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Evolutionary psychology (EP) is an approach within psychology that examines psychological traits — such as memory, perception, or language — from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and immune system, is common in evolutionary biology. Evolutionary psychology applies the same thinking to psychology, arguing that the mind has a modular structure similar to that of the body with different modules having adapted to serve different functions. Evolutionary psychologists argue that much of human behavior is the output of psychological adaptations that evolved to solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments.

Psychological adaptations, according to EP, might include the abilities to infer others' emotions, to discern kin from non-kin, to identify and prefer healthier mates, to cooperate with others, and so on. Consistent with the theory of natural selection, evolutionary psychology sees organisms as often in conflict with others of their species, including mates and relatives. For example, mother mammals and their young offspring sometimes struggle over weaning, which benefits the mother more than the child. Evolutionary psychology emphasizes the importance of kin selection and reciprocity in allowing for nonselfish social traits such as altruism to arise. Like chimps and bonobos, humans have subtle and flexible social instincts, allowing them to form extended families, lifelong friendships, and political alliances. In studies testing theoretical predictions, evolutionary psychologists have made impressive findings on topics such as infanticide, intelligence, beauty, and parental investment.

Evolutionary psychologists hold that behaviors or traits that occur universally in all cultures are good candidates for evolutionary adaptations. Evolved psychological adaptations (such as the ability to learn a language) interact with cultural inputs to produce specific behaviors (e.g., the specific language learned). Innate gender differences, such as greater adult strength and aggression among men, are explained as adaptations that reflect the different reproductive strategies of males and females. Evolutionary psychologists contrast their approach to what they term the "standard social science model," according to which the mind is a general-purpose cognition device shaped almost entirely by culture.

Some critics argue that evolutionary psychology hypotheses are difficult or impossible to test. While testing adaptationist hypotheses can be difficult, evolutionary psychologists assert that is not impossible and, indeed, that many empirical studies have provided either generally corrobrative or disconfirming evidence regarding hypotheses about specific psychological adaptations (in particular, see Confer, et al., 2010). The influence of adaptationist approaches in psychology has been steadily increasing.

Overview

Evolutionary psychology (EP) is an approach that views human nature as a universal set of evolved psychological adaptations to recurring problems in the ancestral environment. Proponents of EP suggest that it seeks to heal a fundamental division at the very heart of science --- that between the soft human social sciences and the hard natural sciences, and that the fact that human beings are living organisms demands that psychology be understood as a branch of biology. Anthropologist John Tooby and psychologist Leda Cosmides note:

"Evolutionary psychology is the long-forestalled scientific attempt to assemble out of the disjointed, fragmentary, and mutually contradictory human disciplines a single, logically integrated research framework for the psychological, social, and behavioral sciences—a framework that not only incorporates the evolutionary sciences on a full and equal basis, but that systematically works out all of the revisions in existing belief and research practice that such a synthesis requires."

In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.

— Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

Just as human physiology and evolutionary physiology have worked to identify physical adaptations of the body that represent "human physiological nature," the purpose of evolutionary psychology is to identify evolved emotional and cognitive adaptations that represent "human psychological nature." EP is, to quote Steven Pinker, "not a single theory but a large set of hypotheses" and a term which "has also come to refer to a particular way of applying evolutionary theory to the mind, with an emphasis on adaptation, gene-level selection, and modularity." Evolutionary psychology is consistent with the computational theory of mind. For example, our brains can perceive a spider, compute that it is a potential threat, and initiate a fear response.

EP proposes that the human brain comprises many functional mechanisms, called psychological adaptations or evolved cognitive mechanisms or cognitive modules, designed by the process of natural selection. Examples include language-acquisition modules, incest-avoidance mechanisms, cheater-detection mechanisms, intelligence and sex-specific mating preferences, foraging mechanisms, alliance-tracking mechanisms, agent-detection mechanisms, and others.

EP has roots in cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology. It also draws on behavioral ecology, artificial intelligence, genetics, ethology, anthropology, archaeology, biology, and zoology. EP is closely linked to sociobiology, but there are key differences between them including the emphasis on domain-specific rather than domain-general mechanisms, the relevance of measures of current fitness, the importance of mismatch theory, and psychology rather than behaviour. Most of what is now labeled as sociobiological research is now conducted in the field of behavioral ecology.

The term evolutionary psychology was probably coined by American biologist Michael Ghiselin in a 1973 article published in the journal Science. Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby popularized the term "evolutionary psychology" in their highly influential 1992 book The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and The Generation of Culture. EP has been applied to the study of many fields, including economics, aggression, law, psychiatry, politics, literature, and sex.

Nikolaas Tinbergen's four categories of questions can help to clarify the distinctions between several different, but complementary, types of explanations. Table source. Evolutionary psychology mostly focuses on the adaptation (functional) category.

The species-level categories (often called "ultimate explanations") are

• the function (i.e., adaptation) that a behavior serves and
• the evolutionary process (i.e., phylogeny) that resulted in the adaptation (functionality).

The individual-level categories are

• the development of the individual (i.e., ontogeny) and
• the proximate mechanism (e.g., brain anatomy and hormones).

Related disciplines

The content of EP has derived from, on the one hand, the biological sciences (especially evolutionary theory as it relates to ancient human environments, the study of paleoanthropology and animal behavior) and, on the other, the human sciences especially psychology. Evolutionary biology as an academic discipline emerged with the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s, although it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that university departments included the term evolutionary biology in their titles. Several behavioural subjects relate to this core discipline: in the 1930s the study of animal behaviour (ethology) emerged with the work of Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch.

In the 1970s, two major branches developed from ethology. Firstly, the study of animal social behavior (including humans) generated sociobiology, defined by its pre-eminent proponent Edward O. Wilson in 1975 as "the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior" and in 1978 as "the extension of population biology and evolutionary theory to social organization". Secondly, there was behavioral ecology which placed less emphasis on social behavior by focusing on the ecological and evolutionary basis of both animal and human behavior.

From psychology there are the primary streams of developmental, social and cognitive psychology. Establishing some measure of the relative influence of genetics and environment on behavior has been at the core of behavioral genetics and its variants, notably studies at the molecular level that examine the relationship between genes, neurotransmitters and behavior. Dual inheritance theory (DIT), developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, has a slightly different perspective by trying to explain how human behavior is a product of two different and interacting evolutionary processes: genetic evolution and cultural evolution. DIT is a "middle-ground" between much of social science, which views culture as the primary cause of human behavioral variation, and human sociobiology and evolutionary psychology which view culture as an insignificant by-product of genetic selection.

