Aurelio J. Figueredo

The colorful pseudoscience Race & Racialism

Hating thy neighbour

Racism Racial pride Nationalism

Divide and conquer

Pittsburgh synagogue shooting Bradley effect Golden Dawn Stalin apologetics JIDF

Dog-whistlers

Tom Tancredo August Kreis III Mark Dice Nesta Webster Timothy LaHaye v - t - e

Aurelio José Figueredo (1955–) is an evolutionary psychologist. His research has been funded in part by the far-right Pioneer Fund.^[1] As Professor of Psychology at the University of Arizona, Figueredo controversially accepted at least $458,000 from the Pioneer Fund, and partly used the money to attend the pseudoscientific London Conference on Intelligence alongside white supremacists; for this he has been widely criticized:

Andrew Winston, a psychology professor who teaches a class on scientific racism at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, said he believes it’s morally unacceptable for the University of Arizona to accept the foundation’s money. While the school must uphold academic freedom, it also has an obligation to promote "human rights, equality and diversity,” he said.

“The scientific racism supported by the Pioneer Fund is used by racial extremists around the world,” he said in an email.

Figueredo has used Pioneer Fund money for travel to the London Conference on Intelligence, a gathering that has included eugenics-themed presentations. Recent conferences were held at the University College London, which said in January that it didn’t endorse the gatherings and would investigate the content of presentations.^[1]

Responding to criticism, Figueredo stated that he doesn't believe in racial inferiority and denounces eugenics. He added that he didn't feel his research was doing harm, even in light of taking cash from the Pioneer Fund. Regarding the London Conference on Intelligence, he stated it was "not about eugenics",^[1] although some presentations there were.

Personality trait research

Figueredo co-authored a 1997 paper with James E. King which applied Big Five personality traits to chimpanzees residing in zoos. Chimps were judged based on dozens of adjectives, including: "clumsy", "autistic", "stingy", and "manipulative". King and Figueredo anticipate skepticism towards the paper, but aim to dispel it.^[2] Even among humans, "Big Five" personality measures may not hold the same validity between cultures.^[3]

London Conference on Intelligence papers

2016

Positive effects of intergroup competition upon ingroup collectivism, slow life history, human capital, and intelligence: The case of historical Japan

Speaker: Heitor B. F. Fernandes

Co-authors: Kenya Kura, Aurelio José Figueredo

Competition between groups has been argued to select for ingroup altruism, slow life history, intelligence, and related psychosocial traits evolutionarily. To test if such effects can be observed over historical time in human populations, we used prefecture-level data on the major military events that occurred since AD 1000 in Japan. Positive effects of per-capita frequency of battles (PCFB) during the highly competitive Warring States period were observed to positively predict prefecture-level collectivism (cohesion and self-sacrifice within extended families), slow life history (an aggregate of longevity, reversed fertility rate, reversed infant mortality, height), intelligence (national achievement tests with adolescent students), and human capital (an aggregate of percentage of high-school graduates pursuing further education, employment rate, socioeconomic position, income, savings), but not social capital (an aggregate of trust in and frequency of socializing with others, and volunteer activity in the community). PCFB in previous and subsequent more peaceful periods, during which conflict was not consistent, showed weaker and less interpretable effects. Prefectures which were more victimized by WW-II bombings present faster life history, lower intelligence and human capital, and more social capital, as targeted prefectures were not necessarily those that were more socially organized for and engaged in competition against enemies. No period predicted psychological health (an aggregate of life satisfaction, happiness, peace of mind, energy, reversed hopelessness, reversed depression and loneliness, reversed impacts of mental-health problems). We discuss the usefulness of theories of group selection, individual selection, and proximate effects for understanding the results.

Allegations of racism

Although Figueredo denies allegations of racism, he sits on the Advisory Board of the Mankind Quarterly (a racist pseudoscholarly journal in which he has also co-authored multiple articles) although he commented in 2018 that he was not involved with reviewing racially charged papers, per AZCentral.^[1] In 2009 he co-authored a paper with the Pioneer Fund’s president at the time, J. Philippe Rushton (died 2012) who was infamous for race and IQ pseudoscience.^[4][1] In 2018, Figueredo co-signed a letter alongside many others critical of criticism towards hereditarian papers; the letter especially characterizes Stephen Jay Gould's book, The Mismeasure of Man, as a case of apparent "controversialization" of intelligence research, creating what the letter says is a chilling effect.

See also

• Adam Perkins

External links

• Aurelio Figueredo, University of Arizona
• Google Scholar citations

References