John Tooby

37.2k total citations · 5 hit papers
112 papers, 15.3k citations indexed

About

John Tooby is a scholar working on Sociology and Political Science, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience. According to data from OpenAlex, John Tooby has authored 112 papers receiving a total of 15.3k indexed citations (citations by other indexed papers that have themselves been cited), including 61 papers in Sociology and Political Science, 52 papers in Experimental and Cognitive Psychology and 26 papers in Cognitive Neuroscience. Recurrent topics in John Tooby's work include Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (54 papers), Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (47 papers) and Cultural Differences and Values (21 papers). John Tooby is often cited by papers focused on Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (54 papers), Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (47 papers) and Cultural Differences and Values (21 papers). John Tooby collaborates with scholars based in United States, Australia and Denmark. John Tooby's co-authors include Leda Cosmides, Jerome H. Barkow, Aaron Sell, Robert Kurzban, Daniel Sznycer, Debra Lieberman, Andrew W. Delton, Joshua New, Michael E. Price and Max M. Krasnow and has published in prestigious journals such as Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In The Last Decade

John Tooby

108 papers receiving 13.7k citations

Hit Papers

5 papers align trajectories

What are hit papers?

Hit papers significantly outperform the citation benchmark for their cohort. A paper qualifies if it has ≥500 total citations, achieves ≥1.5× the top-1% citation threshold for papers in the same subfield and year (this is the minimum needed to enter the top 1%, not the average within it), or reaches the top citation threshold in at least one of its specific research topics.

The Adapted mind : evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture

1992 3.1k citations Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides et al. Oxford University Press eBooks profile →
The past explains the present

1990 1.1k citations John Tooby, Leda Cosmides profile →
On the Universality of Human Nature and the Uniqueness of the Individual: The Role of Genetics and Adaptation

1990 546 citations John Tooby, Leda Cosmides profile →
Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization

2001 528 citations Robert Kurzban, John Tooby et al. profile →
Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, part II

1989 476 citations Leda Cosmides, John Tooby profile →

Peers — A (Enhanced Table)

Peers by citation overlap · career bar shows stage (early→late) cites · hero ref

Name	h						Papers	Cites
John Tooby United States	54	6.7k	6.0k	4.9k	4.3k	1.6k	112	15.3k
Leda Cosmides United States	57	7.5k 1.1×	6.7k 1.1×	5.4k 1.1×	5.2k 1.2×	2.0k 1.2×	120	18.2k
Ara Norenzayan Canada	48	10.0k 1.5×	4.2k 0.7×	10.8k 2.2×	4.4k 1.0×	1.4k 0.8×	106	22.3k
Daniel C. Dennett United States	52	3.2k 0.5×	4.8k 0.8×	4.2k 0.9×	8.0k 1.8×	615 0.4×	255	19.8k
Steven J. Heine Canada	50	8.1k 1.2×	3.9k 0.6×	10.6k 2.2×	3.5k 0.8×	984 0.6×	105	20.2k
Daniel Nettle United Kingdom	61	3.6k 0.5×	4.1k 0.7×	3.1k 0.6×	1.8k 0.4×	838 0.5×	241	13.0k
Michael Gurven United States	61	5.5k 0.8×	5.1k 0.8×	3.4k 0.7×	1.6k 0.4×	2.5k 1.5×	224	14.1k
Frans Β. Μ. de Waal United States	74	5.3k 0.8×	4.9k 0.8×	15.7k 3.2×	4.9k 1.1×	1.4k 0.8×	244	23.3k
Dan Sperber France	43	3.6k 0.5×	5.3k 0.9×	3.1k 0.6×	2.6k 0.6×	541 0.3×	143	15.5k
Michael A. Hauser United States	73	2.7k 0.4×	4.0k 0.7×	8.1k 1.7×	9.4k 2.2×	723 0.4×	273	22.3k
Paul Rozin United States	74	5.0k 0.8×	3.1k 0.5×	6.7k 1.4×	6.7k 1.5×	433 0.3×	225	23.3k

Countries citing papers authored by John Tooby

Since Specialization

Citations

This map shows the geographic impact of John Tooby's research. It shows the number of citations coming from papers published by authors working in each country. You can also color the map by specialization and compare the number of citations received by John Tooby with the expected number of citations based on a country's size and research output (numbers larger than one mean the country cites John Tooby more than expected).

Fields of papers citing papers by John Tooby

Since Specialization

Physical SciencesHealth SciencesLife SciencesSocial Sciences

This network shows the impact of papers produced by John Tooby. Nodes represent research fields, and links connect fields that are likely to share authors. Colored nodes show fields that tend to cite the papers produced by John Tooby. The network helps show where John Tooby may publish in the future.

