He was born in Bristol on 29 September 1966 and went to school at Sevenoaks School and West Kent College of Further Education.

At Southampton University he studied Spanish and Linguistics and later he received his doctorate from the London School of Economics.

He worked at the University of Bath and the University of the West of England. Evans was a psychoanalyst in the style of Jacques Lacan, and wrote a standard reference work in the field. Evans eventually came to doubt the scientific validity of Lacanianism, and ultimately abandoned the field because he was worried Lacanianism harmed rather than helped patients.

He spent a while running the "Utopia Experiment" in the Highlands of Scotland. This was to be a self-sufficient group of people growing their own food, with no television and limited use of electricity for a predetermined period of time.

He is currently Lecturer in Behavioural Science in the School of Medicine at University College Cork.

Risk intelligence is one of his research areas.

He is an atheist and a distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association.

On 15 September 2010, Evans, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in The Guardian, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI's state visit to the UK.

Books

• Emotion, Evolution and Rationality (2004)
• Placebo: The Belief Effect (2003)
• Introducing Evolution (2001)
• Emotion: The Science of Sentiment (2001)
• Introducing Evolutionary Psychology (1999)
• An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (1996)