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Evolutionary psychology is a scientific discipline that approaches human behavior through a lens that incorporates the effects of evolution. It combines the science of psychology with the study of biology.
Evolutionary psychologists seek to explain people’s emotions, thoughts, and responses based on Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Through Natural Selection, similarly to how evolutionary biologists explain an organism’s physical features.
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain useful mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, i.e., as the functional products of natural selection.
The purpose of this approach is to bring the functional way of thinking about biological mechanisms such as the immune system into the field of psychology, and to approach psychological mechanisms in a similar way.
In short, evolutionary psychology is focused on how evolution has shaped the mind and behavior.
Though applicable to any organism with a nervous system, most research in evolutionary psychology focuses on humans.
Evolutionary Psychology proposes that the human brain comprises many functional mechanisms, called psychological adaptations or evolved cognitive mechanisms 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 so on.
Evolutionary psychology has roots in cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology.
It also draws on behavioral ecology, artificial intelligence, genetics, ethology, anthropology, archaeology, biology, and zoology.
Evolutionary psychology 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.
Many evolutionary psychologists, however, argue that the mind consists of both domain-specific and domain-general mechanisms, especially evolutionary developmental psychologists.
Most sociobiological research is now conducted in the field of behavioral ecology.
Evolutionary Psychology Approach
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Proponents of this psychological approach posit that as our ancestors confronted problems and developed ways of solving them, some had certain innate instincts and intelligence that gave them the ability to figure out and apply the most successful solutions.
In doing so, they gained advantages, such as better health or a longer lifespan, allowing them to produce more offspring through the process of natural selection. According to evolutionary psychology, our ancestors who had psychological advantages passed down these behavioral traits to future generations, resulting in a population of offspring that then had these adaptive behaviors.
Psychological abilities, such as reading others’ intentions, making friends, and gaining trust, are known to help a person throughout life. Evolutionary psychologists believe that these skills are rooted in deeply complex neural circuits in the brain and that they are inherited.
These innate behavioral tendencies are often tempered by input from our culture, family, and individual factors, but the principle of evolutionary psychology is that the underlying neural mechanisms are shaped by evolutionary forces.
5 Principles of Evolutionary Psychology
Evolutionary psychology is a well-defined discipline of study and research, with fundamental foundations that have developed and continue to guide new studies. There are five basic principles of evolutionary psychology:
- Your brain is a physical system that instructs you to behave in a manner appropriate and adaptive to your environment.
- The neural circuitry of your brain helps you solve problems in an appropriate manner. The specific ways that the neural circuitry is constructed were directed by natural selection, over the course of generations.
- Most of your psychological behaviors are determined subconsciously by your neural circuitry, and you are largely of these subconscious processes. You rely on conscious decision-making to guide you in your daily life, and you may be aware of the conclusions resulting from the complex neural circuitry while remaining unaware of the underlying process involved.
- Neural circuits in the brain are specialized to solve different adaptive problems. For example, the circuitry involved in vision is not the same as for vomiting.
- Your mind is based on adaptive changes that originated in the Pleistocene era.
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):
- 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.
- The cognitive programs of the human brain are adaptations. They exist because they produced behavior in our ancestors that enabled them to survive and reproduce.
- The cognitive programs of the human brain may not be adaptive now; they were adaptive in ancestral environments.
- Natural selection ensures that the brain is composed of many different special purpose programs and not a domain general architecture.
- Describing the evolved computational architecture of our brains “allows a systematic understanding of cultural and social phenomena”
Evolutionary Psychology and Behavioral Skills
At its most basic level, evolutionary psychology explains skills that we consider to be relatively simple and common to most humans, such as language.
At some point in history, early man developed language skills beyond grunting and pointing. The ability to communicate complex thoughts was beneficial for human survival, and, as a result, language acquisition abilities evolved and advanced through the process of natural selection. Evolutionary psychologists may argue that advanced language skills contribute to a person’s safety, survival, and reproduction.
Nevertheless, the language or languages you learn depends on the language spoken in your home and neighborhood, demonstrating the importance of cultural input.
How Evolution Explains Phobias
Phobias are fears that are irrational and that go beyond protecting you from danger. For example, research studies show you are more likely to fear snakes and spiders than other predatory animals, such as lions and tigers.
From an evolutionary point of view, this may be due to the fact that snakes and spiders are more difficult to spot. It made sense to our ancestors to look carefully for poisonous creatures before sticking their hands into woodpiles or overgrown brush.
Over time, that ability to recognize and quickly react to these small, quiet creatures became a trait that many humans inherited as an instinctive human reaction. In fact, a young child who has never heard of the dangers of snakes or spiders may have a dramatic reaction at seeing one, possibly rooted in evolutionary psychology.
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