Co-authorship network of co-authors of John Tooby

This figure shows the co-authorship network connecting the top 25 collaborators of John Tooby. A scholar is included among the top collaborators of John Tooby based on the total number of citations received by their joint publications. Widths of edges represent the number of papers authors have co-authored together. Node borders signify the number of papers an author published with John Tooby. John Tooby is excluded from the visualization to improve readability, since they are connected to all nodes in the network.

All Works

Sort: Min cites: Since: Top N: Style:

20 of 20 papers shown

Tooby, John & Leda Cosmides. (2025). The evolution of war and its cognitive foundations. Evolution and Human Behavior. 46(3). 106687–106687. 1 indexed citations

Ermer, Elsa, Gary Charness, John Tooby, & Leda Cosmides. (2025). Coalitional support regulates resource divisions in men. Evolution and Human Behavior. 46(5). 106715–106715.

Barlev, Michael, Sakura Arai, John Tooby, & Leda Cosmides. (2025). Willingness to protect from violence, independent of strength, guides partner choice. Evolution and Human Behavior. 46(6). 106745–106745.

Tooby, John, et al.. (2023). Rational inferences about social valuation. Cognition. 239. 105566–105566. 2 indexed citations

Arai, Sakura, John Tooby, & Leda Cosmides. (2022). Motivations to reciprocate cooperation and punish defection are calibrated by estimates of how easily others can switch partners. PLoS ONE. 17(4). e0267153–e0267153. 2 indexed citations

Cosmides, Leda & John Tooby. (2016). Better than rational: Evolutionary psychology and the invisible hand. American Economic Review. 84(2). 327–332. 80 indexed citations

Sznycer, Daniel, Eric Schniter, John Tooby, & Leda Cosmides. (2015). Regulatory Adaptations for Delivering Information: The Case of Confession. Chapman University Digital Commons (Chapman University).

Sznycer, Daniel, Eric Schniter, John Tooby, & Leda Cosmides. (2014). Regulatory adaptations for delivering information: the case of confession. Evolution and Human Behavior. 36(1). 44–51. 24 indexed citations

Krasnow, Max M., Andrew W. Delton, John Tooby, & Leda Cosmides. (2013). Meeting now suggests we will meet again: Implications for debates on the evolution of cooperation. Scientific Reports. 3(1). 1747–1747. 45 indexed citations

10.

Sznycer, Daniel, Kosuke Takemura, Andrew W. Delton, et al.. (2012). Cross-cultural differences and similarities in proneness to shame: an adaptationist and ecological approach.. PubMed. 10(2). 352–70. 65 indexed citations

11.

Delton, Andrew W., et al.. (2012). The psychosemantics of free riding: Dissecting the architecture of a moral concept.. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 102(6). 1252–1270. 89 indexed citations

12.

Klein, Stanley B., et al.. (2009). Evolution and Episodic Memory: An Analysis and Demonstration of a Social Function of Episodic Recollection. Social Cognition. 27(2). 283–319. 40 indexed citations

13.

Tooby, John, Leda Cosmides, & Michael E. Price. (2006). Cognitive adaptations forn‐person exchange: the evolutionary roots of organizational behavior. Managerial and Decision Economics. 27(2-3). 103–129. 164 indexed citations

14.

Cosmides, Leda, John Tooby, & Robert Kurzban. (2003). Perceptions of race. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 7(4). 173–179. 248 indexed citations

15.

Klein, Stanley B., et al.. (2002). Decisions and the evolution of memory: Multiple systems, multiple functions.. Psychological Review. 109(2). 306–329. 291 indexed citations

16.

Fiddick, Laurence, Leda Cosmides, & John Tooby. (2000). No interpretation without representation: the role of domain-specific representations and inferences in the Wason selection task. Cognition. 77(1). 1–79. 181 indexed citations

17.

Cosmides, Leda, et al.. (1999). When and why do people avoid unknown probabilities in decisions under uncertainty? Testing some predictions from optimal foraging theory. Cognition. 72(3). 269–304. 136 indexed citations

18.

Cosmides, Leda & John Tooby. (1999). Toward an evolutionary taxonomy of treatable conditions.. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 108(3). 453–464. 17 indexed citations

19.

Barkow, Jerome H., Leda Cosmides, & John Tooby. (1992). The Adapted mind : evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. Oxford University Press eBooks. 3129 indexed citations breakdown →

20.

Tooby, John & Leda Cosmides. (1989). ADAPTATION VERSUS PHYLOGENY: THE ROLE OF ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY IN THE STUDY OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR. International Journal of Comparative Psychology. 2(3). 18 indexed citations

Rankless uses publication and citation data sourced from OpenAlex, an open and comprehensive bibliographic database. While OpenAlex provides broad and valuable coverage of the global research landscape, it—like all bibliographic datasets—has inherent limitations. These include incomplete records, variations in author disambiguation, differences in journal indexing, and delays in data updates. As a result, some metrics and network relationships displayed in Rankless may not fully capture the entirety of a scholar's output or impact.

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