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Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evolved to solve. In this framework, psychological traits and mechanisms are either functional products of natural and sexual selection or non-adaptive by-products of other adaptive traits.
Modularity of mind is the notion that a mind may, at least in part, be composed of innate neural structures or mental modules which have distinct, established, and evolutionarily developed functions. However, different definitions of "module" have been proposed by different authors. According to Jerry Fodor, the author of Modularity of Mind, a system can be considered 'modular' if its functions are made of multiple dimensions or units to some degree. One example of modularity in the mind is binding. When one perceives an object, they take in not only the features of an object, but the integrated features that can operate in sync or independently that create a whole. Instead of just seeing red, round, plastic, and moving, the subject may experience a rolling red ball. Binding may suggest that the mind is modular because it takes multiple cognitive processes to perceive one thing.
Sociobiological theories of rape explore how evolutionary adaptation influences the psychology of rapists. Such theories are highly controversial, as traditional theories typically do not consider rape a behavioral adaptation. Some object to such theories on ethical, religious, political, or scientific grounds. Others argue correct knowledge of rape causes is necessary for effective preventive measures.
David Michael Buss is an American evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, researching human sex differences in mate selection. He is considered one of the founders of evolutionary psychology.
The Human Behavior and Evolution Society, or HBES, is an interdisciplinary, international society of researchers, primarily from the social and biological sciences, who use modern evolutionary theory to help to discover human nature — including evolved emotional, cognitive and sexual adaptations. It was founded on October 29, 1988 at the University of Michigan.
Evolutionary ethics is a field of inquiry that explores how evolutionary theory might bear on our understanding of ethics or morality. The range of issues investigated by evolutionary ethics is quite broad. Supporters of evolutionary ethics have claimed that it has important implications in the fields of descriptive ethics, normative ethics, and metaethics.
In science and philosophy, a just-so story is an untestable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals. The pejorative nature of the expression is an implicit criticism that reminds the listener of the fictional and unprovable nature of such an explanation. Such tales are common in folklore genres like mythology. A less pejorative term is a pourquoi story, which has been used to describe usually more mythological or otherwise traditional examples of this genre, aimed at children.
John Tooby is an American anthropologist, who helped pioneer the field of evolutionary psychology with his psychologist wife Leda Cosmides.
In evolutionary psychology, the Cinderella effect is the phenomenon of higher incidence of different forms of child abuse and mistreatment by stepparents than by biological parents. It takes its name from the fairy tale character Cinderella, which is about a girl who is mistreated by her stepsisters and stepmother. Evolutionary psychologists describe the effect as a byproduct of a bias towards kin, and a conflict between reproductive partners of investing in young that are unrelated to one partner.
Jerome H. Barkow is a Canadian anthropologist who works in the field of evolutionary psychology. He is a professor emeritus at Dalhousie University.
Evolutionary developmental psychology (EDP) is a research paradigm that applies the basic principles of evolution by natural selection, to understand the development of human behavior and cognition. It involves the study of both the genetic and environmental mechanisms that underlie the development of social and cognitive competencies, as well as the epigenetic processes that adapt these competencies to local conditions.
David Fredrick Bjorklund is an American professor of psychology at Florida Atlantic University. His areas of research interest include cognitive development and evolutionary developmental psychology. His works include authoring several books and over 130 scientific papers. He is editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Gad Saad is a Canadian marketing professor at the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University. He is known for applying evolutionary psychology to marketing and consumer behaviour. He wrote a blog for Psychology Today and hosts a YouTube channel titled "The Saad Truth".
Evolutionary psychology seeks to identify and understand human psychological traits that have evolved in much the same way as biological traits, through adaptation to environmental cues. Furthermore, it tends toward viewing the vast majority of psychological traits, certainly the most important ones, as the result of past adaptions, which has generated significant controversy and criticism from competing fields. These criticisms include disputes about the testability of evolutionary hypotheses, cognitive assumptions such as massive modularity, vagueness stemming from assumptions about the environment that leads to evolutionary adaptation, the importance of non-genetic and non-adaptive explanations, as well as political and ethical issues in the field itself.
Douglas T. Kenrick is professor of psychology at Arizona State University. His research and writing integrate three scientific syntheses of the last few decades: evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, and dynamical systems theory. He is author of over 170 scientific articles, books, and book chapters, the majority applying evolutionary ideas to human cognition and behavior.
Mark van Vugt is a Dutch evolutionary psychologist who holds a professorship in evolutionary psychology and work and organizational psychology at the VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Van Vugt has affiliate positions at the University of Oxford, Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology (ICEA).
Evolutionary Psychology is a peer-reviewed open access academic journal published since 2003. It covers empirical, philosophical, historical, and socio-political aspects of evolutionary psychology. Its editors-in-chief are Todd K. Shackelford, Bernhard Fink, David A. Puts, and Rebecca Sear. In 2015 the journal moved to SAGE Publications.
The history of evolutionary psychology began with Charles Darwin, who said that humans have social instincts that evolved by natural selection. Darwin's work inspired later psychologists such as William James and Sigmund Freud but for most of the 20th century psychologists focused more on behaviorism and proximate explanations for human behavior. E. O. Wilson's landmark 1975 book, Sociobiology, synthesized recent theoretical advances in evolutionary theory to explain social behavior in animals, including humans. Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby popularized the term "evolutionary psychology" in their 1992 book The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and The Generation of Culture. Like sociobiology before it, evolutionary psychology has been embroiled in controversy, but evolutionary psychologists see their field as gaining increased acceptance overall.
David J. Buller is an American philosopher of science who is Distinguished Research Professor and Chair Emeritus of the Department of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University. He is known for his 2005 book Adapting Minds, in which he presents a detailed philosophical critique of evolutionary psychology.
References
- ↑ Holcomb, H. R. (2005). "Book Review: Buller Does to Evolutionary Psychology What Kitcher Did to Sociobiology". Evolutionary Psychology. 3 (1): 147470490500300. doi: 10.1177/147470490500300127 . ISSN 1474-7049.
