Who came up with evolutionary psychology?
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 ...
Who is the most famous evolutionary psychologist?
Steven Pinker is a multi-faceted figure who has made some major contributions to both psychology and linguistics. This has brought him recognition as the father of evolutionary pscyhology. Steven Pinker, born in 1954 in Montreal, is considered the father of evolutionary psychology. He’s also an important scientist, linguist, and writer.
What do evolutionary psychologists believe?
What do evolutionary psychologists believe? Evolutionary psychology, the study of behaviour, thought, and feeling as viewed through the lens of evolutionary biology. Evolutionary psychologists presume all human behaviours reflect the influence of physical and psychological predispositions that helped human ancestors survive and reproduce.
Who is the father of modern psychology and why?
Wilhelm Wundt is typically considered the father of modern psychology. He founded the first experimental psychology lab in 1879 at the University of Leipzig in Germany. Until Wundt opened the Institute for Experimental Psychology, the field was widely regarded and studied as an ambiguous combination of philosophy and biology.
Who contributed to the evolutionary perspective?
Young Charles Darwin. Ideas aimed at explaining how organisms change, or evolve, over time date back to Anaximander of Miletus, a Greek philosopher who lived in the 500s B.C.E.
Who are the evolutionary theorists?
Evolutionary theories take the long-term look at the emergence of the human species. According to this perspective, humans of today carry with them genetically guided characteristics passed from generation to generation that have contributed to survival and reproductive success.
Was Charles Darwin an evolutionary psychologist?
Darwin was the grandfather of evolutionary psychology , which attempts to determine which psychological traits, such as personality and perception of attractiveness, are evolved adaptations due to natural selection. He was also one of the pioneers for child development research and psychology.
Was Freud an evolutionary psychologist?
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) is generally considered as the main precursor of current evolutionary psychopathology (Stevens and Price, 1996; McGuire and Troisi, 1998; de Block, 2006), as several of his works involved Darwinian concepts or, more globally, evolutionary ones.
Who discovered evolution before Darwin?
Jean Baptiste LamarckCuvier rejected Lamarck's evolutionism and Darwin would later ridicule this idea of soft inheritance. But it is to Lamarck's credit that he taught the non-fixity of species, which later would become a central pillar of Darwin's theory of evolution. Figure 4. Jean Baptiste Lamarck.
What is evolutionary psychology theory?
evolutionary psychology, the study of behaviour, thought, and feeling as viewed through the lens of evolutionary biology. Evolutionary psychologists presume all human behaviours reflect the influence of physical and psychological predispositions that helped human ancestors survive and reproduce.
Was Freud influenced by Darwin?
Sigmund Freud was born just a few years before Charles Darwin (1809–1882) published his On the origin of species by means of natural selection (Darwin, 1859), and the whole scientific generation to which he belonged in the German-speaking area was indeed deeply influenced by Darwin's works and their German ...
Did Freud believe evolution?
Throughout his career as a writer, Sigmund Freud maintained an interest in the evolutionary origins of the human mind and its neurotic and psychotic disorders. In common with many writers then and now, he believed that the evolutionary past is conserved in the mind and the brain.
How did Charles Darwin contribute to evolutionary psychology?
Evolutionary psychology is inspired by the work of Charles Darwin and applies his ideas of natural selection to the mind. Darwin's theory argues that all living species, including humans, arrived at their current biological form through a historical process involving random inheritable changes.
Who is Nicolaus Copernicus and Darwin?
Nicolaus Copernicus developed a heliocentric view of the cosmos that displaced humans from the physical center of the universe. Charles Darwin developed an evolutionary theory that placed humans firmly within the organismic order of nature.
Who is the father of evolution?
Charles DarwinCharles Darwin: Naturalist, Revolutionary, and Father of Evolution.
Which theory paved the foundation for evolutionary psychology?
Natural selection. Evolutionary psychologists consider Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection to be important to an understanding of psychology.
What is evolutionary psychology?
