known for his work on attitude and personality measurement, sexual attraction, deviation and dysfunction, partner compatibility, and psychology applied to performing arts.
In 2001, Wilson was ranked among the 10 most frequently cited British psychologists in scientific journals. He is a fellow of the British Psychological Society and makes frequent media appearances as a psychology expert, especially in TV news and documentaries.
After graduating MA with 1st-class honors at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, Wilson moved to London in 1967 to study for his PhD under the supervision of Professor Hans Eysenck, with whom he subsequently collaborated on a number of research projects and co-authored six books. He also co-authored the Eysenck Personality Profiler, a standard personality test used in clinical research and industry. With John Patterson, he devised the Wilson-Patterson Conservatism Scale, which became widely used as a measure of social attitudes and continues to be used today. His 1973 theory that a heritable trait reflecting fear of uncertainty underlies social attitudes in all fields has much empirical support. Together with G.Knyazev and H.Slobodskaya of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Wilson has researched the EEG correlates of personality and produced a theory of the evolution of brain oscillations.
In a ground-breaking study conducted before leaving New Zealand, Wilson showed that classical fear conditioning in humans can be overridden by verbal reassurances of "safety". This initiated a continuing field of research concerned with the power of cognitive expectations to control anxiety that underlies the rationale of cognitive behavior therapy.
Wilson was a pioneer of evolutionary approaches to understanding human sex differences and mating behavior, attracting some hostility when this was unfashionable in the 1970s. His use of the bust-waist ratio as an objective index of female sexual attractiveness presaged the waist-hip ratio, now widely accepted as an oestrogen (fertility) marker. His studies of sex fantasy yielded the Wilson Sex Fantasy Questionnaire, often used in research and forensic psychology. With Peter Fenwick and others at the Institute of Psychiatry, he showed that men with normal and paraphilic interests could be distinguished with respect to EEG responses to erotic images in certain brain areas.
...
Wikipedia