Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology (abbreviated ev-psych or EP) is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain 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 an adaptationist 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. Closely related fields are Human behavioral ecology and Sociobiology.

Overview

Just as human evolutionary physiology has 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." Evolutionary Psychology 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." EP proposes that the human brain comprises many functional mechanisms,[1] 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. EP has roots in cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology (See also sociobiology). It also draws on behavioral ecology, artificial intelligence, genetics, ethology, anthropology, archaeology, biology, and zoology. EP is closely linked to sociobiology,[2] 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.[3]

The term evolutionary psychology was probably coined by Michael Ghiselin in his 1973 article in Science. The field of research derives from the final chapter of E.O. Wilson's work on sociobiology, "Sociobiology: A New Synthesis." 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 (and critics have asserted that the term "evolutionary psychology" is nothing more than a name change to distance researchers from the unpopular field of sociobiology). Evolutionary psychology has been applied to the study of many fields, including economics, aggression, law, psychiatry, politics, literature, and sex.

Evolutionary psychology uses Nikolaas Tinbergen's four categories of questions and explanations of animal behavior. Two categories are at the species level; two, at the individual level. 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 this functionality.

The individual-level categories are

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

Evolutionary psychology emphasizes the functionality category.

Principles of evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology is a hybrid discipline that draws insights from modern evolutionary theory, biology, cognitive psychology, anthropology, economics, computer science, and paleoarchaeology. The discipline rests on a foundation of core premises, according to a prominent researcher in the field, David Buss:

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.

In addition, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, two of the founders of the field, offer these five foundational principles of evolutionary psychology:

1. The brain is a physical system. It functions as a computer. Its circuits are designed to generate behavior that is appropriate to your environmental circumstances.
2. Our neural circuits were designed by natural selection to solve problems that our ancestors faced during our species' evolutionary history.
3. Consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg; most of what goes on in your mind is hidden from you. As a result, your conscious experience can mislead you into thinking that our circuitry is simpler than it really is. Most problems that you experience as easy to solve are very difficult to solve -- they require very complicated neural circuitry
4. Different neural circuits are specialized for solving different adaptive problems.
5. Our modern skulls house a stone age mind. [4]

General evolutionary theory

Main article: Evolution

William Paley, drawing upon the work of many others, argued that organisms are machines designed to function in particular environments. Paley believed that this evidence of 'design' was evidence for a designer—God. Charles Darwin opposed Paley's argument that organisms are designed for particular environments by invoking the both Adam Smith and Malthus. He asserted that the supposed good design of organisms to environments was an accidental result of natural selection. The theory of natural selection, formulated in depth by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, provided a scientific account of the origins of functional design in the natural world.

Evolutionary psychology is rooted in evolutionary theory. It is sometimes seen not simply as a sub-discipline of psychology but as a way in which evolutionary theory can be used as a meta-theoretical framework within which to examine the entire field of psychology, however many evolutionary biologists challenge the basic evolutionary premises of evolutionary psychology.

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

• Heritability - 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 this genetic variation),
• Differential survival and reproduction - tehse 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. Darwin's great claim was that this "natural selection" was creative - it could lead to new traits and even new species, it was centred on individual survival, and it could explain the broad scale patterns of evolution.

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 basically a combination of natural selection, sexual selection, and kin selection. It refers to the sum of an individual's own reproductive success plus 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:

cost < relatedness × benefit

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 on many levels of functional organization, (including the "group" level), and not just the "gene" level.

Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology borrows particular themes from evolutionary biology (outlined above), and adds these fundamental assumptions:

• Existence of discrete psychological traits: Psychological aspects of humans (e.g. "spatial ability", "anxiety levels") are discreet traits,
• Heritability of psychological traits: These traits have a genetic basis, they are inherited, and at some point in the evolutionary past have been components of genetic variation,
• Adaptationism: These traits have been exposed to selection, and currently represent adaptations to some previous environment.

Middle-level evolutionary theories

Middle-level evolutionary theories are theories that encompass broad domains of functioning. They are compatible with general evolutionary theory but not derived from it. Furthermore, they are applicable across species. During the early 1970s, three very important middle-level evolutionary theories were contributed by Robert Trivers:

• The theory of reciprocal altruism explains how altruism can arise amongst non-kin, as long as there is a sufficient probability of the recipient of the altruistic act reciprocating at a later date. The possibility was also noted by Trivers, later coined 'indirect altruism' by Richard Alexander, that reciprocation could be provided by third parties, raising the issue of social reputation. These theories have been criticized as example of "Just So stories" within evolutionary biology.