Evolutionary psychology is one of many biologically informed approaches to the study of human behavior. Along with cognitive psychologists, evolutionary psychologists propose that much, if not all, of our behavior can be explained by appeal to internal psychological mechanisms. What distinguishes evolutionary psychologists from many cognitive psychologists is the proposal that the relevant internal mechanisms are adaptations—products of natural selection—that helped our ancestors get around the world, survive and reproduce. To understand the central claims of evolutionary psychology we require an understanding of some key concepts in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. Philosophers are interested in evolutionary psychology for a number of reasons. For philosophers of science —mostly philosophers of biology—evolutionary psychology provides a critical target. Although here is a broad consensus among philosophers of biology that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise, this does not entail that these philosophers completely reject the relevance of evolutionary theory to human psychology. For philosophers of mind and cognitive science evolutionary psychology has been a source of empirical hypotheses about cognitive architecture and specific components of that architecture. However, some philosophers of mind are also critical of evolutionary psychology but their criticisms are not as all-encompassing as those presented by philosophers of biology. Evolutionary psychology is also invoked by philosophers interested in moral psychology both as a source of empirical hypotheses and as a critical target.#N#In what follows I briefly explain evolutionary psychology’s relations to other work on the biology of human behavior and the cognitive sciences. Next I introduce the research tradition’s key theoretical concepts. In the following section I take up discussions about evolutionary psychology in the philosophy of mind, specifically focusing on the debate about the massive modularity thesis. I go on to review some of the criticisms of evolutionary psychology presented by philosophers of biology and assess some responses to those criticisms. I then go on to introduce some of evolutionary psychology’s contributions to moral psychology and human nature and, finally, briefly discuss the reach and impact of evolutionary psychology.
Which psychologist argued that evolutionary psychology owes theoretical debt to both sociobiology and ethology?
Paul Griffiths argues that evolutionary psychology owes theoretical debt to both sociobiology and ethology (Griffiths 2006; Griffiths 2008). Evolutionary psychologists acknowledge their debt to sociobiology but point out that they add a dimension to sociobiology: psychological mechanisms.
What is the main point of Buller's book on evolutionary psychology?
Buller dedicates several chapters of his book on evolutionary psychology to an examination of hypothesis testing and many of his criticisms center around the introduction of alternate hypotheses that do as good a job, or a better job, of accounting for the data.
What is the scientific term for the study of human behavior?
1. Evolutionary Psychology: One research tradition among the various biological approaches to explaining human behavior. This entry focuses on the specific approach to evolutionary psychology that is conventionally named by the capitalized phrase “Evolutionary Psychology”.
What do behavioral ecologists believe?
Behavioral ecologists also believe that much of human behavior can be explained by appealing to evolution while rejecting the idea held by evolutionary psychologists that one period of our evolutionary history is the source of all our important psychological adaptations (Irons 1998).
What is Buller's theory of human nature?
Buller’s (2005) criticism of evolutionary psychologists’ notion of human nature (or the nomological account) is based on the idea that we vary across many dimensions and an account of human nature based on fixed, universal traits cannot account for any of this variation.
How is the brain created?
The brain is a computer designed by natural selection to extract information from the environment. Individual human behavior is generated by this evolved computer in response to information it extracts from the environment. Understanding behavior requires articulating the cognitive programs that generate the behavior.
What is evolutionary psychology?
Evolutionary psychology, which emerged in the late 1980s, is a synthesis of developments in several different fields, including ethology, cognitive psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and social psychology. At the base of evolutionary psychology is Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.
What did Charles Darwin think of the evolution of psychology?
In 1873 he argued that human emotional expressions likely evolved in the same way as physical features (such as opposable thumbs and upright posture). Darwin presumed emotional expressions served the very useful function of communicating with other members of one’s own species. An angry facial expression signals a willingness to fight but leaves the observer an option to back off without either animal being hurt. Darwin’s view had a profound influence on the early development of psychology.
What did McDougall believe about social behaviour?
McDougall believed that many important social behaviours were motivated by instincts, but he viewed instincts as complex programs in which particular stimuli (e.g., social obstacles) lead to particular emotional states (e.g., anger) that in turn increase the likelihood of particular behaviours (e.g., aggression).
What was Darwin's view on psychology?
