I'm going to provide some links here that folks can use to get started on their project. I'll break it down by topic, but there are a few general links that you all may be interested in:
- The Center for Evolutionary Psychology [1]
- Steve Pinker's website at Harvard University [2]
Now for some topic specific links:
- With respect to the tolerance of difference/racism group, you may be interested in Kurzban, R., Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2001). http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/papers/eraserace.pdf">Can race be erased?: Coalitional computation and social categorization. [2] Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(26), 15387-15392. Also see: Cosmides, L., Tooby, J. & Kurzban, R. (2003). Perceptions of race [3]. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7(4), 173-179 (April).
- For the diet/nutrition topic, there are a couple of books you might start with: Nestle, Marion 2002 Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. University of California Press, and Counihan, Carole and Van Esterik, Penny (eds) 1997 Food and Culture: A Reader.
- On the topic of education and learning styles, here's a nice primer [4]. I also mentioned Jerry Fodor and Howard Gardner as resources.
- For altruism/belief/morality/religion, the work of Marc Hauser [5] should get you a lot of good references. Hauser has a recent book: Moral Minds, and that will have all the references you'll need.
- With respect to depression/happiness, I mentioned one author: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [6]. (I notice that his wiki entry is pretty thin -- hint, hint.) Another possible source is: Hagen EH (under review) Gestures of despair and hope: A strategic reinterpretation of deliberate self-harm. (You may be able to get a copy by emailing the author.)