research paper topics evolutionary psychology

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Research topics at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology

Reprints are provided for scholarly purposes only.  Permission to reprint any article must be sought from the holder of the copyright. 

Scientists at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology specialize in finding new ways that an evolutionary perspective can inform research on the design of the human mind.  In so doing, we have been researching many new topics, as well as trying out new approaches to old topics.  Below we provide a partial list with links to some relevant research papers. 

Principles of evolutionary psychology

A roadmap to principles of evolutionary psychology

Reasoning and rationality

Social exchange reasoning (reciprocation, reciprocal altruism, cooperation)

Judgment under uncertainty  (intuitive statistics; optimal foraging; ecological rationality; heuristics & biases)

Adaptationism, normative theories, and rationality

Emotions—What are they?

Emotion  (emotions as super-ordinate programs solving the problem of mechanism coordination in a multimodular mind)

Emotions—Specific ones

Anger . See also:

Formidability, Strength, and Entitlement . Adaptations for detecting physical strength

Vision and Visual Attention

Visual attention –a system specialized for monitoring animals

Vision : Faces—the case for domain-specific object recognition

Evolutionary Biology

Evolutionary Biology : Intragenomic Conflict , Pathogens & the Evolution of Sexual Recombination; Banker’s Paradox (etc)

Literature and the Arts

Art, Fiction, and Aesthetics

Close social relationships

Kin detection  (as regulator of incest avoidance; altruism)

Friendship and Deep Engagement Relationships

Courtship, Mate Choice, and Human Sexuality

Varieties of Cooperation

Two-person cooperation / reciprocation / reciprocal altruism

Evolution of generosity

Cooperating in Groups:

Coalitional psychology and alliance detection

Adaptations for collective action

Memory  (memory systems; specializations; personality trait database; self-knowledge, episodic memories; amnesia; memory loss )

Spatial cognition

Spatial adaptations for foraging (female advantage in location memory for plants; content effects; optimal foraging)

Tools: Cognitive foundations

Adaptations for tool use  (the artifact concept and inferences about function; design stance; problem solving, dissociation between inferences about function and naming)

Personality

Personality (personality differences and universal human nature; adaptationist framework for personality science; cognitive systems specialized for encoding, storing, and retrieving knowledge of personality traits)

The links below are not live yet—hopefully I will be able to update them soon! LC

Darwinian medicine, Darwinian psychiatry

Development

Economics, Business, and Organizational Behavior

Hazard Management (precautionary reasoning)

Intelligence (improvisational intelligence; dedicated intelligence; decoupled reasoning (counterfactual reasoning, suppositional reasoning, metarepresentation)

Theoretical foundations of psychology and the behavioral sciences

Environments of Evolutionary Adaptedness  (EEA; Why the past explains the present)

Evolutionary psychology: A primer

A brief introduction to the field in  [ English ], [ Español ] and [ Português ].

Recent News

Recent Awards

Methods and Applications in: Evolutionary Psychology

Loading... Original Research 03 August 2023 When biology takes over: TV formats like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette confirm evolutionary theories of partner selection Alexandra Lenhard ,  1 more  and  Wolfgang Lenhard 6,349 views 0 citations

Original Research 23 June 2023 Validating the dual evolutionary foundations of political values in a US sample Guy A. Lavender Forsyth ,  1 more  and  Quentin Douglas Atkinson 1,860 views 1 citations

Loading... Hypothesis and Theory 11 April 2023 Functional contextual implementation of an evolutionary, entropy-based, and embodied free energy framework: Utilizing Lagrangian mechanics and evolutionary game theory’s truth vs. fitness test of the veridicality of phenomenological experience Darren J. Edwards 7,607 views 0 citations

Original Research 24 January 2023 Evolutionary psychological perspectives on filicide are applicable in modern-day Norway Vibeke Ottesen 2,132 views 1 citations

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Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology is one of many biologically informed approaches to the study of human behavior. Along with cognitive psychologists, evolutionary psychologists propose that much, if not all, of our behavior can be explained by appeal to internal psychological mechanisms. What distinguishes evolutionary psychologists from many cognitive psychologists is the proposal that the relevant internal mechanisms are adaptations—products of natural selection—that helped our ancestors get around the world, survive and reproduce. To understand the central claims of evolutionary psychology we require an understanding of some key concepts in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. Philosophers are interested in evolutionary psychology for a number of reasons. For philosophers of science —mostly philosophers of biology—evolutionary psychology provides a critical target. Although here is a broad consensus among philosophers of biology that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise, this does not entail that these philosophers completely reject the relevance of evolutionary theory to human psychology. For philosophers of mind and cognitive science evolutionary psychology has been a source of empirical hypotheses about cognitive architecture and specific components of that architecture. However, some philosophers of mind are also critical of evolutionary psychology but their criticisms are not as all-encompassing as those presented by philosophers of biology. Evolutionary psychology is also invoked by philosophers interested in moral psychology both as a source of empirical hypotheses and as a critical target.

In what follows I briefly explain evolutionary psychology’s relations to other work on the biology of human behavior and the cognitive sciences. Next I introduce the research tradition’s key theoretical concepts. In the following section I take up discussions about evolutionary psychology in the philosophy of mind, specifically focusing on the debate about the massive modularity thesis. I go on to review some of the criticisms of evolutionary psychology presented by philosophers of biology and assess some responses to those criticisms. I then go on to introduce some of evolutionary psychology’s contributions to moral psychology and human nature and, finally, briefly discuss the reach and impact of evolutionary psychology.

1. Evolutionary Psychology: One research tradition among the various biological approaches to explaining human behavior

2. evolutionary psychology’s theory and methods, 3. the massive modularity hypothesis, 4. philosophy of biology vs. evolutionary psychology, 5. moral psychology and evolutionary psychology, 6. human nature, 7. applications of evolutionary psychology and prospects for further debate, other internet resources, related entries.

This entry focuses on the specific approach to evolutionary psychology that is conventionally named by the capitalized phrase “Evolutionary Psychology”. This naming convention is David Buller’s (2000; 2005) idea. He introduces the convention to distinguish a particular research tradition (Laudan 1977) from other approaches to the biology of human behavior. [ 1 ] This research tradition is the focus here but lower case is used throughout as no other types of evolutionary psychology are discussed. Evolutionary psychology rests upon specific theoretical principles (presented in section 2 below) not all of which are shared by others working in the biology of human behavior (Laland & Brown 2002; Brown et al. 2011). For example, human behavioral ecologists present and defend explanatory hypotheses about human behavior that do not appeal to psychological mechanisms (e.g., Hawkes 1990; Hrdy 1999). Behavioral ecologists also believe that much of human behavior can be explained by appealing to evolution while rejecting the idea held by evolutionary psychologists that one period of our evolutionary history is the source of all our important psychological adaptations (Irons 1998). Developmental psychobiologists take yet another approach: they are anti-adaptationist. (Michel & Moore 1995; but see Bateson & Martin 1999; Bjorklund & Hernandez Blasi 2005 for examples of developmentalist work in an adaptationist vein.) These theorists believe that much of our behavior can be explained without appealing to a suite of specific psychological adaptations for that behavior. Instead they emphasize the role of development in the production of various human behavioral traits. From here on, “evolutionary psychology” refers to a specific research tradition among the many biological approaches to the study of human behavior.

