Race, Evolution, and Behavior

Race, Evolution and Behavior

Cover of the first edition
Author	J. Philippe Rushton
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Race
Publisher	Transaction Books, later The Charles Darwin Research Institute
Publication date	1995, 1997, 2000
Media type	Print
Pages	388
ISBN

Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective is a book by J. Philippe Rushton. He served as a professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario for many years, and he also served, until his death from cancer on October 2, 2012, as the head of the Pioneer Fund. The first unabridged edition of the book came out in 1995, and the third, latest unabridged edition came out in 2000; abridged versions were also distributed.

Rushton argues that race is a valid biological concept and that racial differences frequently arrange in a continuum across 60 different behavioral and anatomical variables, with "Mongoloids" (East Asians) at one end of the continuum, "Negroids" (Sub-Saharan Africans) at the opposite extreme, and "Caucasoids" (Europeans, Middle Easterners and North Africans) in the middle.

The book was generally received negatively, its methodology and conclusions being criticized by many experts. The aggressive marketing strategy also received a lot of criticism. The book received positive reviews by some researchers, many of whom were personally associated with Rushton and with the Pioneer Fund which funded much of Rushton's research. The book has been examined as an example of Pioneer's funding of "scientific racist" research, while psychologist Michael Howe has identified the book as part of a movement, begun in the 1990s, to promote a racial agenda in social policy.

The book grew out of Rushton's 1989 paper, "Evolutionary Biology and Heritable Traits (With Reference to Oriental-White-Black Difference)". The 1st unabridged edition was published in 1995, the 2nd unabridged edition in 1997, and the 3rd unabridged edition in 2000.