Margo Wilson FRSC (1942–2009) was a Canadian evolutionary psychologist. She was a professor of psychology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, noted for her pioneering work in the field of evolutionary psychology and her contributions to the study of violence.^[1]

Wilson was born on October 1, 1942, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.^[2] She spent her childhood years in the Gwich'in community of Fort McPherson, where her mother, a nurse, provided medical services.^[3] She attended the University of Alberta, graduating with an undergraduate degree in psychology in 1964.^[2] She then studied behavioural endocrinology at the University of California and, after winning the a Commonwealth Scholarship, at University College London, England, where she earned her PhD in 1972.^[2][3]

From 1972 through 1975, she was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Toronto, where she met her future husband, fellow psychologist Martin Daly.^[2][4] Together, they moved to Hamilton in 1978 after Daly was hired by McMaster University.^[2] In the 1980s, Wilson was appointed professor of Psychology at McMaster, where she remained for the rest of her career.^[2]

Wilson was elected president of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society in 1997.^[3] With Daly, she was, for 10 years, the editor-in-chief of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior,.^[4] In 1998, she was named a fellow of the Royal Society.^[2]

Wilson died in Hamilton on September 24, 2009, of cancer.^[2] In 2009, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society established the Margo Wilson Award (for best paper published in the previous year) to honour her contributions to the field.^[5][6]

In 1978, Wilson proposed the idea to Daly that they could analyze patterns of homicide to better understand humans' social behaviours from an evolutionary perspective.^[4] For the next 30 years, Wilson and Daly collaborated on this research, authoring several books and over 100 academic papers and book chapters in this area.^[7][4]

Their first book on this topic, Homicide (1988),^[8] has been described as a "founding"^[9] and "classic"^[4] text for the field of evolutionary psychology. Their second book on homicide, The truth about Cinderella (1999),^[10] summarized their findings on the Cinderella effect, which suggests that stepparents are more likely to mistreat children than biological parents.^[11]

(All books co-authored with Martin Daly)

• Sex, Evolution, and Behaviour, Brooks Cole, 1978 (2nd edition 1983), ISBN 978-0871507679
• Homicide: Foundations of Human Behavior, Aldine Transaction, 1988, ISBN 978-0202011783
• The truth about Cinderella: A Darwinian view of parental love, Yale, 1999, ISBN 9780300080292

• Cinderella effect
• Evolutionary psychology
• Human Behavior and Evolution Society
• Martin Daly