Paul Griffiths argues that evolutionary psychology owes theoretical debt to both sociobiology and ethology (Griffiths 2006; Griffiths 2008). Evolutionary psychologists acknowledge their debt to sociobiology but point out that they add a dimension to sociobiology: psychological mechanisms. Human behaviors are not a direct product of natural selection but rather the product of psychological mechanisms that were selected for. The relation to ethology here is that in the nineteen fifties, ethologists proposed instincts or drives that underlie our behavior; [ 2 ] evolutionary psychology’s psychological mechanisms are the correlates to instincts or drives. Evolutionary psychology is also related to cognitive psychology and the cognitive sciences. The psychological mechanisms they invoke are computational, sometimes referred to as “Darwinian algorithms” or as “computational modules”. This overt cognitivism sets evolutionary psychology apart from much work in the neurosciences and from behavioral neuroendocrinology. In these fields internal mechanisms are proposed in explanations of human behavior but they are not construed in computational terms. David Marr’s (e.g., 1983) well known three part distinction is often invoked to distinguish the levels at which researchers focus their attention in the cognitive and neurosciences. Many neuroscientists and behavioral neuroendocrinologists work at the implementation level while cognitive psychologists work at the level of the computations that are implemented at the neurobiological level (see Griffiths 2006).

Evolutionary psychologists sometimes present their approach as potentially unifying, or providing a foundation for, all other work that purports to explain human behavior (e.g., Tooby & Cosmides 1992). This claim has been met with strong skepticism by many social scientists who see a role for a myriad of types of explanation of human behavior, some of which are not reducible to biological explanations of any sort. This discussion hangs on issues of reductionism in the social sciences. (Little 1991 has a nice introduction to these issues.) There are also reasons to believe that evolutionary psychology neither unifies nor provides foundations for closely neighboring fields such as behavioral ecology or developmental psychobiology. (See the related discussion in Downes 2005.) In other work, evolutionary psychologists present their approach as being consistent with or compatible with neighboring approaches such as behavioral ecology and developmental psychobiology. (See Buss’s introduction to Buss 2005.) The truth of this claim hangs on a careful examination of the theoretical tenets of evolutionary psychology and its neighboring fields. We now turn to evolutionary psychology’s theoretical tenets and revisit this discussion in section 4 below.

Influential evolutionary psychologists, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, provide the following list of the field’s theoretical tenets (Tooby & 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” (16–18).

Tenet 1 emphasizes the cognitivism that evolutionary psychologists are committed to. 1 in combination with 2 directs our attention as researchers not to parts of the brain but to the programs run by the brain. It is these programs—psychological mechanisms—that are products of natural selection. While they are products of natural selection, and hence adaptations, these programs need not be currently adaptive. Our behavior can be produced by underlying psychological mechanisms that arose to respond to particular circumstances in our ancestors’ environments. Tenet 5 presents what is often called the “massive modularity thesis” (see, e.g., Samuels 1998; Samuels 2000). There is a lot packed into this tenet and we will examine this thesis in some detail below in section 3. In brief, evolutionary psychologists maintain that there is an analogy between organs and psychological mechanisms or modules. Organs perform specific functions well and are products of natural selection. There are no general purpose organs, hearts pump blood and livers detoxify the body. The same goes for psychological mechanisms; they arise as responses to specific contingencies in the environment and are selected for to the extent that they contribute to the survival and reproduction of the organism. Just as there are no general purpose organs, there are no general purpose psychological mechanisms. Finally, tenet 6 introduces the reductionist or foundational vision of evolutionary psychology, discussed above.

There are numerous examples of the kinds of mechanisms that are hypothesized to underlie our behavior on the basis of research guided by these theoretical tenets: the cheater-detection module; the mind-reading module; the waist/hip ratio detection module; the snake fear module and so on. A closer look at the waist/hip ratio detection module illustrates the above theoretical tenets at work. Devendra Singh (Singh 1993; Singh & Luis 1995) presents the waist/hip ratio detection module as one of the suite of modules that underlies mate selection in humans. This one is a specifically male psychological mechanism. Men detect variations in waist/hip ratio in women. Men’s preferences are for women with waist/hip ratios closer to .7. Singh claims that the detection and preference suite are adaptations for choosing fertile mates. So our mate selection behavior is explained in part by the underlying psychological mechanism for waist/hip ratio preference that was selected for in earlier human environments.

What is important to note about the research guided by these theoretical tenets above is that all behavior is best explained in terms of underlying psychological mechanisms that are adaptations for solving a particular set of problems that humans faced at one time in our ancestry. Also, evolutionary psychologists stress that the mechanisms they focus on are universally distributed in humans and are not susceptible to much, if any, variation. They maintain that the mechanisms are a product of adaptation but are no longer under selection (Tooby & Cosmides 2005, 39–40). Clark Barrett’s (2015) accessible and wide ranging introduction to evolutionary psychology sustains this emphasis on evolved mechanisms as the main focus of evolutionary psychology research. Barrett also expands the scope of evolutionary psychology and notes the addition of research methods developed since Cosmides and Tooby first set out the parameters for research in the field. Some of Barrett’s proposals are discussed in sections 6 and 7 below. Todd Shackleford and Viviana Weekes-Shackleford (2017) have just completed a huge compendium of work in the evolutionarily based psychological sciences. In this volume a vast array of different research methods are presented and defended and there are a number of entries comparing the merits of alternative approaches to evolutionary psychology.

The methods for testing hypotheses in evolutionary psychology come mostly from psychology. For example, in Singh’s work, male subjects are presented with drawings of women with varying waist hip ratios and ask to give their preference rankings. In Buss’s work supporting several hypothesized mate selection mechanisms, he performed similar experiments on subjects, asking for their responses to various questions about features of desired mates (Buss 1990). Buss, Singh and other evolutionary psychologists emphasize the cross cultural validity of their results, claiming consistency in responses across a wide variety of human populations. (But see Yu & Shepard 1998; Gray et al. 2003 for alternate conflicting results to Singh’s.) For the most part standard psychological experimental methods are used to test hypotheses in evolutionary psychology. This has raised questions about the extent to which the evolutionary component of evolutionary psychologists’ hypotheses is being tested (see, e.g., Shapiro & Epstein 1998; Lloyd 1999; Lloyd & Feldman 2002). A response profile may be prevalent in a wide variety of subject populations but this says nothing about whether or not the response profile is a psychological mechanism that arose from a particular selective regimen.

