4. What is “Evolutionary Psychology”?
Here’s one answer:
(paraphrased from Cosmides & Tooby, 1997)
Evolutionary psychology is an approach to asking and
answering questions about how the mind works, in which basic
principles of evolutionary biology are used to inform research on
human psychology.
(Evolutionary psychology isn’t defined by any specific topics of
inquiry; instead, it is defined by a systematic way of
thinking about psychology, which can potentially be applied to
any topic area within the psychological sciences.)
5. What is “Evolutionary Psychology”?
Here’s another answer:
Evolutionary psychology assumes two elementary principles of
genetic evolution and developmental biology…
1. The genes that define contemporary human
populations are products of a long history of
evolution by natural selection.
2. The human nervous system typically develops
according to a recipe encoded in those genes.
…and, by systematically considering the implications of those
assumptions, this approach yields new insights about how the
human mind was “designed” by natural selection, and about
how our minds work right here and right now.
7. A lot of complicated processes are implied here:
Specific selection pressures on ancestral populations.
Actual genetic stuff that characterizes contemporary humans.
Development of the human nervous system
How the nervous system actually works.
Cognition, affect, behavior in the here and now
evolutionary biology; population genetics
developmental biology
cognitive, affective, and behavioral neuroscience
anatomy and physiology
8. What we will actually focus on:
Specific selection pressures on ancestral populations.
Actual genetic stuff that characterizes contemporary humans.
Development of the human nervous system
How the nervous system actually works.
Cognition, affect, behavior in the here and now
9. This course in three parts:
Part 1: Gene`s eye view of life, and the useful
implications of this perspective for understanding how
the human mind works.
Part 2: Challenges associated with survival and
sexual reproduction in ancestral populations, which
affected how the human mind evolved, with
implications for contemporary human cognition and
behavior.
Part 3: Other challenges that mattered in ancestral
populations, which also affected how the human mind
evolved, with additional implications for contemporary
human cognition and behavior.
12. Next class:
Logical principles underlying evolutionary psychology
Readings (in addition to reading the syllabus, of course):
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1997). Evolutionary psychology: A primer. Center for
Evolutionary Psychology; University of California, Santa Barbara.
Confer, J. C., Easton, J. A., Fleischman, D. S., Goetz, C. D., Lewis, D. G.
M., Perilloux, C., & Buss, D. M. (2010). Evolutionary psychology: Controversies,
questions, prospects, and limitations. American Psychologist, 65, 110–126.