• Parental investment theory refers to the different levels of investment in offspring on the part of each sex. For example, females in any species are defined as the sex with the larger gamete. In humans, females release approximately one large, metabolically costly egg per month, as opposed to the millions of relatively tiny and metabolically cheap sperm that are produced each day by males. Females are fertile for only a few days each month, while males are fertile every day of the month. Females also have a nine month gestation period, followed by a few years of lactation. Males' obligatory biological investment can be achieved with one copulatory act. Consequently, human females have a significantly higher obligatory investment in offspring than males do. (In some species, the opposite is true.) Because of this difference in parental investment between males and females, the sexes face different adaptive problems in the domains of mating and parenting. Therefore, it is predicted that the higher investing sex will be more selective in mating, and the lesser investing sex will be more competitive for access to mates. Thus, differences in behaviour between sexes is predicted to exist not because of maleness or femaleness per se, but because of different levels of parental investment.

• 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. Recall that 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. 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.

Evolved psychological mechanisms

Main article: Evolved psychological mechanisms

Evolutionary psychology is based on the belief 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.

Evolutionary psychologists subdivide the concept of psychological mechanisms into two general categories:

• Domain-specific mechanisms, which deal with recurrent adaptive problems over the course of human evolutionary history
• Domain-general mechanisms, which deal with evolutionary novelty

The environment of evolutionary adaptedness

The term environment of evolutionary adaptedness, often abbreviated EEA, 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. In the environment in which ducks evolved, for example, attachment of ducklings to their mother had great survival value for the ducklings. 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 therefore properly function to form an attachment to the mother. In novel environments, however, the mechanism can malfunction by forming an attachment to a dog or human instead.

The genus Homo, which includes modern humans, 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. To properly understand human mating psychology, for example, it is essential to recognize that in the EEA (as now) women got pregnant and men did not.

If humans are mostly adapted to Pleistocene environments, then some psychological mechanisms should occasionally exhibit “mismatches” to the modern environment, similar to the attachment patterns of ducks. One example is the fact that although about 30,000 people are killed with guns in the US annually (CDC pdf), 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 (Öhman and Mineka 2001). A potential explanation is that spiders and snakes were a threat to human ancestors throughout the Pleistocene, whereas guns, rabbits and flowers were not. There is thus a mismatch between our evolved fear learning psychology and the modern environment.

In sum, evolutionary psychology argues that to properly understand the functions of the brain one must understand the properties of the environment in which the brain evolved.

Controversies

The application of evolutionary theory to animal behavior is uncontroversial. However, adaptationist approaches to human psychology has at times been contentious, with critics questioning the scientific nature of evolutionary psychology of evolutionary psychology, and with more minor debates within the field itself. The history of debate from the evolutionary psychology perspective is covered in detail by Segerstråle (2000) and Alcock (2001). The debates regarding the validity of evolutionary psychology have been regarded as occasionally quite vicious, with a strong ad hominem component. Some have suggested that the controversies would constitute a quiet debate over subtleties if the participants were less prone to caricaturing their opponents.

A detailed discussion about the controversies can be viewed at the Evolutionary psychology controversy page.

References

• Barkow, Jerome; Cosmides, Leda; Tooby, John (1992) The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and The Generation of Culture ISBN 0-19-510107-3.

• Buss, David, ed. (2005) The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. ISBN 0-471-26403-2.

• Buss, D.M. (2004). Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

• Ghiselin, Michael T. (1973). Darwin and Evolutionary Psychology. Science 179: 964-968.

• Wilson, E.O. (1975) Sociobiology: The New Synthesis

• Wright, Robert (1995). The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. ISBN 0-679-76399-6.

• Alcock, John (2001). The Triumph of Sociobiology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Barkow, Jerome (Ed.). (2006) Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Clarke, Murray (2004). Reconstructing Reason and Representation. Cambridge: MIT Press.

• Pinker, S. (1997). How the Mind Works. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

• Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking.

• Richards, Janet Radcliffe (2000). Human Nature After Darwin: A Philosophical Introduction. London: Routledge.

• Segerstrale, Ullica (2000). Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Miller, Geoffrey (2000). The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature. New York: Random House Inc.