Claims that the mind has a modular architecture, and even massively modular architecture, are widespread in cognitive science (see, e.g., Hirshfield & Gelman 1994). The massive modularity thesis is first and foremost a thesis about cognitive architecture. As defended by evolutionary psychologists, the thesis is also about the source of our cognitive architecture: the massively modular architecture is the result of natural selection acting to produce each of the many modules (see, e.g., Barrett & Kurzban 2006; Barrett 2012). Our cognitive architecture is composed of computational devices, that are innate and are adaptations (Samuels 1998; Samuels et al. 1999a; Samuels et al. 1999b; Samuels 2000). This massively modular architecture accounts for all of our sophisticated behavior. Our successful navigation of the world results from the action of one or more of our many modules.

Jerry Fodor was the first to mount a sustained philosophical defense of modularity as a theory of cognitive architecture (Fodor 1983). His modularity thesis is distinct from the massive modularity thesis in a number of important ways. Fodor argued that our “input systems” are modular—for example, components of our visual system, our speech detection system and so on—these parts of our mind are dedicated information processors, whose internal make-up is inaccessible to other related processors. The modular detection systems feed output to a central system, which is a kind of inference engine. The central system, on Fodor’s view is not modular. Fodor presents a large number of arguments against the possibility of modular central systems. For example, he argues that central systems, to the extent that they engage in something like scientific confirmation, are “Quinean” in that “the degree of confirmation assigned to any given hypothesis is sensitive to properties of the entire belief system” (Fodor 1983, 107). Fodor draws a bleak conclusion about the status of cognitive science from his examination of the character of central systems: cognitive science is impossible. So on Fodor’s view, the mind is partly modular and the part of the mind that is modular provides some subject matter for cognitive science.

A distinct thesis from Fodor’s, the massive modularity thesis, gets a sustained philosophical defense from Peter Carruthers (see especially Carruthers 2006). Carruthers is well aware that Fodor (see e.g. Fodor 2000) does not believe that central systems can be modular but he presents arguments from evolutionary psychologists and others that support the modularity thesis for the whole mind. Perhaps one of the reasons that there is so much philosophical interest in evolutionary psychology is that discussions about the status of the massive modularity thesis are highly theoretical. [ 3 ] Both evolutionary psychologists and philosophers present and consider arguments for and against the thesis rather than simply waiting until the empirical results come in. Richard Samuels (1998) speculates that argument rather than empirical data is relied on, because the various competing modularity theses about central systems are hard to pull apart empirically. Carruthers exemplifies this approach as he relies heavily on arguments for massive modularity often at the expense of specific empirical results that tell in favor of the thesis.

There are many arguments for the massive modularity thesis. Some are based upon considerations about how evolution must have acted; some are based on considerations about the nature of computation and some are versions of the poverty of the stimulus argument first presented by Chomsky in support of the existence of an innate universal grammar. (See Cowie 1999 for a nice presentation of the structure of poverty of the stimulus arguments.) Myriad versions of each of these arguments appear in the literature and many arguments for massive modularity mix and match components of each of the main strands of argumentation. Here we review a version of each type of argument.

Carruthers presents a clear outline of the first type of argument “the biological argument for massive modularity”: “(1) Biological systems are designed systems, constructed incrementally. (2) Such systems, when complex, need to have massively modular organization. (3) The human mind is a biological system and is complex. (4) So the human mind will be massively modularly in its organization” (Carruthers 2006, 25). An example of this argument is to appeal to the functional decomposition of organisms into organs “designed” for specific tasks, e.g. hearts, livers, kidneys. Each of these organs arises as a result of natural selection and the organs, acting together, contribute to the fitness of the organism. The functional decomposition is driven by the response to specific environmental stimuli. Rather than natural selection acting to produce general purpose organs, each specific environmental challenge is dealt with by a separate mechanism. All versions of this argument are arguments from analogy, relying on the key transitional premise that minds are a kind of biological system upon which natural selection acts.

The second type of argument makes no appeal to biological considerations whatsoever (although many evolutionary psychologists give these arguments a biological twist). Call this the computational argument, which unfolds as follows: minds are computational problem solving devices; there are specific types of solutions to specific types of problems; and so for minds to be (successful) general problem solving devices, they must consist of collections of specific problem solving devices, i.e. many computational modules. This type of argument is structurally similar to the biological argument (as Carruthers points out). The key idea is that there is no sense to the idea of a general problem solver and that no headway can be made in cognitive science without breaking down problems into their component parts.

The third type of argument involves a generalization of Chomsky’s poverty of the stimulus argument for universal grammar. Many evolutionary psychologists (see, e.g., Tooby & Cosmides 1992) appeal to the idea that there is neither enough time, nor enough available information, for any given human to learn from scratch to successfully solve all of the problems that we face in the world. This first consideration supports the conclusion that the underlying mechanisms we use to solve the relevant problems are innate (for evolutionary psychologists “innate” is usually interchangeable with “product of natural selection” [ 4 ] ). If we invoke this argument across the whole range of problem sets that humans face and solve, we arrive at a huge set of innate mechanisms that subserve our problem solving abilities, which is another way of saying that we have a massively modular mind.

There are numerous responses to the many versions of each of these types of arguments and many take on the massive modularity thesis head on without considering a specific argument for it. I will defer consideration of responses to the first argument type until section 4 below, which focuses on issues of the nature of evolution and natural selection – topics in philosophy of biology.

The second type of argument is one side of a perennial debate in the philosophy of cognitive science. Fodor (2000, 68) takes this argument to rest on the unwarranted assumption that there is no domain-independent criterion of cognitive success, which he thinks requires an argument that evolutionary psychologists do not provide. Samuels (see esp. Samuels 1998) responds to evolutionary psychologists that arguments of this type do not sufficiently discriminate between a conclusion about domain specific processing mechanisms and domain specific knowledge or information. Samuels articulates what he calls the “library model of cognition” in which there is domain specific information or knowledge but domain general processing. The library model of cognition is not massively modular in the relevant sense but type two arguments support it. According to Samuels, evolutionary psychologists need something more than this type of argument to warrant their specific kind of conclusion about massive modularity. Buller (2005) introduces further worries for this type of argument by tackling the assumption that there can be no such thing as a domain general problem solving mechanism. Buller worries that in their attempt to support this claim, evolutionary psychologists fail to adequately characterize a domain general problem solver. For example, they fail to distinguish between a domain general problem solver and a domain specific problem solver that is over generalized. He offers the example of social learning as a domain general mechanism that would produce domain specific solutions to problems. He uses a nice biological analogy to drive this point home: the immune system is a domain general system in that it allows the body to respond to a wide variety of pathogens. While it is true that the immune system produces domain specific responses to pathogens in the form of specific antibodies, the antibodies are produced by one domain general system. These and many other respondents conclude that type two arguments do not adequately support the massive modularity thesis.

