Professional background
Abraham (Bram) P. Buunk, is a social psychologist, who has obtained his Masters Degree in 1971 at the University of Groningen and his PhD in 1980 at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He was affiliated as a Senior Lecturer in Social and Organizational Psychology at Radboud University from 1975 till 1990. From 1982 till 1983 he was also a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1990 he became Chair and Professor in Social Psychology at the University of Groningen. In 2004 Abraham Buunk was the first social psychologist to become a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, and in 2005 he was appointed by this academy to the honorable position of Academy Professor in Evolutionary Social Psychology. In 2012 he retired from this position, but remained active as a Honorary Professor. From 2013 till 2017 he was a part-time professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at the University of Curaçao. He is since 2017 a Profesor Visitante at the Universidad Católica del Uruguay. He also gives regularly workshops on cooperation and conflict for the Akademie voor Wetgeving (Academy for Lawmaking) in the Hague.
Research and publications
Abraham has conducted numerous social psychological studies on a variety of applied issues, including professional burnout, absenteeism, AIDS-prevention, loneliness, depression, marital satisfaction, successful ageing, and coping with cancer. His research over the past decades has focused primarily on evolutionary and cultural approaches of human behavior, particularly jealousy, intra-sexual competition, and parental control of mate choice.
He published and edited many books. Among others, he edited with Frederick X. Gibbons Social comparison, health and well-being: Perspectives from social comparison theory (1997), and with Linda Steg, Kees Keizer and Talib Rothengatter Applied social psychology. Understanding and managing social problems (2017). With Mark van Vugt he wrote Applying social psychology. From problem to solution (2008, 2013), and with Miguel Moya and Inma Valor he recently published an edited textbook in Spanish on applied social psychology, Psicología Social. Aplicación a los problemas sociales (2022).
He collaborated, and still does so, with scholars in South America, including Argentina, Uruguay, Suriname, Chile and Curaçao. Currently he is on the editorial board of Personality and Social Psychology Compass, Sociedad y Salud, Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, Ciencias Psicológicas, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Interpersona and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Abraham Buunk completed the supervision of 60 dissertations and has over 600 scientific publications in a wide variety of journals and books. In 2009 he received the honorable royal distinction of Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw (Knight in the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands). In 2011 he was awarded the honorable distinction of Professor Honorario from the Universidad Católica de Santa Maria in Arequipa, Peru.
Personal life
On the personal side, Abraham married in 2008 in Uruguay with Yvonne Werkhoven. He has been running three times a week for over 40 years, and ran various half marathons. He enjoys travelling, enjoying nature and listening to Latin, Caribbean and pop music. He loves live performances of these kinds of music. During the past decade, he has lived in Amsterdam, but he spends a lot of time in Spain and Uruguay. In this decade, Abraham has become more and more involved in playing music, first learning how to play conga´s and bongo´s, which he played many years in the Poco Loco Steelband in Spain. This resulted in the cd Steelin´ Pop, with Enrico Garcia (2016). More recently, he took singing lessons and sang for years in the Costa Blanca Joyful Gospel Choir, also in Spain. In The Netherlands, he took singing lessons with Annika IJdo, and recently he started composing songs, which resulted in 2022 in the cd More Than Just A Lonely Soul, on which he sings 12 self-composed popsongs, arranged, accompanied and produced by Korné ter Steege, with drums and percussion by Jelle Huiberts. For his role as singer he uses the artist name Prof Bram.
Recente publicaties en in press
Buunk, A.P. & Valor Segura, I. (in press). Infidelity. In T. Shackelford (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Religious Psychology and Behavior. Berlin, GE: Springer Nature
Buunk, A.P. (2024). Individual differences in social comparison in organizations. In O. Azar, H. Volberda, & K. de Ruyter (Eds.), The Oxford handbook on individual differences in organizations. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Buunk, A.P., Van Brummen-Girigori, O., Girigori, A. (2023). Parent-offspring conflict about mate choice and father absence among teenage girls in Curaçao. Journal of Anthropological and Archeological Sciences, 8, 1126-1131. https://doi: 10.32474/JAAS.2023.08.000294.
Buunk, A.P., & Massar, K. (2023). Jealousy in close relationships from an evolutionary and cultural perspective: Responding to real and feared rivals. In J. Mogilsky & T. Shackelford (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of evolutionary psychology and romantic relationships (pp. 233-259). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Buunk, A.P., (2023). Diversiteit: wat en waarom. Liberaal Journaal, Juni, p. 13.
Valor-Segura, I., Sáez, G. & Buunk, A.P. (2022). Cultural differences and similarities in correlates of infidelity. In T. DeLecce & T. Shackelford (Eds.), Oxford handbook of infidelity (pp. 333-359). New York: Oxford University Press.
Moyaya Morales, M.C., Valor Segura, I., & Buunk, A.P. (Eds.) (2022). Psicología social. Aplicación a los problemas sociales. Madrid: Panamericana.
Buunk, A.P. (2022). Social comparison in organizations. In J.M. Peiro (Ed). Oxford Encyclopedia of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (February 20, pp. 1-20). New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.554
Buunk, A. P. (2022). Cultural dimensions associated with intrasexual competitiveness. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 16(2), 181–186. https://doi.org/10.1037/ebs0000233