Psychology
Evolutionary Perspective in Psychology
The evolutionary perspective in psychology focuses on how human behavior and mental processes have evolved over time to enhance survival and reproduction. It emphasizes the role of natural selection in shaping psychological mechanisms and traits. This perspective seeks to understand human behavior by examining how it may have been adaptive in the context of our ancestors' environments.
Written by Perlego with AI-assistance
Related key terms
1 of 5
10 Key excerpts on "Evolutionary Perspective in Psychology"
eBook - PDFPsychology
Six Perspectives
- Dodge Fernald(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
These evolved psychological mechanisms are activated Psychology in Perspective —— 349 by specific circumstances in everyday life and related to problems of survival and reproduction in ancestral eras. In modern society, some are negative, others positive. The so-called negative mechanisms arouse fear, anger, jeal-ousy, and related emotions. In bygone millennia, they promoted successful responses to dangerous situations and engendered competition among human beings (Buss, 2000). The more positive evolved mechanisms, including mate and food prefer-ences, kinship patterns, and social exchange, contributed to happiness. Natural selection has designed in human beings certain landscape prefer-ences, for example, favoring patterns of good weather and signs of the har-vest, resisting dense forests and completely open plains. For living spaces, human beings consistently prefer savanna-like landscapes over other natural and even human-made environments (Buss, 1995a, 2000). According to the evolutionary perspective, at least a portion of human nature appears in these highly evolved psychological mechanisms, positive and negative. Human nature includes the many ways in which natural selection, over the eons of human prehistory, designed us for survival and reproduction. In summary, these four perspectives show successively different responses to the question of human nature, appearing almost completely independent of one another. And yet each may contain an element of truth. It is notewor-thy too that the earlier, more philosophical perspectives—psychoanalysis, humanistic psychology, and behaviorism—all take firm categorical posi-tions. Among the later, more topical perspectives, evolutionary psychology approaches human nature in pluralistic fashion, including a mixture of inborn “programs.” And modern biological and cognitive psychology, if forced to a position, would move toward evolutionary psychology, reflect-ing the interest in mind-brain systems and subsystems.
No longer available |Learn more- (Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- The English Press(Publisher)
________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter- 1 Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology Evolutionary psychology ( EP ) 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 modular adaptations serving 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 prosocial traits such as altruism to evolve. 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 modest findings on topics such as infanticide, intelligence, marriage patterns, promiscuity, perception of beauty, bride price and parental investment.
eBook - PDFPsychology of Personality
Viewpoints, Research, and Applications
- Bernardo J. Carducci(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Chapter Summary: Reexamining the Highlights ● Linking Evolutionary Theory to the Study of Personality – Basic Logic. The evolutionary viewpoint uses principles of classic and contemporary evolutionary theory to understand the operation and expression of personality dimensions. ● Basic Processes of the Evolutionary Viewpoint – Survival and Reproduction. The two fundamental tasks in the process of evolution are the attraction of potential mates and the transmission of genetic and biological characteristics to the offspring resulting from successful mating. – Natural Selection. Gradual changes in the physical characteristics of organisms that increase the likelihood of survival and reproduction of the species are a result of natural selection. – Adaptive Behavior. Responses to environmental challenges that result in survival and reproductive success are repeated and incorporated into the neurological circuits in the brain, forming the basis of genetic behavioral patterns. – The Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness. While the nature of the environmental conditions and adaptive behaviors may change over time, Chapter Summary: Reexamining the Highlights 365 the basic evolutionary tasks—successful survival and reproduction—remain the same. ● Accounting for the Emergence of Individual Differences in Personality – Explanations of Individual Differences. The evolutionary viewpoint proposes that individual differences in personality emerge as a results of the variability in certain personality traits among individuals serving to increase the likelihood of survival and reproduction among individuals within a general population.