Fodor (2000) and Kim Sterelny (2003) provide different responses to type three arguments. Fodor’s response is that poverty of the stimulus type arguments support conclusions about innateness but not modularity and so these arguments can not be used to support the massive modularity thesis. He argues that the domain specificity and encapsulation of a mechanism and its innateness pull apart quite clearly, allowing for “perfectly general learning mechanisms” that are innate and “fully encapsulated mechanisms” that are single stimulus specific and everything in between. Sterelny responds to the generalizing move in type three arguments. He takes language to be the exception rather than the rule in the sense that while the postulation of an innate, domain specific module may be warranted to account for our language abilities, much of our other problem solving behavior can be accounted for without postulating such modules (Sterelny 2003, 200). [ 5 ] Sterelny’s counter requires invoking alternate explanations for our behavioral repertoire. For example, he accounts for folk psychology and folk biology by appealing to environmental factors, some of which are constructed by our forebears, that allow us to perform sophisticated cognitive tasks. If we can account for our success at various complex problem solving tasks, without appealing to modules, then the massive modularity thesis is undercut. Sterelny sharpens his response to massive modularity by adding more detail to his accounts of how many of our uniquely human traits may have evolved (see, e.g., Sterelny 2012). Sterelny introduces his “evolved apprentice” model to account for the evolution of many human traits that many assume require explanation in terms of massive modularity, for example, forming moral judgments. Cecilia Heyes adopts a similar approach to Sterenly in attacking massive modularity. Rather than presenting arguments against massive modularity, she offers alternative explanations of the development of folk psychology that do not rely on the massive modularity thesis (Heyes 2014a; Heyes 2014b).

Heyes and Sterelny not only reject massive modularity but also have little expectation that any modularity theses will bear fruit but there are many critics of the massive modularity thesis who allow for the possibility of some modularity of mind. Such critics of evolutionary psychology do not reject the possibility of any kind of modularity, they just reject the massive modularity thesis. There is considerable debate about the status of the massive modularity thesis and some of this debate centers around the characterization of modules. If modules have all the characteristics that Fodor (1983) first presented, then he may be right that central systems are not modular. Both Carruthers (2006) and Barrett and Kurzban (2006) present modified characterizations of modules, which they argue better serve the massive modularity thesis. There is no agreement on a workable characterization of modules for evolutionary psychology but there is agreement on the somewhat benign thesis that “the language of modularity affords useful conceptual groundwork in which productive debates surrounding cognitive systems can be framed” (Barrett and Kurzban 2006, 644).

Many philosophers have criticized evolutionary psychology. Most of these critics are philosophers of biology who argue that the research tradition suffers from an overly zealous form of adaptationism (Griffiths 1996; Richardson 1996; Grantham & Nichols 1999; Lloyd 1999; Richardson 2007), an untenable reductionism (Dupré 1999, 2001), a “bad empirical bet” about modules (Sterelny 1995; Sterelny & Griffiths 1999; Sterelny 2003), a fast and loose conception of fitness (Lloyd 1999; Lloyd & Feldman 2002); and most of the above and much more (Buller 2005). (See also Downes 2005.) [ 6 ] All of these philosophers share one version or other of Buller’s view: “I am unabashedly enthusiastic about efforts to apply evolutionary theory to human psychology” (2005, x). [ 7 ] But if philosophers of biology are not skeptical of the fundamental idea behind the project, as Buller’s quote indicates, what are they so critical of? What is at stake are differing views about how to best characterize evolution and hence how to generate evolutionary hypotheses and how to test evolutionary hypotheses. For evolutionary psychologists, the most interesting contribution that evolutionary theory makes is the explanation of apparent design in nature or the explanation of the production of complex organs by appeal to natural selection. Evolutionary psychologists generate evolutionary hypotheses by first finding apparent design in the world, say in our psychological make up, and then presenting a selective scenario that would have led to the production of the trait that exhibits apparent design. The hypotheses evolutionary psychologists generate, given that they are usually hypotheses about our psychological capacities, are tested by standard psychological methods. Philosophers of biology challenge evolutionary psychologists on both of these points. I introduce a few examples of criticisms in each of these two areas below and then look at some responses to philosophical criticisms of evolutionary psychology.

Adaptation is the one biological concept that is central to most debates over evolutionary psychology. Every theoretical work on evolutionary psychology presents the research tradition as being primarily focused on psychological adaptations and goes on to give an account of what adaptations are (see, e.g., Tooby & Cosmides 1992; Buss et al. 1998; Simpson & Campbell 2005; Tooby & Cosmides 2005). Much of the philosophical criticism of evolutionary psychology addresses its approach to adaptation or its form of adaptationism. Let us quickly review the basics from the perspective of philosophy of biology.

Here is how Elliott Sober defines an adaptation: “characteristic c is an adaptation for doing task t in a population if and only if members of the population now have c because, ancestrally, there was selection for having c and c conferred a fitness advantage because it performed task t ” (Sober 2000, 85). Sober makes a few further clarifications of the notion of adaptation that are helpful. First, we should distinguish between a trait that is adaptive and a trait that is an adaptation . Any number of traits can be adaptive without those traits being adaptations. A sea turtle’s forelegs are useful for digging in the sand to bury eggs but they are not adaptations for nest building (Sober 2000, 85). Also, traits can be adaptations without being currently adaptive for a given organism. Vestigial organs such as our appendix or vestigial eyes in cave dwelling organisms are examples of such traits (Sterelny and Griffiths 1999). Second, we should distinguish between ontogenic and phylogenetic adaptations (Sober 2000, 86). The adaptations of interest to evolutionary biologists are phylogenetic adaptations, which arise over evolutionary time and impact the fitness of the organism. Ontogenetic adaptations, including any behavior we learn in our lifetimes, can be adaptive to the extent that an organism benefits from them but they are not adaptations in the relevant sense. Finally, adaptation and function are closely related terms. On one of the prominent views of function—the etiological view of functions—adaptation and function are more or less coextensive; to ask for the function of an organ is to ask why it is present. On the Cummins view of functions adaptation and function are not coextensive, as on the Cummins view, to ask what an organ’s function is, is to ask what it does (Sober 2000, 86–87). (See also Sterelny & Griffiths 1999, 220–224.)