See also

• Sociobiology
• Behavioural genetics
• Dual inheritance theory
• Environmental psychology
• Evolutionary developmental psychology
• Evolutionary educational psychology
• Evolutionary physiology
• Philosophy of psychology
• Human behavioral ecology
• List of evolutionary psychologists
• List of publications on evolution and human behavior
• Gene-centered view of evolution

External links

Introductory Reading

• Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer
• The Evolutionary Psychology FAQ
• Human Behavior and Evolution Society(HBES) Introduction to the Field
• On Scaffolds and Sweet Potatoes Introduction to Evolutionary Perspectives (registration required)
• Books listed at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society.

Introductory peer-reviewed papers and chapters

• 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. Full text

• 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

Evolutionary Psychology Academic Societies

• Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES)- International society of researchers who use modern evolutionary theory.
• The International Society for Human Ethology (ISHE)- aims to promote ethological perspectives in the scientific study of humans worldwide.
• The Association for Politics and the Life Sciences (APLS)- an international and interdisciplinary association of scholars, scientists, and policymakers concerned with evolutionary, genetic, and ecological knowledge and its bearing on political behavior, public policy and ethics.
• The New England Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology Journals

• Evolution and Human Behavior - Academic journal of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society.
• Evolutionary Psychology - An open access peer-reviewed journal.
• Human Nature: An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective
• The Journal of Social, Evolutionary & Cultural Psychology - An open access peer-reviewed journal.
• Society for Evolutionary Analysis in Law
• Behavioral and Brain Sciences
• Biological Theory: Integrating Development, Evolution and Cognition - A journal devoted to theoretical advances in the fields of biology and cognition, with an emphasis on the conceptual integration afforded by evolutionary and developmental approaches. Free access to Winter 2006 issues

Evolutionary Psychology Research Groups and Centers

• The UCSB Center for Evolutionary Psychology UCSB researchers in evolutionary psychology and allied disciplines.
• Individual Differences and Evolutionary Psychology Program at the Psychology Department of the University of Texas at Austin
• Evolution and Human Adaptation Program at the University of Michigan
• Human Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
• UCLA Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture
• IGERT Program in Evolutionary Modeling, University of Washington & Washington State University
• Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University
• Evolutionary Anthropology Research Group, Durham University
• Human Evolutionary Ecology Group at the University College London
• Ethology and Evolutionary Psychology Program at the University of Arizona, Tuscon
• The Evolutionary Psychology Research Group at Simon Fraser University
• Evolution and Human Behavior Group at Brunel University
• Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max Planck Institute
• Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science
• Biological Anthropology Program, UCLA
• Evolutionary Psychology Lab, Florida Atlantic University
• Research Group on Evolution and Higher Cognition, Rutgers Unversity
• Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution, at University College London
• Evolution and the Social Mind at UCSB.
• Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for Urban Ethology, Germany
• Behavioural Ecology at Simon Fraser University
• Behavioral Biology Laboratory University of Chicago
• Nebraska Behavioral Biology Group
• [http://www.sfu.ca/~janicki/ Evolutionary Psychology Research Group, Simon Fraser University, Canada
• Evolutionary Psychology and Behavior Ecology Group at the University of Liverpool
• Evolutionary World Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Washington
• International Paleopsychology Project
• New England Complex Systems Institute
• Group on Evolutionary Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

A small sampling of papers and research concerning Evolutionary Psychology

• Evolutionary Psychology of Religion by Steven Pinker
• Controversies Surrounding Evolutionary Psychology by Edward H. Hagen.
• The role of function in evolutionary psychology by Jennifer Mundale and William Bechtel
• [5] David Buss reprints.
• [6] Leda Cosmides and John Tooby reprints.
• [7] Martin Daly, Margo Wilson et al. reprints.
• [8] David C. Geary reprints.
• Ed Hagen reprints.

Evolutionary Psychology challenged and critisized

• Paul Ehrlich challenges Evolutionary Psychology

• Smith, E.A., Borgerhoff Mulder, M. & Hill, K. (2000). Evolutionary analyses of human behaviour: a commentary on Daly & Wilson. Animal Behaviour, 60, F21-F26. Full text

• Stephen Jay Gould, "Darwinian Fundamentalism", New York Review of Books June 12th 1997

Other Links

• Video An interview of Steven Pinker by Robert Wright (journalist), offering a good discussion of Evolutionary Psychology.
• Video An interview of Edward O. Wilson by Robert Wright (journalist), which helps put Evolutionary Psychology in its scientific, academic, political and philosophical context.

• Forum A new forum on evolutionary psychology at The Psychology Wiki