eBook - PDFEvolutionary Psychology
An Introduction
- Lance Workman, Will Reader(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Evolutionary Psychology Description. A theoretical approach that, like sociobiology draws on ethology and behavioural ecology, but differs in that the focus is on mental states rather than behaviour per se. Also differs in that it emphasises there is a mismatch between the environment in which our species evolved and the current one. This means that much of our current behaviour is not necessarily adaptive. Most evolutionary psychologists research human behaviour. Those researching the behaviour of non-human animals are most likely to describe themselves using one of the terms above. Box 1.2 (cont.) 14 Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology Learning Theory and Its Shortcomings Despite the misgivings of the social scientists, outside psychology Darwinian thinking was alive and well in disciplines such as ethology (Tinbergen, 1951) and behavioural ecology (Krebs and Davies, 1978) (see Box 1.2), but the orthodoxy within human psychology was still cultural relativism. Even psychologists who studied animal behaviour – where Darwinism can be least controversially ap- plied – tended to ignore species-specific behaviour. Learning theorists such as Pavlov, Watson and Skinner were concerned with studying the general mechanisms of learning, using the principles of classical and operant conditioning. This framework viewed human beings as just more complex versions of rats, pigeons and sea slugs and proposed that if we could understand these simpler or- ganisms then we could scale up the findings to understand humans. Interestingly, two of Skinner’s researchers, Keller and Marian Breland (1961), found that animals’ instinctive behaviour kept get- ting in the way of the supposedly species-general processes of association and reinforcement. Using Skinnerian methods they trained animals to put dollars in piggy banks for advertising companies.
- Alan Lewis(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Evolutionary psychology offers such an alternative. In this chapter, we want to first outline the basic premises of evolutionary psychology and its relation to microeconomics. Then, we will discuss how several research areas of economic psychology might be informed by reflecting the many ways in which humans’ present behavior is influenced by their evolutionary past. 22.1.1 Evolutionary Psychology in a Nutshell Evolutionary psychology can be regarded as the systematic attempt to apply Darwin’s (1859) theory of natural selection and his theory of sexual selection to the understanding of human cognition, motivation, and behavior (Tooby, Cosmides, and Barkow, 1995). Darwin’s first theory – the theory of natural selection – is founded on three basic observations: (1) organisms of a certain species are not identical but dif- fer from each other (e.g., some antelopes run faster than others); (2) these dif- ferences are at least partly heritable (e.g., fast-running antelopes tend to have offspring that also run quickly); and (3) within a given species, only a part of all offspring survive into adulthood and thus have a chance to propagate their genes into future generations. If the chance of survival is at least partly due to the heritable differences of organisms within a given species, some attributes will be naturally selected (e.g., Bergstrom and Dugatkin, 2012). For example, if fast-running antelopes are better able to evade predators (e.g., lions), they have a higher chance of survival and thus also have a higher chance to sire offspring that will also run The Importance of Evolutionary Psychology for the Understanding of Economic Behavior 651 651 quickly. Thus, over the course of evolution, antelopes will run faster and faster (as will lions, who will be under a very similar selection pressure).
No longer available |Learn more- Dana Dunn, Bridgette Martin Hard(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Darwin’s (1859) theory of nat-ural selection has a set of three components: variation in the genotype of a species, inheritance of genotype, and differential reproductive success. Only genotypic variations that are heritable can evolve in frequency across gener-ations. Through natural selection, those variations that promote survival and reproduction are increasingly passed on. These products of the process of nat-ural selection are adaptations that solve problems in the environment that can threaten both survival and reproduction. These evolutionary principles have long been applied to other sciences and are an important part of psychology’s history. Charles Darwin (1872) himself considered the role of evolution in shaping psychological phenomena, such as emotions. William James’s (1890) functionalist approach to understanding psychology made him the first evolu-tionary psychologist. Responding to and adapting to one’s environment is the very function of psychological processes. After all, individuals’ evolved biologi-cal processes (i.e., brain and nervous system) underlie all of their psychological processes. If evolution is to provide a thread of continuity and connection for all sub-sequent material, it is important to present basic principles of evolution early on. A lecture on evolutionary psychology, normally presented at the very beginning of a course, provides the perfect opportunity to build understanding of principles of evolution. It is worth the time and effort to devote an entire lecture to these principles and to allow students to brainstorm and forecast ways in which they think evolution can contribute to understanding psychology across domains. It is good to keep track of their ideas so that they can be addressed again as you come to that specific material.This process allows students to think creatively and to see the advantages of the accumulated knowledge in play as they progress through the material.