Principles

Leading practitioners of EP have proposed a foundation of core premises. Those proposed by David Buss state that:

1. Manifest behavior depends on underlying psychological mechanisms, information-processing devices housed in the brain, in conjunction with the external and internal inputs that trigger their activation.
2. Evolution by selection is the only known causal process capable of creating such complex organic mechanisms.
3. Evolved psychological mechanisms are functionally specialized to solve adaptive problems that recurred for humans over deep evolutionary time.
4. Selection designed the information processing of many evolved psychological mechanisms to be adaptively influenced by specific classes of information from the environment.
5. Human psychology consists of a large number of functionally specialized evolved mechanisms, each sensitive to particular forms of contextual input, that get combined, coordinated, and integrated with each other to produce manifest behavior.

Pioneers of the subject Leda Cosmides and John Tooby consider the following five principles as critical:

1. The brain is a physical system. It functions as a computer with circuits that have evolved to generate behavior that is appropriate to environmental circumstances.
2. Neural circuits were designed by natural selection to solve problems that human ancestors faced while evolving into Homo sapiens.
3. Consciousness is a small portion of the contents and processes of the mind; conscious experience can mislead individuals to believe their thoughts are simpler than they actually are. Most problems experienced as easy to solve are very difficult to solve and are driven and supported by very complicated neural circuitry.
4. Different neural circuits are specialized for solving different adaptive problems.
5. Modern skulls house a Stone age mind.

These researchers suggest that EP is not simply a subdiscipline of psychology but that evolutionary theory can provide a foundational, metatheoretical framework that integrates the entire field of psychology, in the same way it has for biology.

General evolutionary theory

Main article: Evolution

EP is sometimes seen not simply as a subdiscipline of psychology but as a way in which evolutionary theory can be used as a metatheoretical framework within which to examine the entire field of psychology although a few biologists challenge its basic premises.

Natural selection

Natural selection, a key component of evolutionary theory, involves three main ingredients:

• Genetically based inheritance of traits - some traits are passed down from parents to offspring in genes,
• Variation - heritable traits vary within a population (now we know that mutation is the source of some of this genetic variation),
• Differential survival and reproduction - these traits will vary in how strongly they promote the survival and reproduction of their bearers.

Selection refers to the process by which environmental conditions "select" organisms with the appropriate traits to survive; these organisms will have such traits more strongly represented in the next generation. This is the basis of adaptive evolution. The insight of Wallace and Darwin was that this "natural selection" was creative - it could lead to new traits and even new species, it was based on differential survival of variable individuals, and it could explain the broad scale patterns of evolution.

Sexual selection

Many traits that are selected for can actually hinder survival of the organism while increasing its reproductive opportunities. Consider the classic example of the peacock's tail. It is metabolically costly, cumbersome, and essentially a "predator magnet." What the peacock's tail does do is attract mates. Thus, the type of selective process that is involved here is what Darwin called "sexual selection". Sexual selection can be divided into two types:

• Intersexual selection, which refers to the traits that one sex generally prefers in the other sex, (e.g. the peacock's tail).
• Intrasexual competition, which refers to the competition among members of the same sex for mating access to the opposite sex, (e.g. two stags locking antlers).

Inclusive fitness

Inclusive fitness theory, which was proposed by William D. Hamilton in 1964 as a revision to evolutionary theory, is essentially a combination of natural selection, sexual selection, and kin selection. It refers to the sum of an individual's own reproductive success in addition to the effects the individual's actions have on the reproductive success of their genetic relatives. General evolutionary theory, in its modern form, is essentially inclusive fitness theory.

Inclusive fitness theory resolved the issue of how "altruism" evolved. The dominant, pre-Hamiltonian view was that altruism evolved via group selection: the notion that altruism evolved for the benefit of the group. The problem with this was that if one organism in a group incurred any fitness costs on itself for the benefit of others in the group, (i.e. acted "altruistically"), then that organism would reduce its own ability to survive and/or reproduce, therefore reducing its chances of passing on its altruistic traits.

Furthermore, the organism that benefited from that altruistic act and only acted on behalf of its own fitness would increase its own chance of survival and/or reproduction, thus increasing its chances of passing on its "selfish" traits. Inclusive fitness resolved "the problem of altruism" by demonstrating that altruism can evolve via kin selection as expressed in Hamilton's rule:

In other words, altruism can evolve as long as the fitness cost of the altruistic act on the part of the actor is less than the degree of genetic relatedness of the recipient times the fitness benefit to that recipient. This perspective reflects what is referred to as the gene-centered view of evolution and demonstrates that group selection is a very weak selective force. However, in recent years group selection has been making a comeback (albeit a controversial one) as multilevel selection, which posits that evolution can act not just on the "gene" level but on many levels of functional organization, including the "group" level.

Overview of Theoretical Foundations

Middle-level evolutionary theories

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Middle-level evolutionary theories are consistent with general evolutionary theory, but focus on certain domains of functioning (Buss, 2011) Specific evolutionary psychology hypotheses may be derivative from a mid-level theory (Buss, 2011). Three very important middle-level evolutionary theories were contributed by Robert Trivers as well as Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson

• The theory of parent-offspring conflict rests on the fact that even though a parent and his/her offspring are 50% genetically related, they are also 50% genetically different. All things being equal, a parent would want to allocate their resources equally amongst their offspring, while each offspring may want a little more for themselves. Furthermore, an offspring may want a little more resources from the parent than the parent is willing to give. In essence, parent-offspring conflict refers to a conflict of adaptive interests between parent and offspring. However, if all things are not equal, a parent may engage in discriminative investment towards one sex or the other, depending on the parent's condition.

• The Trivers–Willard hypothesis, which proposes that parents will invest more in the sex that gives them the greatest reproductive payoff (grandchildren) with increasing or marginal investment. Females are the heavier parental investors in our species. Because of that, females have a better chance of reproducing at least once in comparison to males, but males in good condition have a better chance of producing high numbers of offspring than do females in good condition. Thus, according to the Trivers–Willard hypothesis, parents in good condition are predicted to favor investment in sons, and parents in poor condition are predicted to favor investment in daughters.