Darwin’s view had a profound influence on the early development of psychology. In 1890 William James’s classic text The Principles of Psychology used the term evolutionary psychology, and James argued that many human behaviours reflect the operation of instincts (inherited predispositions to respond to certain stimuli in adaptive ways).
Which is more likely to be found in altricial or precocial species?
For example, investment by fathers is more likely to be found in altricial species (those with helpless offspring, such as birds and humans) than in precocial species (whose young are mobile at birth, such as goats and many other mammals).
What do evolutionary psychologists study?
Evolutionary psychologists often work alongside archaeologists and anthropologists to study the behavior, norms, and societies of primitive humans and those who came after to try to glean exactly how early humans lived, and whether the behavior of those humans can still be seen today.
Why do we study evolutionary psychology?
The study of evolutionary psychology helps us understand how human behavior, cognition, and traits differ as a result of the evolutionary process . Evolutionary psychologists often work with archeologists to find out about past human behavior.
What does evolutionary psychology look for in adaptations?
However, evolutionary psychology also looks at where adaptations go wrong. After ongoing evolutionary analysis, evolutionary psychologists have come to the conclusion that the heightened physical arousal during times of danger no longer serves humans. You might wonder if anxiety isn't just human nature.
What is cognitive psychology?
Cognitive psychology would explain all these aspects of psychology in terms of cognitive functions. Evolutionary psychologists, however, don't usually work directly with patients. Instead, evolutionary psychologists study human behavior and how it applies to evolutionary theory.
What is the evolutionary theory of psychology?
The evolutionary theory of psychology builds on Darwin's theory of biological evolution to study the effects of psychological evolution on human nature. First, consider the general theory of evolution proposed and studied by Darwin. There are four main ideas that define Darwin's theory of evolution. They are:
Why is evolution important?
Although some basic tenets of evolutionary psychology are undergoing their evolution, the idea remains the same: evolution plays an important role in the overall development of the human mind, and the behaviors and experiences that humans embody and create.
How does evolution explain human behavior?
Most scientists agree that evolution explains how humans developed behaviors in the early days of humanity. Many also believe that psychological mechanisms studied in evolutionary psychology are responsible for human behavior and human nature the way it is today. For example, certain instincts evolved long ago.
Who is the founder of evolutionary psychology?
The theories on which evolutionary psychology is based originated with Charles Darwin 's work, including his speculations about the evolutionary origins of social instincts in humans. Modern evolutionary psychology, however, is possible only because of advances in evolutionary theory in the 20th century.
When did evolutionary psychology start?
In the 1970s and 1980s university departments began to include the term evolutionary biology in their titles. The modern era of evolutionary psychology was ushered in, in particular, by Donald Symons ' 1979 book The Evolution of Human Sexuality and Leda Cosmides and John Tooby 's 1992 book The Adapted Mind.
What did Darwin predict about psychology?
In The Origin of Species, Darwin predicted that psychology would develop an evolutionary basis: 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 .
What are the premises of evolution?
Evolutionary psychology is founded on several core premises. The brain is an information processing device, and it produces behavior in response to external and internal inputs. The brain's adaptive mechanisms were shaped by natural and sexual selection.
How does sexual selection affect evolution?
Given that sexual reproduction is the means by which genes are propagated into future generations, sexual selection plays a large role in 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, mate retention, mating preferences and conflict between the sexes.
What is the purpose of adaptationist thinking?
It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations – that is, the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection in human evolution. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and immune system, is common in evolutionary biology.
Which theory is based on the hypothesis that cognition has functional structure that has a genetic basis?
Main article: Evolved psychological mechanisms. 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.
How is evolution related to psychology?
Evolutionary psychology is related to both macroevolution in the sense that it looks at how the human species (especially the brain) has changed over time, and it is also rooted in the ideas attributed to microevolution. These microevolutionary topics include changes at the gene level of DNA. Attempting to link the discipline ...
How did evolutionary psychology help humans survive?
According to evolutionary psychology, each of these would have helped early humans to survive. Being vigilant for threat s would help humans avoid predators and working cooperatively would allow humans to share resources and knowledge with others in their group. The field of evolutionary psychology looks at how evolutionary pressures led ...
What are the principles of evolutionary psychology?