eBook - PDF- Ronald Comer, Elizabeth Gould, Adrian Furnham(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
A further perspective offered by evolutionary psycho- pathology concerns the impact of the mismatch between modern and ancestral environments for psychological health. Culture has evolved at a much faster rate than bio- logical evolution (see above on cultural evolution). Human psychology has changed little since hunter-gatherer times, but the world we inhabit is very different. To name but a few of the differences, we now live in much larger groups, are often separated from kin, work longer hours and have less leisure time. In short, we inhabit a world that we are not adapted to. The mismatch between ancestral and modern environments is likely to underlie much psychopathology. For example, depression and anxiety may result from lack of kin support, crowded living conditions and the highly com- petitive environment in which we live. Buss (2000) argues that the environmental mismatch is responsible for a great deal of human unhappiness. Darwinian medicine is in its infancy but has the potential to transform our understanding of health and disease, and contribute to effective treatment. A phobia of spiders would have been adaptive in the ancestral environment. Source: Peter Waters/Shutterstock.com. Activities to test yourself further are available in your interactive e-book at www.wileyopenpage.com A C T I V I T Y Before You Go On What Do You Know? 13. Describe the role of evolutionary approaches to these future areas of research. 14. What are the benefits to these areas of using an evolutionary perspective? What Do You Think? Will evolutionary theory help our understanding of all areas of psychology in the future? What do you think are the main reasons that could prevent this? CHAPTER 6 GENES, ENVIRONMENT AND EVOLUTION 160 The History of Evolutionary Approaches to Psychology LEARNING OBJECTIVE 1 Understand the historical and scientific discoveries that have shaped how evolutionary theory is applied to human behaviour.
No longer available |Learn more- (Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- College Publishing House(Publisher)
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 and individual level psychological adaptations 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. 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. Consciousness Consciousness is likely an evolved adaptation since it meets George Williams' criteria of species universality, complexity, and functionality, and it is a trait that apparently increases fitness. In his paper Evolution of consciousness, John Eccles argues that special anatomical and physical adaptations of the mammalian cerebral cortex gave rise to consciousness.
eBook - PDFEvolutionary Thought in Psychology
A Brief History
- Henry Plotkin(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
And we certainly need cross-cultural studies. We need to know, for example, whether the personality differences arising from birth order that Sulloway reports are present also in hunter-gatherer cultures. The studies described here, whilst among the most prominent, are merely representative of a general viewpoint that has grown to significant proportions. Evolutionary psychology rules no area of a science of mind out of understanding within an evolutionary framework. In effect it has appropriated all of modern psycho-logical science and added to it an evolutionary perspective. This is not a negative judgment, merely a reflection of the ambition of the discipline. The specific criticisms attaching to each of the studies outlined above are a part of the normal hurly-burly of science. There are, however, more general criticisms that have been leveled at attempts to understand psychology from an evolutionary perspective, criticisms which often seem to be driven by nonscientific considerations, and it is to these that we briefly turn. Which Side is Bringing Science into Disrepute? It would be incorrect to judge the furor over the application of sociobiology to humans as a mere curtain-raiser to what was to come with the appearance of evolutionary psychology in the 1980s. But what is clear is that the principal (in the sense of most visible, and most visible because they are or were signifi-cant contributors to their own areas of science) critics of the 148 EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT IN PSYCHOLOGY earlier era maintained their same stances with regard to evolu-tionary psychology on their more substantive points. The trivial nonsense and unpleasant ad hominem attacks, from both sides, can be sampled in mid-1990s copies of the New York Review of Books , though these tasteless displays of professional spite are best forgotten. In general the criticisms came as two types, the substantive and the fatuous.
- Philip J. Corr, Gerald Matthews(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
PART IV BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES: EVOLUTION, GENETICS AND NEUROSCIENCE OF PERSONALITY 16 Evolutionary Personality Psychology DAVID M. G. LEWIS, LAITH AL-SHAWAF AND DAVID M. BUSS INTRODUCTION Historically, psychology has been characterized by a dichotomy between branches that focus on human nature and those that focus on individual differences. Initial “grand theories” of personality, such as those advanced by Freud, Maslow and others, were interested in universal psychological features. For Freud, the emphasis was on sexual and aggressive “instincts” and a universal sequence of psychosexual stages. For Maslow, the focus was on a hierarchy of universal psychological needs, from immedi- ate physiological demands to “self-actualization.” Histor- ically, personality psychology has been the primary branch that has aspired to such broad conceptualizations of human nature. Over the past few decades, personality psychology has retreated from this grand goal. Most empirical research on personality deals with individual differences, not with human nature, let alone the links between the two (e.g., McCrae & John, 1992). By focusing largely on individual differences (Larsen & Buss, 2018), modern personality psychology has implicitly ceded the study of human nature to other branches such as social psychology. Per- sonality psychology’s restricted focus on individual differ- ences has led some to identify this as a defining feature of the field: “that branch of psychology which is concerned with. . . the ways in which individuals differ from one another” (Wiggins, 1979, p. 375). Grand theories of human nature that once characterized the field are now regarded primarily as historical relics. The central argument of this chapter is that personality psychology should reclaim its grand goals, and that an evolutionary framework will be central to achieving these goals.
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