• r/K selection theory, which, in ecology, relates to the selection of traits in organisms that allow success in particular environments. r-selected species, (in unstable or unpredictable environments), produce many offspring, each of which is unlikely to survive to adulthood, while K-selected species, (in stable or predictable environments), invest more heavily in fewer offspring, each of which has a better chance of surviving to adulthood.

Evolved psychological mechanisms

At a proximal level, evolutionary psychology is based on the hypothesis that, just like hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys, and immune systems, cognition has functional structure that has a genetic basis, and therefore has evolved by natural selection. Like other organs and tissues, this functional structure should be universally shared amongst a species, and should solve important problems of survival and reproduction. Evolutionary psychologists seek to understand psychological mechanisms by understanding the survival and reproductive functions they might have served over the course of evolutionary history.

While philosophers have generally considered human mind to include broad faculties, such as reason and lust, evolutionary psychologists describe EPMs as narrowly evolved to deal with specific issues, such as catching cheaters or choosing mates.

Some mechanisms, termed domain-specific, deal with recurrent adaptive problems over the course of human evolutionary history. Domain-general mechanisms, on the other hand, deal with evolutionary novelty.

Products of Evolution: Adaptations, Exaptations, Byproducts, and Random Variation

Not all traits of organisms are adaptations. As noted in the table below, traits may also be exaptations, byproducts of adaptations (sometimes called "spandrels"), or random variation between individuals. For more on these distinctions, see Buss, et al., (1998).

Psychological adaptations are hypothesized to be innate or relatively easy to learn, and to manifest in cultures worldwide. For example, the ability of toddlers to learn a language with virtually no training is likely to be an psychological adaptation. On the other hand, ancestral humans did not read or write, thus today learning to read and write require extensive training, and presumably represent byproducts of cognitive processing that use psychological adaptations designed for other functions.

Cultural Universals

Evolutionary psychologists hold that behaviors or traits that occur universally in all cultures are good candidates for evolutionary adaptations. Cultural universals include behaviors related to language, cognition, social roles, gender roles, and technology.

Environment of evolutionary adaptedness

EP argues that to properly understand the functions of the brain, one must understand the properties of the environment in which the brain evolved. That environment is often referred to as the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, or EEA for short.

Definition

The term environment of evolutionary adaptedness was coined by John Bowlby as part of attachment theory. It refers to the environment to which a particular evolved mechanism is adapted. More specifically, the EEA is defined as the set of historically recurring selection pressures that formed a given adaptation, as well as those aspects of the environment that were necessary for the proper development and functioning of the adaptation.

Human EEA

Humans, comprising the genus Homo, appeared between 1.5 and 2.5 million years ago, a time that roughly coincides with the start of the Pleistocene 1.8 million years ago. Because the Pleistocene ended a mere 12,000 years ago, most human adaptations either newly evolved during the Pleistocene, or were maintained by stabilizing selection during the Pleistocene. Evolutionary psychology therefore proposes that the majority of human psychological mechanisms are adapted to reproductive problems frequently encountered in Pleistocene environments. In broad terms, these problems include those of growth, development, differentiation, maintenance, mating, parenting, and social relationships.

The EEA is significantly different from modern society. Our ancestors lived in smaller groups, had more cohesive cultures, and had more stable and rich contexts for identity and meaning. Researchers look to existing hunter-gatherer societies for clues as to how our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived. Since hunter-gatherer societies are egalitarian, the ancestral population may have been egalitarian as well, a social pattern different from the hierarchies found in chimp bands. Unfortunately, the few surviving hunter-gatherer societies are different from each other, and they have been pushed out of the best land and into harsh environments, so it is not clear how closely they reflect ancestral culture.

Evolutionary psychologists sometimes look to chimpanzees, bonobos, and other great apes for insight into human ancestral behavior. Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha argue that evolutionary psychologists have overemphasized our similarity to chimps, which are more violent, while underestimating our similarity to bonobos, which are more peaceful.

Mismatches

Since an organisms adaptations were suited to its ancestral environment, a new and different environment can create a mismatch. In the environment in which ducks evolved, for example, attachment of ducklings to their mother had great survival value. Because the first moving being that a duckling was likely to see was its mother, a psychological mechanism that evolved to form an attachment to the first moving being would properly attach the duckling to the mother. In novel environments, however, the mechanism can malfunction by forming an attachment to a dog or human instead.

Because humans are mostly adapted to Pleistocene environments, psychological mechanisms sometimes exhibit "mismatches" to the modern environment, similar to the attachment patterns of ducks. One example is the fact that although about 10,000 people are killed with guns in the US annually, whereas spiders and snakes kill only a handful, people nonetheless learn to fear spiders and snakes about as easily as they do a pointed gun, and more easily than an unpointed gun, rabbits or flowers. A potential explanation is that spiders and snakes were a threat to human ancestors throughout the Pleistocene, whereas guns (and rabbits and flowers) were not. There is thus a mismatch between our evolved fear-learning psychology and the modern environment.

This mismatch also shows up in the phenomena of the supernormal stimulus-- a stimulus that elicits a response more strongly than the stimulus for which it evolved. The term was coined by Nobel Laureate Niko Tinbergen to describe animal behavior, but Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett has pointed out that supernormal stimulation governs the behavior of humans as powerfully as that of animals. In her 2007 book, Waistland, she explains junk food as an exaggerated stimulus to cravings for salt, sugar, and fats, and in her 2010 book, "Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose," she describes how television is an exaggeration of social cues of laughter, smiling faces and attention-grabbing action. Magazine centerfolds and double cheeseburgers pull instincts intended for an EEA where breast development was a sign of health, youth and fertility in a prospective mate, and fat was a rare and vital nutrient.

Research methods

Evolutionary psychologists use several methods and data sources to test their hypotheses, as well as various comparative methods to test for similarities and differences between: humans and other species, males and females, individuals within a species, and between the same individuals in different contexts. They also use more traditional experimental methods involving, for example, dependent and independent variables. Recently, methods and tools have been introduced based on fictional scenarios, mathematical models, and multi-agent computer simulations.

Evolutionary psychologists also use various sources of data for testing, including archeological records, data from hunter-gatherer societies, observational studies, self-reports, public records, and human products.