The discipline of evolutionary psychology was founded on six core principles that combine a traditional understanding of psychology, along with evolutionary biology ideas of how the brain functions. These principles are as follows: 1 The human brain's purpose is to process information, and in doing so, it produces responses to both external and internal stimuli. 2 The human brain adapted and has undergone both natural and sexual selection. 3 The parts of the human brain are specialized to solve problems that occurred over evolutionary time. 4 Modern humans have brains that evolved after problems recurred repeatedly over long periods of time. 5 Most of the human brain's functions are done unconsciously. Even problems that seem easy to solve require very intricate neural responses at an unconscious level. 6 Many very specialized mechanisms make up the whole of human psychology. All of these mechanisms together create human nature.
Why do psychologists believe that the brain evolved?
Evolutionary psychologists believe that the brain evolved in response to solving very specific problems.
What are the survival skills of evolution?
The theory of evolution lends itself to several areas where psychological adaptations must occur in order for species to develop. The first includes basic survival skills such as consciousness, responding to stimuli, learning, and motivation. Emotions and personality also fall into this category, although their evolution is much more complex than basic instinctual survival skills. The use of language is also linked as a survival skill on the evolutionary scale within psychology.
Why did the human brain evolve?
According to evolutionary psychologists, the human brain evolved in response to specific problems that early humans faced. A core idea of evolutionary psychology is that the behavior of humans today can be better understood by thinking about the context in which early humans evolved.
What is evolution psychology?
Evolutionary psychology is a relatively new scientific discipline that looks at how human nature has evolved over time as a series of built-up psychological adaptations.
What is evolution psychology?
Evolutionary psychology provides a metatheory for psychological science that unites these fields, and justifies why the seemingly disparate branches of psychology truly belong within the covers of introductory psychology books and within the same departments of psychology.
What are the advances in evolutionary theory?
Advances in modern evolutionary theory heralded by inclusive fitness theory and the “gene’s-eye” perspective guide researchers to phenomena Darwin could not have envisioned , such as inherent and predictable form s of within-family conflict and sexual conflict between males and females.
How long has psychology been around?
200 years after Charles Darwin’s birth and 150 years after the publication of “On the Origin of Species”, the field of psychology is traveling back to its roots as a life science, integrating the same principles biologists use to understand non-human life forms to understand human behavior and cognition.
What are Darwin's principles?
Combined with the recent theoretical advances offered by genic selection and inclusive fitness theory , Darwin’s principles have proved to be invaluable tools for mapping the structure of the modern human mind and linking it with our long evolutionary history.
What is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth?
In commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work On the Origin of Species, this edition of Psychological Science Agenda includes a special section on evolutionary theory and psychology. Scientists and philosophers were invited to submit personal reflections on ...
What did Darwin believe about dogs?
And he believed that dogs have a “sense of humor as distinct from mere play” and “possess something very like a conscience.” (Darwin, 1871).
Who is Daniel Povinelli?
Daniel Povinelli is James S. McDonnell Centennial Fellow and Professor of Biology at the University of Louisiana. Derek Penn is Affiliate Scientist at the University of Louisiana. Keith Holyoak is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
What are adaptationist hypotheses regarding the etiology of psychological disorders based on?
As noted in the table below, adaptationist hypotheses regarding the etiology of psychological disorders are often based on analogies with evolutionary perspectives on medicine and physiological dysfunctions (see in particular, Randy Nesse and George C. Williams’ book Why We Get Sick). Evolutionary psychiatrists and psychologists suggest that some mental disorders likely have multiple causes.
Is religious belief a result of natural selection?
As with all other organ functions, cognition’s functional structure has been argued to have a genetic foundation, and is therefore subject to the effects of natural selection and sexual selection. Like other organs and tissues, this functional structure should be universally shared amongst humans and should have solved important problems of survival and reproduction in ancestral environments. However, evolutionary psychologists remain divided on whether religious belief is more likely a consequence of evolved psychological adaptations, or are the byproducts of other cognitive adaptations.
What is evolution psychology?
So, too, did the human brain. Evolutionary psychology is the study of the ways in which the mind was shaped by pressures to survive and reproduce. Findings in this field often shed light on "ultimate" ...
