Concept

Evolutionary psychology

Overview

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 regard 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.

Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and the liver, is common in evolutionary biology. Evolutionary psychologists apply the same line of thinking in psychology, arguing that just as the heart evolved to pump blood, the liver evolved to detoxify poisons, and the kidneys evolved to filter turbid fluids, there is modularity of mind, in that different psychological mechanisms evolved to solve distinct adaptive problems. The evolutionary psychologists argue that much of human behavior is the output of psychological adaptations that evolved to solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments.

Some evolutionary psychologists argue that evolutionary theory can provide a foundational, metatheoretical framework that integrates the entire field of psychology, much as evolutionary biology has done for biology.

Evolutionary psychologists hold that behaviors or traits that occur universally in all cultures are good candidates for evolutionary adaptations, including the abilities to infer others' emotions, discern kin from non-kin, identify and prefer healthier mates, and cooperate with others. Findings have been made regarding human social behaviour related to infanticide, intelligence, marriage patterns, promiscuity, perception of beauty, bride price, and parental investment.

The theories and findings of evolutionary psychology have applications in many fields, including economics, environment, health, law, management, psychiatry, politics, and literature.

Criticism of evolutionary psychology involves questions of testability, cognitive and evolutionary assumptions (such as modular functioning of the brain, and large uncertainty about the ancestral environment), importance of non-genetic and non-adaptive explanations, and political and ethical implications of interpretations of research results.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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As long as we keep to the consideration of purely outward facts, even the most complicated facts of biology, our task as evolutionists is comparatively easy. We are dealing all the time with matter and its aggregations and separations; and although our treatment must perforce be hypothetical, this does not prevent it from being _continuous_. The point which as evolutionists we are bound to hold fast to is that all…
William James, The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1
The chapter “EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY DEMANDS A MIND-DUST.” is titled for Evolutionary psychology; the author is tied to Evolutionary psychology in the knowledge graph.
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The trembling of fear is supposed by Mantegazza to be for the sake of warming the blood (!). The reddening of the face and neck is called by Wundt a compensatory arrangement for relieving the brain of the blood-pressure which the simultaneous excitement of the heart brings with it. The effusion of tears is explained both by this author and by Darwin to be a blood-withdrawing agency of a similar sort. The contraction…
William James, Psychology
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While then every man is to be regarded as a specially determined and characterised phenomenon of will, and indeed to a certain extent as a special Idea, in the case of the brutes this individual character as a whole is wanting, because only the species has a special significance.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
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Philosophers who discussed Evolutionary psychology

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Developmental psychology

Place in the tradition

Part of American philosophy.

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