Major areas of research

Foundational areas of research in evolutionary psychology can be divided into broad categories of adaptive problems that arise from the theory of evolution itself: survival, mating, parenting, family and kinship, interactions with non-kin, and cultural evolution.

Survival

Inclusive fitness is the ultimate arbiter of which traits survive in the gene pool. Problems of survival are thus clear targets for the evolution of physical and psychological adaptations. Major problems our ancestors faced included (a) food selection and acquisition, (b) territory selection and physical shelter, and (c) avoiding predators and other environmental threats. See Buss (2011) for descriptions of various psychological adaptations that have evolved to deal with these challenges of survival.

Communication and Language

The universal human ability to learn to talk between the ages of 1 - 4, basically without training, suggests that language acquisition is a distinctly human psychological adaptation (see, in particular, Steven Pinker's (1994) The Language Instinct).

The development of fully modern behavior in H. sapiens, not shared by H. neanderthalensis or any other variety of Homo, is dated to some 70,000 to 50,000 years ago. The development of more sophisticated tools, for the first time constructed out of more than one material (e.g. bone or antler) and sortable into different categories of function (such as projectile points, engraving tools, knife blades, and drilling and piercing tools) are often taken as proof for the presence of fully developed language, assumed to be necessary for the teaching of the processes of manufacture to offspring.

The Broca's and Wernicke's areas of the primate brain also appear in the human brain, the first area being involved in many cognitive and perceptual tasks, the latter lending to language skills. The same circuits discussed in the primates' brain stem and limbic system control non-verbal sounds in humans (laughing, crying, etc.), which suggests that the human language center is a modification of neural circuits common to all primates. This modification and its skill for linguistic communication seem to be unique to humans, which implies that the language organ derived after the human lineage split from the primate (chimps and bonobos) lineage. Plainly stated, spoken language is a modification of the larynx that is unique to humans.

Derek Bickerton and Noam Chomsky concluded that humans are born with a universal grammar hardwired into their brains. This universal grammar consists of a wide range of grammatical models that include all the grammatical systems of the world's languages. The default settings of this universal grammar are represented by the similarities apparent in creole languages. These default settings are overridden during the process of language acquisition by children to match the local language. When children learn language, they first learn the creole-like features more easily than the features that conflict with creole grammar.

Mating

Given that sexual reproduction is the means by which genes are propagated into future generations, sexual selection plays a large role in the direction of human evolution. Human mating, then, is of interest to evolutionary psychologists who aim to investigate evolved mechanisms to attract and secure mates. Several lines of research have stemmed from this interest, such as studies of mate selection mate poaching, and mate retention, to name a few.

Much of the research on human mating is based on parental investment theory, which makes important predictions about the different strategies men and women will use in the mating domain (see above under "Middle-level evolutionary theories"). In essence, it predicts that women will be more selective when choosing mates, whereas men will not, especially under short-term mating conditions. This has led some researchers to predict sex differences in such domains as sexual jealousy, (however, see also,) wherein females will react more aversively to emotional infidelity and males will react more aversively to sexual infidelity. This particular pattern is predicted because the costs involved in mating for each sex are distinct. Women, on average, should prefer a mate who can offer some kind of resources (e.g., financial, commitment), which means that a woman would also be more at risk for losing those valued traits in a mate who commits an emotional infidelity. Men, on the other hand, are limited by the fact that they can never be certain of the paternity of their children because they do not bear the offspring themselves. This obstacle entails that sexual infidelity would be more aversive than emotional infidelity for a man because investing resources in another man's offspring does not lead to propagation of the man's own genes.

Another interesting line of research is that which examines women's mate preferences across the ovulatory cycle. The theoretical underpinning of this research is that ancestral women would have evolved mechanisms to select mates with certain traits depending on their hormonal status. For example, the theory hypothesizes that, during the ovulatory phase of a woman's cycle (approximately days 10-15 of a woman's cycle), a woman who mated with a male with high genetic quality would have been more likely, on average, to produce and rear a healthy offspring than a woman who mated with a male with low genetic quality. These putative preferences are predicted to be especially apparent for short-term mating domains because a potential male mate would only be offering genes to a potential offspring. This hypothesis allows researchers to examine whether women select mates who have characteristics that indicate high genetic quality during the high fertility phase of their ovulatory cycles. Indeed, studies have shown that women's preferences vary across the ovulatory cycle. In particular, Haselton and Miller (2006) showed that highly fertile women prefer creative but poor men as short-term mates. Creativity may be a proxy for good genes. Research by Gangestad et al. (2004) indicates that highly fertile women prefer men who display social presence and intrasexual competition; these traits may act as cues that would help women predict which men may have, or would be able to acquire, resources.

Parenting

Reproduction is costly. Individuals are limited in the degree to which they can devote time and resources to producing and raising their young, and such expenditure may also be detrimental to their future condition, survival and further reproductive output. Parental investment is any parental expenditure (time, energy etc.) that benefits one offspring at a cost to parents' ability to invest in other components of fitness (Clutton-Brock 1991: 9; Trivers 1972). Components of fitness (Beatty 1992) include the well being of existing offspring, parents' future reproduction, and inclusive fitness through aid to kin (Hamilton, 1964). Parental investment theory is a branch of life history theory.

Robert Trivers' theory of parental investment predicts that the sex making the largest investment in lactation, nurturing and protecting offspring will be more discriminating in mating and that the sex that invests less in offspring will compete for access to the higher investing sex (see Bateman's principle). Sex differences in parental effort are important in determining the strength of sexual selection.

The benefits of parental investment to the offspring are large and are associated with the effects on condition, growth, survival and ultimately, on reproductive success of the offspring. However, these benefits can come at the cost of parent's ability to reproduce in the future e.g. through the increased risk of injury when defending offspring against predators, the loss of mating opportunities whilst rearing offspring and an increase in the time to the next reproduction. Overall, parents are selected to maximise the difference between the benefits and the costs, and parental care will be likely to evolve when the benefits exceed the costs.

Family and Kin

Inclusive fitness is the sum of an organism's classical fitness (how many of its own offspring it produces and supports) and the number of equivalents of its own offspring it can add to the population by supporting others. The first component is called classical fitness by Hamilton (1964).

