Research Training Group 2070 Understanding Social Relationships

Lars Penke

Biological Personality Psychology
Georg-Elias-Müller-Institute of Psychology




  • Evolutionary significance of individual differences, esp. in general intelligence and personality traits
  • Evolutionary psychology of mate choice, romantic relationships and sexuality
  • Social endocrinology
  • Links of somatometric measures of the body and face with psychological traits
  • Behaviour genetics
  • Life history theory
  • Neurostructural indicators of intelligence and cognitive aging, esp. associations with white matter integrity
  • Online research




Education and Employment

2013 -Professor, Göttingen University
2011 - 2013Lecturer am Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, UK
2011Habilitation, Psychology, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
2008 - 2010Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, UK
2007 - 2008Post-doctoral Fellow, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
2007Dr. rer. nat., Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany



Selected honours and awards

2015Fellow, Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) Group "Genetic and Social Causes of Life Chances", Bielefeld
2011Early Achievement Award of the European Association of Personality Psychology
2007Best Publication Award, European Journal of Personality (based on a Master or Doctoral thesis)


Selected publications

Hill WD, Davies G, Harris SE, Hagenaars SP, The neuroCHARGE Cognitive Working Group, Liewald DC, Penke L, Gale CR, Deary IJ (2016). Molecular genetic aetiology of general cognitive function is enriched in evolutionarily conserved regions. Translational Psychiatry 6: e980

Kandler C, Riemann R, Angleitner A, Spinath FM, Borkenau P, Penke L (2016). The nature of creativity: The roles of genetic factors, personality traits, cognitive abilities, and environmental sources. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 111: 230-49

Penke L, Jokela M (2016). The evolutionary genetics of personality revisited. Current Opinion in Psychology 7: 104-9

Pietschnig J, Penke L, Wicherts JM, Zeiler M, Voracek M (2015). Meta-analysis of associations between human brain volume and intelligence differences: How strong are they and what do they mean? Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 57: 411-32

Marioni RE*, Penke L*, Davies G, Huffman JE, Hayward C, Deary IJ (2014). The total burden of rare, non-synonymous exome genetic variants is not associated with childhood or late-life cognitive ability. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 281: 20140117

Lefevre CE, Lewis GJ, Perrett DI, Penke L (2013). Telling facial metrics: Facial width is associated with testosterone levels in men. Evolution and Human Behavior 34: 273-9

Penke L, Muñoz Maniega S, Bastin ME, Valdés Hernández MC, Murray C, Royle NA, Starr JM, Wardlaw JM, Deary IJ (2012). Brain white matter tracts integrity as a neural foundation for general intelligence. Molecular Psychiatry 17: 1026-30

Deary IJ*, Penke L*, Johnson W* (2010). The neuroscience of human intelligence dif-ferences. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 11: 201-11

Penke L, Asendorpf JB (2008). Beyond global sociosexual orientations: A more dif-ferentiated look at sociosexuality and its effects on courtship and romantic relation-ships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95: 1113-35

Penke L, Denissen JJA, Miller GF (2007). The evolutionary genetics of personality (target article). European Journal of Personality 21: 549-87

* Shared first authorship.