Evolutionary psychologists focus on psychological adaptations. One consistent theme in the theoretical work of evolutionary psychologists is that “adaptations, the functional components of organisms, are identified […] by […] evidence of their design: the exquisite match between organism structure and environment” (Hagen 2005, 148). The way in which psychological adaptations are identified is by evolutionary functional analysis, which is a type of reverse engineering. [ 8 ] “Reverse engineering is a process of figuring out the design of a mechanism on the basis of an analysis of the tasks it performs. Evolutionary functional analysis is a form of reverse engineering in that it attempts to reconstruct the mind’s design from an analysis of the problems the mind must have evolved to solve” (Buller 2005, 92). Many philosophers object to evolutionary psychologists’ over attribution of adaptations on the basis of apparent design. Here some are following Gould and Lewontin’s (1979) lead when they worry that accounting for apparent design in nature in terms of adaptation amounts to telling just-so stories but they could just as easily cite Williams (1966), who also cautioned against the over attribution of adaptation as an explanation for biological traits. While it is true that evolutionary functional analysis can lend itself to just-so story telling, this is not the most interesting problem that confronts evolutionary psychology, several other interesting problems have been identified. For example, Elisabeth Lloyd (1999) derives a criticism of evolutionary psychology from Gould and Lewontin’s criticism of sociobiology, emphasizing the point that evolutionary psychologists’ adaptationism leads them to ignore alternative evolutionary processes. Buller takes yet another approach to evolutionary psychologists’ adaptationism. What lies behind Buller’s criticisms of evolutionary psychologists’ adaptationism is a different view than theirs about what is important in evolutionary thinking (Buller 2005). Buller thinks that evolutionary psychologists overemphasize design and that they make the contentious assumption that with respect to the traits they are interested in, evolution is finished, rather than ongoing.

Sober’s definition of adaptation is not constrained only to apply to organs or other traits that exhibit apparent design. Rather, clutch size (in birds), schooling (in fish), leaf arrangement, foraging strategies and all manner of traits can be adaptations (Seger & Stubblefield 1996). Buller argues the more general point that phenotypic plasticity of various types can be an adaptation, because it arises in various organisms as a result of natural selection. [ 9 ] The difference here between Buller (and other philosophers and biologists) and evolutionary psychologists is a difference in the explanatory scope that they attribute to natural selection. For evolutionary psychologists, the hallmark of natural selection is a well functioning organ and for their critics, the results of natural selection can be seen in an enormous range of traits ranging from the specific apparent design features of organs to the most general response profiles in behavior. According to Buller, this latter approach opens up the range of possible evolutionary hypotheses that can account for human behavior. Rather than being restricted to accounting for our behavior in terms of the joint output of many specific modular mechanisms, we can account for our behavior by appealing to selection acting upon many different levels of traits. This difference in emphasis on what is important in evolutionary theory also is at the center of debates between evolutionary psychologists and behavioral ecologists, who argue that behaviors, rather than just the mechanisms that underlie them, can be adaptations (Downes 2001). Further, this difference in emphasis is what leads to the wide range of alternate evolutionary hypotheses that Sterelny (Sterelny 2003) presents to explain human behavior. Given that philosophers like Buller and Sterelny are adaptationists, they are not critical of evolutionary psychologists’ adaptationism. Rather, they are critical of the narrow explanatory scope of the type of adaptationism evolutionary psychologists adopt (see also Downes 2015).

Buller’s criticism that evolutionary psychologists assume that evolution is finished for the traits that they are interested in connects worries about the understanding of evolutionary theory with worries about the testing of evolutionary hypotheses. Here is Tooby & Cosmides’ clear statement of the assumption that Buller is worried about: “evolutionary psychologists primarily explore the design of the universal, evolved psychological and neural architecture that we all share by virtue of being human. Evolutionary psychologists are usually less interested in human characteristics that vary due to genetic differences because they recognize that these differences are unlikely to be evolved adaptations central to human nature. Of the three kinds of characteristics that are found in the design of organisms – adaptations, by-products, and noise – traits caused by genetic variants are predominantly evolutionary noise, with little adaptive significance, while complex adaptations are likely to be universal in the species” (Tooby & Cosmides 2005, 39). This line of thinking also captures evolutionary psychologists’ view of human nature: human nature is our collection of universally shared adaptations. (See Downes & Machery 2013 for more discussion of this and other, contrasting biologically based accounts of human nature.) The problem here is that it is false to assume that adaptations cannot be subject to variation. The underlying problem is the constrained notion of adaptation. Adaptations are traits that arise as a result of natural selection and not traits that exhibit design and are universal in a given species (Seger & Stubblefield 1996). As a result, it is quite consistent to argue, as Buller does, that many human traits may still be under selection and yet reasonably be called adaptations. Finally, philosophers of biology have articulated several different types of adaptationism (see, e.g., Godfrey-Smith 2001; Lewens 2009; Sober 2000). While some of these types of adaptationism can be reasonably seen placing constraints on how evolutionary research is carried out, Godfrey-Smith’s “explanatory adaptationism” is different in character (Godfrey-Smith 2001). Explanatory adaptationism is the view that apparent design is one of the big questions we face in explaining our natural world and natural selection is the big (and only supportable) answer to such a big question. Explanatory adaptationism is often adopted by those who want to distinguish evolutionary thinking from creationism or intelligent design and is the way evolutionary psychologists often couch their work to distinguish it from their colleagues in the broader social sciences. While explanatory adaptationism does serve to distinguish evolutionary psychology from such markedly different approaches to accounting for design in nature, it does not place many clear constraints on the way in which evolutionary explanations should be sought (Downes 2015). So far these are disagreements that are located in differing views about the nature and scope of evolutionary explanation but they have ramifications in the discussion about hypothesis testing.

If the traits of interest to evolutionary psychologists are universally distributed, then we should expect to find them in all humans. This partly explains the stock that evolutionary psychologists put in cross cultural psychological tests (see, e.g., Buss 1990). If we find evidence for the trait in a huge cross section of humans, then this supports our view that the trait is an adaptation —on the assumption that adaptations are organ-like traits that are products of natural selection but not subject to variation. But given the wider scope view of evolution defended by philosophers of biology, this method of testing seems wrong-headed as a test of an evolutionary hypothesis. Certainly such testing can result in the very interesting results that certain preference profiles are widely shared cross culturally but the test does not speak to the evolutionary hypothesis that the preferences are adaptations (Lloyd 1999; Buller 2005).

Another worry that critics have about evolutionary psychologists’ approach to hypothesis testing is that they give insufficient weight to serious alternate hypotheses that fit the relevant data. Buller dedicates several chapters of his book on evolutionary psychology to an examination of hypothesis testing and many of his criticisms center around the introduction of alternate hypotheses that do as good a job, or a better job, of accounting for the data. For example, he argues that the hypothesis of assortative mating by status does a better job of accounting for some of evolutionary psychologists’ mate selection data than their preferred high status preference hypothesis. This debate hangs on how the empirical tests come out. The previous debate is more closely connected to theoretical issues in philosophy of biology.