From the gene's point of view, evolutionary success ultimately depends on leaving behind the maximum number of copies of itself in the population. Until 1964, it was generally believed that genes only achieved this by causing the individual to leave the maximum number of viable offspring. However, in 1964 W. D. Hamilton proved mathematically that, because close relatives of an organism share some identical genes, a gene can also increase its evolutionary success by promoting the reproduction and survival of these related or otherwise similar individuals. Hamilton claimed that this leads natural selection to favor organisms that would behave in ways that maximize their inclusive fitness. It is also true that natural selection favors behavior that maximizes personal fitness.

Hamilton's rule describes mathematically whether or not a gene for altruistic behaviour will spread in a population:

${\displaystyle rb>c\ }$

where

• ${\displaystyle c\ }$ is the reproductive cost to the altruist,
• ${\displaystyle b\ }$ is the reproductive benefit to the recipient of the altruistic behavior, and
• ${\displaystyle r\ }$ is the probability, above the population average, of the individuals sharing an altruistic gene – commonly viewed as "degree of relatedness".

The concept serves to explain how natural selection can perpetuate altruism. If there is an '"altruism gene"' (or complex of genes) that influences an organism's behavior to be helpful and protective of relatives and their offspring, this behavior also increases the proportion of the altruism gene in the population, because relatives are likely to share genes with the altruist due to common descent. Altruists may also have some way to recognize altruistic behavior in unrelated individuals and be inclined to support them. As Dawkins points out in The Selfish Gene (Chapter 6) and The Extended Phenotype, this must be distinguished from the green-beard effect.

Evolutionary psychologists have attempted to explain prosocial behavior through kin selection by stating that “behaviors that help a genetic relative are favored by natural selection.” Human beings have developed a tendency over time to frame and interpret their actions as an avenue to the survival of their genetic material, making kin selection not a completely altruistic form of prosocial behavior and is perhaps better described as a component of social exchange theory. This theory does not necessarily imply that people “compute” genetic benefit when helping others, but there is an indication that those who behave in such a way are more likely to pass on their genes to future generations.

Interactions with non-kin / Reciprocity

Although interactions with non-kin are generally less altruistic compared to those with kin, cooperation can be maintained with non-kin via mutually beneficial reciprocity as was proposed by Robert Trivers. If there are repeated encounters between the same two players in an evolutionary game in which each of them can choose either to "cooperate" or "defect," then a strategy of mutual cooperation may be favored even if it pays each player, in the short term, to defect when the other cooperates. Direct reciprocity can lead to the evolution of cooperation only if the probability, w, of another encounter between the same two individuals exceeds the cost-to-benefit ratio of the altruistic act:

w > c/b

Reciprocity can also be indirect if information about previous interactions is shared. Reputation allows evolution of cooperation by indirect reciprocity. Natural selection favors strategies that base the decision to help on the reputation of the recipient: studies show that people who are more helpful are more likely to receive help. The calculations of indirect reciprocity are complicated and only a tiny fraction of this universe has been uncovered, but again a simple rule has emerged. Indirect reciprocity can only promote cooperation if the probability, q, of knowing someone’s reputation exceeds the cost-to-benefit ratio of the altruistic act:

q > c/b

One important problem with this explanation is that individuals may be able to evolve the capacity to obscure their reputation, reducing the probability, q, that it will be known.

Contributions of evolutionary psychology to traditional sub-fields of psychology

Proponents of EP suggests that adaptationism can serve as a foundational meta theory for the entire discipline and thus it may offer a way to integrate different psychological phenomenon. They suggest that evolutionary theory can integrate the entire field of psychological science in much they same way that evolutionary theory has integrated the field of biology.

Evolutionary Developmental Psychology

In evolutionary theory, what matters most is that individuals live long enough to reproduce and pass on their genes. So why do humans live so long after reproduction? Many evolutionary psychologists have proposed that living a long life improves the survival of babies because while the parents were out hunting, the grandparents cared for the young.

According to Paul Baltes, the benefits granted by evolutionary selection decrease with age. Natural Selection has not eliminated many harmful conditions and nonadaptive characteristics that appear among older adults, such as Alzheimer disease. If it were a disease that killed 20 year-olds instead of 70 year-olds this may have been a disease that natural selection could have destroyed ages ago. Thus, unaided by evolutionary pressures against nonadaptive conditions, we suffer the aches, pains, and infirmities of aging. And as the benefits of evolutionary selection decrease with age, the need for culture increases.

History

19th century

After his seminal work in developing theories of natural selection, Charles Darwin devoted much of his final years to the study of animal emotions and psychology. He wrote two books;The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex in 1871 and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals in 1872 that dealt with topics related to evolutionary psychology. He introduced the concepts of sexual selection to explain the presence of animal structures that seemed unrelated to survival, such as the peacock's tail. He also introduced theories concerning group selection and kin selection to explain altruism. Darwin pondered why humans and animals were often generous to their group members. Darwin felt that acts of generosity decreased the fitness of generous individuals. This fact contradicted natural selection which favored the fittest individual. Darwin concluded that while generosity decreased the fitness of individuals, generosity would increase the fitness of a group. In this case, altruism arose due to competition between groups. The following quote, from Darwin's Origin of Species, is often interpreted by evolutionary psychologists as indication of his foreshadowing the emergence of the field:

In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation.

-- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859, p. 449.

Darwin's theory inspired William James's functionalist approach to psychology.

According to Noam Chomsky, perhaps Anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin could be credited as having founded evolutionary psychology, when in his 1902 book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution he argued that the human instinct for cooperation and mutual aid could be seen as stemming from evolutionary adaption.

Post world war II

While Darwin's theories on natural selection gained acceptance in the early part of the 20th century, his theories on evolutionary psychology were largely ignored. Only after the second world war, in the 1950s, did interest increase in the systematic study of animal behavior. It was during this period that the modern field of ethology emerged. Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen were pioneers in developing the theoretical framework for ethology for which they would receive a Nobel prize in 1973.

Sociobiology

In 1975, E O Wilson built upon the works of Lorenz and Tinbergen by combining studies of animal behavior, social behavior and evolutionary theory in his book Sociobiology:The New Synthesis. Wilson included a chapter on human behavior. The specific chapter caused considerable controversy as it reignited the nature versus nurture debate.

E O Wilson argues that the field of evolutionary psychology is essentially the same as sociobiology. According to Wilson, the heated controversies surrounding Sociobiology:The New Synthesis, significantly stigmatized the term "sociobiology".