Why do traits survive?
Our present-day traits and characteristics had survival value for our ancestors, and these traits survived because the genes they are linked to were selected and now remain part of our genetic makeup.
What is the purpose of men committing foolish or heroic acts that increase status or attractiveness?
Men committing foolish or heroic acts that increase status or attractiveness are acting in ways that increase the odds of reproduction, and attempting to maximize reproductive fitness. Reproductive fitness also measures how well an organism is adapted to its environment.
Is our behavior naturally selected?
In fact, our behavior is naturally selected just as our physical traits are naturally selected. We are much taller and live longer than our ancestors. Through centuries of generations, evolution has helped us pass along adaptive behaviors that promote our reproduction.
Do evolutionary psychologists endorse violence?
No endorsement is implied in a discovery of what is natural. The general public commits the naturalistic fallacy in thinking that evolutionary psychologists endorse certain findings (such as violence or rape), when in fact evolutionary psychologists are simply outlining reasons that these behaviors may occur.
Overview
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 so…
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 unrela…
20th century
Darwin's theory inspired William James's functionalist approach to psychology. At the core of his theory was a system of "instincts." James wrote that humans had many instincts, even more than other animals. These instincts, he said, could be overridden by experience and by each other, as many of the instincts were actually in conflict with each other.
In their Evolutionary Psychology Primer Tooby and Cosmides make note of James' perspective, a…
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 No…
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. Wilson's application of evolutionary analysis to human behavior caused bitter debate.
With the publication of Sociobiology, evolutionary thinking for the first time had an identifiable pr…
Modern use of the term "evolutionary psychology"
The term evolutionary psychology was used 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 1992 book The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and The Generation of Culture. The term is sometimes abbreviated "EvoPsych" or "evo-psych" or similar.
See also
• Behavioural genetics – Study of genetic-environment interactions influencing behaviour
• Biocultural evolution
• Dual inheritance theory – Theory of human behavior
• Evolutionary economics – Part of mainstream economics
Evolutionary Psychology’s Theory and Methods
- Influential evolutionary psychologists, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby,provide the following list of the field’s theoretical tenets(Tooby and Cosmides 2005): 1. The brain is a computer designed by natural selection to extractinformation from the environment. 2. Individual human behavior is generated by this evolved computerin response to information ...
The Massive Modularity Hypothesis
- Claims that the mind has a modular architecture, and even massivelymodular architecture, are widespread in cognitive science (see e.g.Hirshfield and Gelman 1994). The massive modularity thesis is firstand foremost a thesis about cognitive architecture. As defended byevolutionary psychologists, the thesis is also about the source of ourcognitive architecture: the massively mo…
Philosophy of Biology vs. Evolutionary Psychology
- Many philosophers have criticized evolutionary psychology. Most ofthese critics are philosophers of biology who argue that the researchtradition suffers from an overly zealous form of adaptationism (Griffiths 1996; Richardson 1996; Grantham and Nichols 1999; Lloyd1999; Richardson 2007), an untenable reductionism (Dupre 1999; Dupre2001), a “bad empirical bet” ab…
Moral Psychology and Evolutionary Psychology
- Many philosophers who work on moral psychology understand that theirtopic is empirically constrained. Philosophers take two mainapproaches to using empirical results in moral psychology. One is touse empirical results (and empirically based theories from psychology)to criticize philosophical accounts of moral psychology (see e.g.Doris 2002) and one is to generat…
Human Nature
- Evolutionary psychology is well suited to providing an account ofhuman nature. As noted above (Section 1), evolutionary psychology owesa theoretical debt to human sociobiology. E.O. Wilson took humansociobiology to provide us with an account of human nature (1978). ForWilson human nature is the collection of universal human behavioralrepertoires and these behavioral repertoire…
Applications of Evolutionary Psychology and Prospects For Further Debate
- Evolutionary psychology is invoked in a wide range of areas of study,for example, in English Literature, Consumer Studies and Law. (SeeBuss 2005 for discussion of Literature and Law and Saad 2007 for adetailed presentation of evolutionary psychology and consumerstudies.) In these contexts, evolutionary psychology is usuallyintroduced as providing resources for practitioners, …