I said in my introduction that there is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise and some philosophers of biology continue to remind us of this sentiment (see, e.g., Dupré 2012). However the relevant consensus is not complete, there are some proponents of evolutionary psychology among philosophers of science. One way of defending evolutionary psychology is to rebut criticism. Edouard Machery and Clark Barrett (2007) do just that in their sharply critical review of Buller’s book. Another way to defend evolutionary psychology is to practice it (at least to the extent that philosophers can, i.e. theoretically). This is what Robert Arp (2006) does in a recent article. I briefly review both responses below.

Machery and Barrett (2007) argue that Buller has no clear critical target as there is nothing to the idea that there is a research tradition of evolutionary psychology that is distinct from the broader enterprise of the evolutionary understanding of human behavior. They argue that theoretical tenets and methods are shared by many in the biology of human behavior. For example, many are adaptationists. But as we saw above, evolutionary psychologists and behavioral ecologists can both call themselves adaptationist but their particular approach to adaptationism dictates the range of hypotheses that they can generate, the range of traits that can be counted as adaptations and impacts upon the way in which hypotheses are tested. Research traditions can share some broad theoretical commitments and yet still be distinct research traditions. Secondly, they argue against Buller’s view that past environments are not stable enough to produce the kind of psychological adaptations that evolutionary psychologists propose. They take this to be a claim that no adaptations can arise from an evolutionary arms race situation, for example, between predators and prey. But again, I think that the disagreement here is over what counts as an adaptation. Buller does not deny that adaptations— traits that arise as a product of natural selection—arise from all kinds of unstable environments. What he denies is that organ-like, special purpose adaptations are the likely result of such evolutionary scenarios.

Arp (2006) defends a hypothesis about a kind of module—scenario visualization—a psychological adaptation that arose in our hominid history in response to the demands of tool making, such as constructing spear throwing devices for hunting. Arp presents his hypothesis in the context of demonstrating the superiority of his approach to evolutionary psychology, which he calls “Narrow Evolutionary Psychology,” over “Broad Evolutionary Psychology,” with respect to accounting for archaeological evidence and facts about our psychology. While Arp’s hypothesis is innovative and interesting, he by no means defends it conclusively. This is partly because his strategy is to compare his hypothesis with archaeologist Steven Mithen’s (1996) non-modular “cognitive fluidity” hypothesis that is proposed to account for the same data. The problem here is that Mithen’s view is only one of the many alternative, evolutionary explanations of human tool making behavior. While Arp’s modular thesis may be superior to Mithen’s, he has not compared it to Sterelny’s (2003; 2012) account of tool making and tool use or to Boyd and Richerson’s (see, e.g., 2005) account and hence not ruled these accounts out as plausible alternatives. As neither of these alternative accounts rely on the postulation of psychological modules, evolutionary psychology is not adequately defended.

Many philosophers who work on moral psychology understand that their topic is empirically constrained. Philosophers take two main approaches to using empirical results in moral psychology. One is to use empirical results (and empirically based theories from psychology) to criticize philosophical accounts of moral psychology (see, e.g., Doris 2002) and one is to generate (and, in the experimental philosophy tradition, to test) hypotheses about our moral psychology (see, e.g., Nichols 2004). For those who think that some (or all) of our moral psychology is based in innate capacities, evolutionary psychology is a good source of empirical results and empirically based theory. One account of the make-up of our moral psychology follows from the massive modularity account of the architecture of the mind. Our moral judgments are a product of domain specific psychological modules that are adaptations and arose in our hominid forebears in response to contingencies in our (mostly) social environments. This position is currently widely discussed by philosophers working in moral psychology. An example of this discussion follows.

Cosmides (see, e.g., 1989) defends a hypothesis in evolutionary psychology that we have a cheater-detection module. [ 10 ] This module is hypothesized to underlie important components of our behavior in moral domains and fits with the massively modular view of our psychology in general. Cosmides (along with Tooby) argues that cheating is a violation of a particular kind of conditional rule that goes along with a social contract. Social exchange is a system of cooperation for mutual benefit and cheaters violate the social contract that governs social exchange (Cosmides & Tooby 2005). The selection pressure for a dedicated cheater-detection module is the presence of cheaters in the social world. The cheater-detection module is an adaptation that arose in response to cheaters. The cheater-detection hypothesis has been the focus of a huge amount of critical discussion. Cosmides and Tooby (2008) defend the idea that cheat detection is modular over hypotheses that more general rules of inference are involved in the kind of reasoning behind cheater detection against critics Ron Mallon (2008) and Fodor (2008). Some criticism of the cheater-detection hypothesis involves rehashing criticisms of massive modularity in general and some treats the hypothesis as a contribution to moral psychology and invokes different considerations. For example, Mallon (2008) worries about the coherence of abandoning a domain general conception of ought in our conception of our moral psychology. This discussion is also ongoing. (See, e.g., Sterelny 2012 for a selection of alternate, non-modular explanations of aspects of our moral psychology.)

Evolutionary psychology is well suited to providing an account of human nature. As noted above (Section 1), evolutionary psychology owes a theoretical debt to human sociobiology. E.O. Wilson took human sociobiology to provide us with an account of human nature (1978). For Wilson human nature is the collection of universal human behavioral repertoires and these behavioral repertoires are best understood as being products of natural selection. Evolutionary psychologists argue that human nature is not a collection of universal human behavioral repertoires but rather the universal psychological mechanisms underlying these behaviors (Tooby & Cosmides 1990). These universal psychological mechanisms are products of natural selection, as we saw in Section 2. above. Tooby and Cosmides put this claim as follows: “the concept of human nature is based on a species-typical collection of complex psychological adaptations” (1990, 17). So, for evolutionary psychologists, “human nature consists of a set of psychological adaptations that are presumed to be universal among, and unique to, human beings” (Buller 2005, 423). Machery’s (2008) nomological account of human nature is based on, and very similar to, the evolutionary psychologists’ account. Machery says that “human nature is the set of properties that humans tend to possess as a result of the evolution of their species” (2008, 323). While Machery’s account appeals to traits that have evolved and are universal (common to all humans), it is not limited to psychological mechanisms. For example, he thinks of bi-pedalism as part of the human nature trait cluster. Machery’s view captures elements of both the sociobiological view and the evolutionary psychology view of human nature. He shares the idea that a trait must be a product of evolution, rather than say social learning or enculturation, with both these accounts.