Origin of evolutionary psychology

Since the term "sociobiology" was controversial, the more acceptable term "evolutionary psychology" emerged in the 1980s. Evolutionary psychologists emphasized that organisms are "adaptation executors" rather than "fitness maximizers." In other words, organisms use behaviors that they were adpative in the past rather than those that maximize fitness in the present. This distinction helps explain maladaptive behaviors, which are "fitness lags" resulting from novel environments. In addition, rather than focus primarily on overt behavior, EP attempts to identify underlying psychological adaptations (including emotional, motivational and cognitive mechanisms), and how these mechanisms interact with the developmental and current environmental influences to produce behavior. The presence that evolutionary theory holds in psychology has been steadily increasing.

Controversies

The practice of applying evolutionary theory to animal behavior and to the human body is generally seen as uncontroversial. However, adaptationist approaches to human psychology are contentious, with critics questioning the scientific nature of evolutionary psychology, and with more minor debates within the field itself. Trying to apply evolutionary theory to human behavior requires caution, and evolutionary psychology can easily go too far in doing so. In the past, evolutionary psychology failed to address the complexity of individual development and experience, making it vulnerable to criticism as genetic reductionism. From the genes to the social environment, interaction is the rule. Evidence that genes influence behavior does not explain how it does so in any individual case. A frequent critique of the discipline is that the hypotheses of evolutionary psychology are difficult or impossible to adequately test, thus questioning its status as an actual scientific discipline, for example because many current traits probably evolved to serve different functions than they do now. Evolutionary Psychologists contradict this statement saying that good evolutionary hypotheses can be corroborated or contradicted by data. While testing the hypotheses of evolutionary psychology is difficult, in the majority viewpoint it is not impossible. Evolutionary Psychologists say that good evolutionary hypotheses can be corroborated or contradicted by data.

Evolutionary psychologists, in turn, accuse proponents of the standard social sciences model of political bias and argue that mind is better understood, not as a blank slate capable of learning anything with equal ease, but as a set of evolved emotional, motivational, and cognitive adaptations designed to help to solve recurrent problems of survival and reproduction in ancestral environments. However, there are many critics outside of the standard social sciences model, who debate the veracity of the computational theory of mind underlying evolutionary psychology. They argue that the computational theory of mind does not fit with our biological reality any more than does a mind shaped entirely by the environment.

See also

Template:Misplaced Pages-Books

• Behavioural genetics
• Dual inheritance theory
• Ethnic nepotism
• Evolutionary developmental psychology
• Evolutionary educational psychology
• Evolutionary neuroscience
• Evolutionary Psychology Research Groups and Centers
• Gene-centered view of evolution
• Human behavioral ecology
• List of evolutionary psychologists
• Memetics
• Multiple discovery
• Outline of psychology

