Nesse's research on the evolution of aging led to a long collaboration with the evolutionary biologist
George C. Williams. Their co-authored book,
Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine, inspired fast growth of the field of evolutionary medicine. His subsequent research has focused on how natural selection shapes mechanisms that regulate pain, fever, anxiety, low mood, and why emotional disorders are so common. He also has written extensively about the evolutionary origins of moral emotions, and strategies for establishing evolutionary biology as a basic science for medicine.
Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry applies the principles of evolutionary medicine to mental disorders. Nesse was the initial organizer and second president of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, and is currently the president of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine & Public Health. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the
American Psychiatric Association, a Fellow of the
Association for Psychological Science, and an elected Fellow of the AAAS. ==Bibliography==