Some critical challenges to evolutionary psychological accounts of human nature (and the nomological account) derive from similar concerns as those driving criticism of evolutionary psychology in general. In Section 4. we see that discussions of evolutionary psychology are founded on disagreements about how adaptation should be characterized and disagreements about the role of variation in evolution. Some critics charge evolutionary psychologists of assuming that adaptation cannot sustain variation. Buller’s (2005) criticism of evolutionary psychologists’ account of human nature also invokes variation (Here he follows Hull 1986 and Sober 1980). The idea here is that humans, like all organisms, exhibit a great deal of variation, including morphological, physiological, behavioral and cultural variation (see also Amundson 2000). Buller argues that the evolutionary psychology account of human nature either ignores or fails to account for all of this variation (see also Lewens 2015 and Ramsey 2013). Any account that restricts human nature to just those traits we have in common and which also are not subject to change, cannot account for human variation.

Buller’s (2005) criticism of evolutionary psychologists’ notion of human nature (or the nomological account) is based on the idea that we vary across many dimensions and an account of human nature based on fixed, universal traits cannot account for any of this variation. The idea that to account for human nature, we must account for human variation is presented and defended by evolutionary psychologists (see, e.g., Barrett 2015), anthropologists (see e.g. Cashdan 2013) and philosophers (see, e.g., Griffiths 2011 and Ramsey 2013). Barrett agrees with Buller (and others) that evolutionary psychologists have failed to account for human variation in their account of human nature. Rather than seeing this challenge as a knock down of the whole enterprise of accounting for human nature, Barrett sees this as a challenge for an account of human nature. Barrett says “Whatever human nature is, it’s a biological phenomenon with all that implies” (2015, 321). So, human nature is “a big wobbly cloud that is different from the population clouds of squirrels and palm trees. To understand human minds and behaviors, we need to understand the properties of our own cloud, as messy as it might be” (2015, 232). Rather than human nature being a collection of shared fixed universal psychological traits, for Barrett, human nature is the whole human trait cluster, including all of the variation in all of our traits. This approach to human nature is sharply different than the approach defended by either Wilson, Tooby and Cosmides or Machery but is also subject to a number of criticisms. The main thrust of the criticisms is that such a view cannot be explanatory and is instead merely a big list of all the properties that humans have had and can have (see, e.g., Buller 2005; Downes 2016; Futuyma 1998; and Lewens 2015). Discussion over the tension between evolutionary psychologists’ views and the manifest variation in human traits continues in many areas that evolutionary psychologists focus on. Another example of this broader discussion is included in Section 7. below.

Evolutionary psychology is invoked in a wide range of areas of study, for example, in English Literature, Consumer Studies and Law. (See Buss 2005 for discussion of Literature and Law and Saad 2007 for a detailed presentation of evolutionary psychology and consumer studies.) In these contexts, evolutionary psychology is usually introduced as providing resources for practitioners, which will advance the relevant field. Philosophers have responded critically to some of these applications of evolutionary psychology. One concern is that often evolutionary psychology is conflated with evolution or evolutionary theory in general (see, e.g., Leiter & Weisberg 2009 and Downes 2013). The discussion reviewed in Section 4. above, reveals a good deal of disagreement between evolutionary theorists and evolutionary psychologists over the proper account of evolution. Evolutionary psychologists offer to enhance fields such as Law and Consumer Studies by introducing evolutionary ideas but what is in fact offered is a selection of theoretical resources championed only by proponents of a specific approach to evolutionary psychology. For example, Gad Saad (2007) argues that Consumer Studies will profit greatly from the addition of adaptive thinking, i.e. looking for apparent design, and by introducing hypothetical evolved modules to account for consumer behavior. However, this does not appear to be an effort to bring evolutionary theory, broadly construed, to bear on Consumer Studies (Downes 2013). Promoting disputed theoretical ideas is certainly problematic but bigger worries arise when thoroughly discredited work is promoted in the effort to apply evolutionary psychology. Owen Jones (see, e.g., 2000; 2005), who believes that Law will benefit from the application of evolutionary psychology, champions Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer’s (2000) widely discredited view that rape is an adaptation as exemplary evolutionary work (see de Waal 2000, Coyne & Berry 2000, Coyne 2003, Lloyd 2003, Vickers & Kitcher 2003, and Kimmel 2003). Further, Jones (2000) claims that the critics of Thornhill and Palmer’s work have no credibility as scientists and evolutionary theorists. This claim indicates Jones’ serious disconnect with the wider scientific (and philosophical) literature on evolutionary theory (Leiter & Weisberg 2009).

Aside from monitoring the expansion efforts of evolutionary psychology, there are a number of other areas in which further philosophical work on evolutionary psychology will be fruitful. The examples given above of work in moral psychology barely scratch the surface of this rapidly developing field. There are huge numbers of empirical hypotheses that bear on our conception of our moral psychology that demand philosophical scrutiny. (Hauser 2006 includes a survey of a wide range of such hypotheses.) Also, work on moral psychology and the emotions can be drawn together via work on evolutionary psychology and related fields. Griffiths (1997) directed philosophical attention to evolution and the emotions and this kind of work has been brought into closer contact with moral psychology by Nichols (see, e.g., his 2004). In philosophy of mind there is still much that can be done on the topic of modules. Work on integrating biological and psychological concepts of modules is one avenue that is being pursued and could be fruitfully pursued further (see, e.g., Barrett & Kurzban 2006; Carruthers 2006) and work on connecting biology to psychology via genetics is another promising area (see e.g. Marcus 2004). In philosophy of science, I have no doubt that many more criticisms of evolutionary psychology will be presented but a relatively underdeveloped area of philosophical research is on the relations among all of the various, theoretically different, approaches to the biology of human behavior (but see Downes 2005; Griffiths 2008; and Brown et al. 2011). Evolutionary psychologists present their work alongside the work of behavioral ecologists, developmental psychobiologists and others (see, e.g., Buss 2005; Buss 2007) but do not adequately confront the theoretical difficulties that face an integrated enterprise in the biology of human behavior. Finally, while debate rages between biologically influenced and other social scientists, most philosophers have not paid much attention to potential integration of evolutionary psychology into the broader interdisciplinary study of society and culture (but see Mallon and Stich 2000 on evolutionary psychology and constructivism). In contrast, feminist philosophers have paid attention to this integration issue as well as offered feminist critiques of evolutionary psychology (see Fehr 2012, Meynell 2012 and the entry on feminist philosophy of biology ). Gillian Barker (2015), shares some evolutionarily based criticisms of evolutionary psychology with philosophers of biology discussed in Section 4. but also assesses evolutionary psychology in relation to other social sciences. She also adds a novel critical appraisal of evolutionary psychology. She argues that, as currently practiced, evolutionary psychology is not a fruitful guide to social policy regarding human flourishing.