Notes

1. Confer, Easton, Fleischman, Goetz, Lewis, Perilloux & Buss, 2010; Buss, 2005; Durrant & Ellis, 2003; Pinker, 2002; Tooby & Cosmides, 2005
2. "Despite this difficulty, there have been many careful and informative studies of human social behaviour from an evolutionary perspective. Infanticide, intelligence, marriage patterns, promiscuity, perception of beauty, bride price, altruism, and the allocation of parental care have all been explored by testing predictions derived from the idea that conscious and unconscious behaviours have evolved to maximize inclusive fitness. The findings have been impressive." "social behaviour, animal." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 23 Jan. 2011. .
3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Psychology was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
4. Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate. New York: Penguin. 2002
5. Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. 1992. The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
6. "instinct." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 18 Feb. 2011. .
7. ^ "social behaviour, animal." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 23 Jan. 2011. .
8. ^ Wright, Robert. The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. Vintage. 1995.
9. Tooby & Cosmides 2005, p. 5
10. evolutionary psychology Psyche Games. Accessed August 22, 2007
11. Ghiselin MT (1973). "Darwin and Evolutionary Psychology: Darwin initiated a radically new way of studying behavior". Science. 179 (4077): 964–968. doi:10.1126/science.179.4077.964. PMID 17842154.
12. Tooby, John; Barkow, Jerome H.; Cosmides, Leda (1995). The Adapted mind: evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. Oxford : Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-510107-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
13. Nesse, R.M. (2000). Tingergen's Four Questions Organized. http://nesse.us
14. "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1973". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 2007-07-28.
15. Sterelny, Kim. 2009. In Ruse, Michael & Travis, Joseph (eds) Wilson, Edward O. (Foreword) Evolution: The First Four Billion Years. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Ma. 978-o674031753. p. 314.
16. Wilson, Edward O. 1975.Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Harvard University Pre ss, Cambridge, Ma. ISBN 0-674-00089-7 p.4.
17. Wilson, Edward O. 1978. On Human Nature. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Ma. p. x.
18. Laland, Kevin N. and Gillian R. Brown. 2002. Sense & Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior. Oxford University Press, Oxford. pp. 287-319.
19. ^ Cosmides, L (1997-01-13). "Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer". Center for Evolutionary Psychology. Retrieved 2008-02-16. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
20. See for example:Gould, Stephen Jay (2002). The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674006135.
21. Mills, M.E. (2004). Evolution and motivation. Symposium paper presented at the Western Psychological Association Conference, Phoenix, AZ. April, 2004.
22. ^ Buss, D.M. (2011). Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind
23. Gaulin, S. J. & McBurney, D. H. (2004). Evolutionary Psychology, (2nd Ed.). NJ: Prentice Hall.
24. ^ Dawkins, R. (1989). The Selfish Gene. (2nd Ed.) New York: Oxford University Press.
25. Darwin, C. (1859). On The Origin of Species.
26. Darwin, C. (1871). The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.
27. ^ Blackmore, Susan. (2000) The Meme Machine
28. Royd & Richerson, (2004) Not by Genes Alone.
29. Buss, D.M. (2011). Evolutionary Psychology. NY: Bacon.
30. ^ Pianka, E.R. (1970). On r and K selection. American Naturalist 104, 592–597./> Trivers, Robert L. (1971). "The evolution of reciprocal altruism". Quarterly Review of Biology. 46 (1): 35–57. doi:10.1086/406755. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) Cite error: The named reference "Pianka, E.R 1970" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
31. Trivers, Robert L. (1972). "Parental investment and sexual selection". In Bernard Campbell (ed.). Sexual selection and the descent of man, 1871-1971. Aldine Transaction (Chicago). pp. 136–179. ISBN 0202020053.
32. Trivers, Robert L. (1974). "Parent-offspring conflict". American Zoologist. 14 (1). The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology: 249–264. doi:10.1093/icb/14.1.249.
33. Pinker, Steven. (1994)The Language Instinct
34. See also "Environment of evolutionary adaptation," a variation of the term used in Economics, e.g., in Rubin, Paul H., 2003, "Folk economics" Southern Economic Journal, 70:1, July 2003, 157-171.
35. Symons, Donald (1992). "On the use and misuse of Darwinism in the study of human behavior". The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. Oxford University Press. pp. 137–159. ISBN 0195101073.
36. Ryan, Christopher and Cacilda Jethá. Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality. Harper. 2010.
37. CDC pdf
38. Ohman, A. (2001). "Fears, phobias, and preparedness: Toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning" (PDF). Psychological Review. 108 (3): 483–522. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.108.3.483. PMID 11488376. Retrieved 2008-06-16. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
39. Pinker, S. (1999). "How the Mind Works" (Document). WW Norton & Co. New York. pp. 386–389.
40. Hagen, EH; Hammerstein, P (2006). "Game theory and human evolution: a critique of some recent interpretations of experimental games". Theoretical population biology. 69 (3): 339–48. doi:10.1016/j.tpb.2005.09.005. PMID 16458945.
41. Barrett, Deirdre. Waistland: The R/Evolutionary Science Behind Our Weight and Fitness Crisis (2007) NY, NY: W.W. Norton, . See especially section "Supernormal Stimuli--Why Birds Are Cuckoo" p. 31-51.
42. Barrett, Deirdre. SUPERNORMAL STIMULI: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose. NY NY: W.W. Norton, 2010
43. Hagen, E and Hammerstein, P (2006). "Game theory and human evolution: A critique of some recent interpretations of experimental games". Theoretical Population Biology. 69 (3): 339. doi:10.1016/j.tpb.2005.09.005. PMID 16458945.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
44. Omar Tonsi Eldakar (2006). "Emotions and actions associated with altruistic helping and punishment" (PDF). Evolutionary Psychology. 4: 274–286. Retrieved 2010-08-15. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
45. Omar Tonsi Eldakar (2008). "Selfishness as second-order altruism" (PDF). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 105 (19): 6982–6986. doi:10.1073/pnas.0712173105. PMC 2383986. PMID 18448681. Retrieved 2010-08-15. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
46. Francisco W.S. Lima (2009). "Evolution of ethnocentrism on undirected and directed Barabási-Albert networks". Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications. 388: 4999–5004. doi:10.1016/j.physa.2009.08.029. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); |format= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
47. Buss, David (2004). Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc. ISBN 978-0205483389.
48. Cite error: The named reference kleinbio was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
49. Wolpert, Lewis (2006). Six impossible things before breakfast, The evolutionary origins of belief. New York: Norton. p. 81. ISBN 0393064492.
50. Cite error: The named reference Freeman was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
51. ^ Diamond, Jared. The Third Chimpanzee.
52. Wilson, G.D. Love and Instinct. London: Temple Smith, 1981.
53. Buss, D. M. (1994). The evolution of desire: Strategies of human mating. New York: Basic Books.
54. Buss, D. M., & Barnes, M. (1986). Preferences in human mate selection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 559-570.
55. Li, N. P., Bailey, J. M., Kenrick, D. T., & Linsenmeier, J. A. W. (2002). The necessities and luxuries of mate preferences: Testing the tradeoffs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 6, 947-955.
56. Schmitt, D. P., & Buss, D. M. (2001). Human mate poaching: Tactics and temptations for infiltrating existing relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 894-917.
57. Buss, D. M. (1988). From vigilance to violence: Tactics of mate retention in American undergraduates. Ethology and Sociobiology, 9, 291-317.
58. Trivers, R. (1972). Parental investment and sexual selection. In B. Campbell (Ed.), Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton.
59. Buss, D. M. (1989). Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 1-49.
60. Buss, D. M., Larsen, R. J., Westen, D., & Semmelroth J. (1992). Sex differences in jealousy: Evolution, physiology, and psychology. Psychological Science 3(4), 251–255
61. Harris, C. R. (2002) Sexual and romantic jealousy in heterosexual and homosexual adults. Psychological Science 13(1), 7–12
62. Haselton, M. G., & Miller, G. F. (2006). Women's fertility across the cycle increases the short-term attractiveness of creative intelligence. Human Nature, 17(1), 50-73.
63. Gangestad, S. W., Simpson, J. A., Cousins, A. J., Garver-Apgar, C. E., & Christensen, P. N. (2004). Women's preferences for male behavioral displays change across the menstrual cycle. Psychological Science, 15(3), 203-207.
64. Wilcox, A. J., Dunson, D. B., Weinberg, C. R., Trussell, J., & Baird, D. D. (2001). Likelihood of conception with a single act of intercourse: Providing benchmark rates for assessment of post-coital contraceptives. Contraception, 63, 211-215.
65. Miller, G. F. (2000b) The mating mind: How sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature. Anchor Books: New York.
66. Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.1038/hdy.1948.21, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.1038/hdy.1948.21 instead.
67. Definition and explanation of inclusive fitness from Personality Research.org
68. Dawkins, Richard, "The Extended Phenotype", Oxford University Press 1982 (Chapter 9)
69. Aronson, W. A. (2007). Social Psychology (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0132382458. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
70. R. Trivers, Q. Rev. Biol. 46, 35 (1971).
71. M. A. Nowak, K. Sigmund, Nature 393, 573 (1998).
72. Fowler JH "Second Order Free Riding Problem Solved?" Nature 437: doi:10.1038/nature04201 (22 September 2005)
73. Duntley, J.D., & Buss, D.M. (2008). Evolutionary psychology is a metatheory for psychology. Psychological Inquiry, 19, 30-34.
74. Santrock, W. John (2005). A Topical Approach to Life-Span Development (3rd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. pp.62.
75. Shermer (2004). The Science of Good and Evil. Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 9780805077698.
76. http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/200401--.htm
77. Wilson, EO (2000). Sociobiology. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674002357. Human sociobiology, now often called evolutionary psychology, has in the last quarter of a century emerged as its own field of study, drawing on theory and data from both biology and the social sciences.
78. Controversies in the evolutionary social sciences: a guide for the perplexed
79. Evolutionary Psychology By Lance Workman, Will Reader
80. Alcock, John (2001). The Triumph of Sociobiology. Oxford : Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516335-4.
81. Segerstråle, Ullica Christina Olofsdotter (2000). Defenders of the truth : the battle for science in the sociobiology debate and beyond. Oxford : Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-850505-1.
82. "social behaviour, animal." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 08 Feb. 2011. .
83. ^ "instinct." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 09 Feb. 2011. .
84. Tooby, J (2005). "Conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology" (pdf). {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); in Buss, David M. (2005). Handbook of evolutionary psychology. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-26403-2.
85. Panksepp, J. & Panksepp, J. (2000). The Seven Sins of Evolutionary Psychology. Evolution and Cognition, 6:2, 108-131.

