Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

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Psychology is often a lot of very separate pieces of experimental work about how a mind does this or that. I think evolutionary psychology is necessarily the theory that’s got to underpin all that, because for the bits of our mind with lots of specialized mechanisms to have evolved, they must have given our ancestors some benefit. Evolutionary psychology is very good at proposing hypotheses for how humans might behave on a large basis and testing those; and also for explaining some of the narrower questions, why there are particular quirks in our brain, or why we behave in a particular way. Over three volumes, the Handbook provides a rich overview of the most important theoretical and empirical work in the field. Chapters cover a broad range of topics, including theoretical foundations, the integration of evolutionary psychology with other life, social, and behavioral sciences, as well as with the arts and the humanities, and the increasing power of evolutionary psychology to inform applied fields, including medicine, psychiatry, law, and education. Each of the volumes has been carefully curated to have a strong thematic focus, covering: More than two decades after the book has been written there is still no evidence for the “killer sperm” the author lucidly describes and presents as a scientific fact. If you’re frightened of controversy, evolutionary psychology is not the subject you should be studying” Cooperation and mutual assistance can flourish even in a basically selfish world (…) we can see how even nice guys can finish first.

Evolutionary Psychology - Wiley Online Library The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology - Wiley Online Library

You can see this interview between Peterson and Buss to realize how little thought they’ve given to the possibility that there might be something true about the patriarchy. To begin with, remember that genetic mutations don’t develop with a predisposition towards helping the individual survive or reproduce, but they first evolve out of total randomness. But it deserves a spot here because it peddles “what I wish it should be” with science, which is the ultimate sin for a scientist. The Third Chimpanzee I think you can probably connect the different things. As I was hinting with Buss, we might have evolved language for one really important reason—communicating or telling people where the prey were—then once you’ve got these language skills, they come in useful for sweet talk and other more specialised things. The same name “evolution” can be misleading as it seems to imply that it’s a continuous march towards “better and stronger”.

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The Mating Mind doesn’t just explain or summarize though, but it also introduces a thought-provoking new theory. After all, why would men give more in tips and charity when a woman is watching? Why would that be, if not because kindness and altruism (also) evolved thanks to sexual selection? Fathers who didn’t care about paternity were out-reproduced by those who did, and they left fewer and fewer copies of their genes. If you want to understand evolutionary psychology, like truly understanding evolutionary psychology, then you need to read this one right after you read Buss’ textbook.

Evolutionary Psychology Books of 2023 - FindThisBest Best Evolutionary Psychology Books of 2023 - FindThisBest

Well, “ The Origins of Virtue” is dedicated to providing an answer: because, sometimes but not always, cooperation is still good for selfish genes -and for the humans who carry them-. Language is a really good example. We’ll look at one of Steven Pinker’s books in a minute, but language is something that we’ve evolved very specialist brain mechanisms for: why? Is it to communicate about facts? Or is it gossip about other people a social thing? Or in some way is it to impress mates? Do more eloquent people get better mates? And, if my wife fell in love with me because I’m more eloquent, why on earth would she have done that? Might it be some combination? Maybe we started evolving language to communicate information—to show that we’re trustworthy—and then once you’ve got that in place, it became useful for gossiping, and then we become more specialized for gossiping. This book examines human psychology and behavior through the lens of modern evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary Psychology: The Ne w Science of the Mind, 5/e provides students with the conceptual tools of evolutionary psychology, and applies them to empirical research on the human mind. 2. Is evolutionary psychology legit?The “coordinate group effect” -the famous “patriarchy”- happens because most men who cluster around the average share the same fears and needs. Most average men, struggling to secure a high-power, successful woman, rationally seek to limit the power of the women in their lives -not necessarily of all women and certainly not in a concerted effort with other men-.

The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology | Wiley Online Books

Secondly, if you’re seeking a connection between why these different books excite me so much is when we predict how other people are going to behave and whether to punish them, we infer minds in them. I can’t see inside your brain, so I’ve got to create a mind for you based on your expressions, the things you say to me… that changes how I judge you and how I treat you. Yet, if you’re doing the same thing about me, it’s probably quite useful for me to be having a bit of my brain that’s working out what you’re inferring about me from my actions. That’s one way of explaining the evidence that Wegner pulled together, that we have this illusion of conscious will and we infer the causes of our action, not because we actually need to do this to work out why we did what we did— our brain probably doesn’t need that information and it could collect it from its own modules—but because in the way I’m building a model of your mind, reading your mind, it’s helpful for me to have some sense of what you’re thinking about me.For example, the standard model of courtship communication was that animals (and humans) communicate about themselves to facilitate mating. However, Dawkins and Krebs realized that communication is sometimes cooperative and sometimes about the deception of one’s true fitness and intentions ( Dawkins & Krebs, 1978). That’s why Daly and Wilson’s book is so great. We can run the stats and say, oh, actually, it looks remarkably similar in many ways. But here’s the question: if we’ve only got the illusion of conscious will, why do we have that illusion? I’m not sure Wegner’s answers are really coherent. It’s still a big question. Albeit probably Pinker knows better and would deny the above claims, “How the Mind Works” gives readers the idea that organisms are perfect, machine-like adaptations and that evolution works better than any humanly engineered system. Evolutionary psychologists did at times go too far in denying the role of culture. In my opinion, that was to be expected. Some trailblazing and popular evolutionary psychologists like Buss, Moody, and Pinker took the gargantuan task of undoing decades of cultural determinism, a paradigm that Pinker correctly labeled “the denial of human nature”. And the tendency of correcting a previous (mistaken) paradigm is almost always to over-correct. Sure, it came out in 1994 and since then much new research has been performed and led to further advances in the field.