References

• Barkow, Jerome H. (2006). Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 0-19-513002-2.
• Buss, David M. (2004). Evolutionary psychology: the new science of the mind. Boston: Pearson/A and B. ISBN 0-205-37071-3.
• Clarke, Murray (2004). Reconstructing reason and representation. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-03322-4.
• Evan, Dylan (2000). Introducing Evolutionary Psychology. Lanham, MD: Totem Books USA. ISBN 1-84046-043-1.
• Joyce, Richard (2006). The Evolution of Morality (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology). Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-10112-2.
• Miller, Geoffrey P. (2000). The mating mind: how sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-49516-1.
• Pinker, Steven (1997). How the mind works. New York: Norton. ISBN 0-393-04535-8.
• Pinker, Steven (2002). The blank slate: the modern denial of human nature. New York, N.Y: Viking. ISBN 0-670-03151-8.
• Richards, Janet C. (2000). Human nature after Darwin: a philosophical introduction. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-21243-X.
• Ryan, C. & Jethá, C. (2010). Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality. New York, NY: Harper. ISBN 0061707805.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Wilson, Edward Raymond (2000). Sociobiology: the new synthesis. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-00089-7.
• Wright, Robert C. M. (1995). The moral animal: evolutionary psychology and everyday life. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-76399-6.
• Santrock, John W. (2005). The Topical Approach to Life-Span Development(3rd ed.). New York, N.Y: McGraw Hill. ISBN 0-07-322626-2.

Further reading

• Confer, J.C., Easton, J.A., Fleischman, D.S., Goetz, C. D., Lewis, D.M.G., Perilloux, C., & Buss, D. M. (2010). Evolutionary Psychology: Controversies, Questions, Prospects, and Limitations. American Psychologist, 65, 110-126.
• Buss, D. M. (1995). Evolutionary psychology: A new paradigm for psychological science. Psychological Inquiry, 6, 1-30. Full text
• Durrant, R., & Ellis, B.J. (2003). Evolutionary Psychology. In M. Gallagher & R.J. Nelson (Eds.), Comprehensive Handbook of Psychology, Volume Three: Biological Psychology (pp. 1–33). New York: Wiley & Sons. Full text
• Kennair, L. E. O. (2002). "Evolutionary psychology: An emerging integrative perspective within the science and practice of psychology". Human Nature Review (2): 17–61.
• Medicus, G. (2005). "Evolutionary Theory of Human Sciences". pp. 9, 10, 11. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
• Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2005). Conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 5–67). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Full text

External links

• Evolutionary Psychology page at Scholarpedia
• Template:Dmoz
• Evolutionary Psychology page at Citizendium
• What Is Evolutionary Psychology? by Clinical Evolutionary Psychologist Dale Glaebach.
• Evolutionary Psychology-Approaches in Psychology

Academic societies

• Human Behavior and Evolution Society; international society dedicated to using evolutionary theory to study human nature
• The International Society for Human Ethology; promotes ethological perspectives on the study of humans worldwide
• European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association an interdisciplinary society that supports the activities of European researchers with an interest in evolutionary accounts of human cognition, behaviour and society
• The Association for Politics and the Life Sciences; international and interdisciplinary association concerned with evolutionary, genetic and ecological knowledge
• Society for Evolutionary Analysis in Law a scholarly association dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary exploration of issues at the intersection of law, biology, and evolutionary theory
• The New England Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology aims to foster research and education into the interdisciplinary nexus of cognitive science and evolutionary studies
• The NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society; regional society dedicated to encouraging scholarship and dialogue on the topic of evolutionary psychology

Journals

• Evolutionary Psychology free access online scientific journal
• Evolution and Human Behavior; journal of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society
• Politics and the Life Sciences is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal published by the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences
• Human Nature: An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective advances the interdisciplinary investigation of the biological, social, and environmental factors that underlie human behavior. It focuses primarily on the functional unity in which these factors are continuously and mutually interactive. These include the evolutionary, biological, and sociological processes as they interact with human social behavior.
• Biological Theory: Integrating Development, Evolution and Cognition devoted to theoretical advances in the fields of biology and cognition, with an emphasis on the conceptual integration afforded by evolutionary and developmental approaches.
• Evolutionary Anthropology
• Behavioral and Brain Sciences interdisciplinary articles in psychology, neuroscience, behavioral biology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, linguistics and philosophy. About 30% of the articles have focused on evolutionary analyses of behavior.
• Evolution and Development Research relevant to interface of evolutionary and developmental biology
• Journal of Social, Evolutionary & Cultural Psychology
• Biological Theory: Integrating Development, Evolution and Cognition; publishes theoretical advances in the fields of biology and cognition, emphasizing the conceptual integration afforded by evolutionary and developmental approaches. Free access to Winter 2006 issues
• The Evolutionary Review - Art, Science, and Culture

Videos

• Brief video clip re what EP is (from the "Evolution" PBS Series)
• TED talk by Steven Pinker about his book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
• Margaret Mead and Samoa; review of the nature vs. nurture debate triggered by Coming of Age in Samoa
• Video interview with Steven Pinker by Robert Wright (journalist) discussing evolutionary psychology
• Video interview with Edward O. Wilson by Robert Wright (journalist), contextualizing evolutionary psychology within science, politics, academics and philosophy

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