The publication of Shackleford and Weekes-Shackleford’s (2017) huge collection of articles on issues arising in the evolutionary psychological sciences provides a great resource for philosophers looking for material to fuel critical discussion. Many evolutionary psychologists are aware of the difficulty variation presents for some established approaches in their field. This issue confronts those interested in developing accounts of human nature, as noted above (Section 6.), but also arises when confronting many of the varying human behaviors evolutionary psychologists seek to account for. For example, human aggression varies along many dimensions and confronting and accounting for each of these types of variation is a challenge for many evolutionary psychologists (Downes & Tabery 2017). Given that evolutionary psychology is just one, among many, evolutionarily based approaches to explaining human behavior, the most promising critical discussions of evolutionary psychology should continue to come from work that compares hypotheses drawn from evolutionary psychology with hypotheses drawn from other evolutionary approaches and other approaches in the social sciences more broadly construed. Stephan Linquist (2016) takes this approach to evolutionary psychologists’ work on cultures of honor. Linquist introduces hypotheses from cultural evolution that appear to offer more explanatory bite than those from evolutionary psychology. The broader issue of tension between evolutionary psychology and cultural evolution here will doubtless continue to attract the critical attention of philosophers. (See Lewens 2015 for a nice clear introduction to and discussion of alternative approaches to cultural evolution.)

Interest has re-emerged in the relation(s) between evolutionary psychology and the other social sciences (Buss 2020). Some time ago, John Dupré (1994) diagnosed evolutionary psychology as an exercise in scientific imperialism. Dupré later characterized scientific imperialism as “the tendency for a successful scientific idea to be applied far beyond its original home, and generally with decreasing success the more its application is expanded” (2001, 16). Dupré uses “scientific imperialism” in a pejorative sense and marshals this as a criticism of evolutionary psychology. (See Downes 2017 for further discussion of scientific imperialism and evolutionary psychology.) Buss (2020) does not cite Dupré but might well be responding to him when he proposes that evolutionary psychology constitutes a scientific revolution in Kuhn’s sense. Buss argues that evolutionary psychology is superior to other approaches in psychology, because it has supplanted them (or at least should supplant them) just as Einstein’s physics supplanted Newton’s or just as cognitive psychology supplanted behaviorism. (David Reich [2018] casts ancient DNA research in similarly Kuhnian terms and offers it up as superior to all previous approaches in archaeology.) Buss takes evolutionary psychology to be a meta-theoretical approach best fit for guiding all of psychology. This is one of the many ways in which his appeal to Kuhn is strained, as Buss is not looking back on the supplanting of one theoretical framework by another but rather arguing for the superiority of his approach to others available in psychology. A further, and quite specific way that Buss sees evolutionary psychology as superior to other approaches in psychology (and the social sciences in general, is that evolutionary psychology ignores (or should ignore) proximate explanations. For Buss, evolutionary psychology offers ultimate explanations and these are enough. However, many areas of biology, for example, physiology, trade in proximate explanations and are not likely to be cast aside because of this focus. This implies that there is still a place for proximate explanations in psychology. This brief discussion indicates that the relations between evolutionary psychology and the rest of psychology, and the social sciences, more broadly is a topic well worth pursuing by philosophers of science and Buss’ and Dupré’s accounts present interesting alternate starting points in this endeavor.

Finally, philosophers of science will doubtless continue to check the credentials of evolutionary ideas imported into other areas of philosophy. Philosophers of biology in particular, still voice suspicion if philosophers borrow their evolutionary ideas from evolutionary psychology rather than evolutionary biology. Philip Kitcher (2017) voices this concern with regards to Sharon Street’s (2006) appeals to evolution. Kitcher worries that Street does not rely on “what is known about human evolution” (2017, 187) to provide an account of how her traits of interest may have emerged. As noted above, Machery’s nomological notion of human nature (2008; 2017) is criticized on the grounds that he takes his idea of an evolved trait from evolutionary psychology as opposed to evolutionary biology. Barker (2015) also encourages philosophers, as well as social scientists, to draw from the huge range of theoretical resources evolutionary biologists have to offer, rather than just from those provided by evolutionary psychologists.

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• Buller, D., 2000, “ Evolutionary Psychology ” (a guided tour), in M. Nani and M. Marraffa (eds.), A Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind .

adaptationism | biology: philosophy of | cognitive science | culture: and cognitive science | emotion | feminist philosophy, interventions: philosophy of biology | -->function --> | game theory: evolutionary | innate/acquired distinction | innateness: and language | language of thought hypothesis | mind: modularity of | moral psychology: empirical approaches | prisoner’s dilemma

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Thanks to Austin Booth, David Buller, Marc Ereshefsky, Matt Haber, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols and the Stanford Encyclopedia referees for helpful comments on drafts of this entry.

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Evolutionary Psychology

Sociobiology

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

The human body evolved over eons, slowly calibrating to the African savanna on which 98 percent of humankind lived and died. So, too, did the human brain. Evolutionary psychology is the study of the ways in which the mind was shaped by pressures to survive and reproduce. Findings in this field often shed light on "ultimate" as opposed to "proximal" causes of behavior. Romantic jealousy and mate guarding are proximally intended to keep one's relationship intact. Ultimately, though, the behavior can be explained by the fact that for most of human history, losing a romantic partner jeopardized one's ability to reproduce and raise children.

• The Science of Evolutionary Psychology
• Concepts In Evolutionary Psychology
• Human Nature, Explained
• Why Evolutionary Psychology Is Controversial

Natural selection has a lot to do with human behavior. In fact, our behavior is naturally selected just as our physical traits are naturally selected. We are much taller and live longer than our ancestors. Through centuries of generations, evolution has helped us pass along adaptive behaviors that promote our reproduction.

Evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers proposed a number of theories on evolutionary psychology , including why we engage in reciprocal altruism , the nature of sex differences, and parent-offspring investment. Altruism among strangers, for example, can naturally develop because people cooperate with the expectation of receiving similar treatment from others.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors passed down behavioral traits that are, for the most part, advantageous to us. For example, we are mindful of danger in dark alleyways. This caution is innate and within our behavioral make-up. And our predetermined response to gravitate to that 800-calorie Cinnabon can wreak havoc, but our ancestors made us do it .

Juggling our ancestral tendencies with the demands of modern-day living can be a struggle. This phenomenon is known as evolutionary mismatch—when we find ourselves in an environment inconsistent with our ancestral conditioning.

A good example of such mismatch is the contemporary diet : Ten thousand years ago, people battled starvation. They had to pile on the necessary calories just to survive certain lean times; high-fat meats and high-sugar foods were a luxury. Today, however, fatty foods and processed sugars are readily available at low cost.

Many of the behaviors people exhibit have been tools for self-preservation: Homo sapiens jealously guard their romantic partners because competition for mates has always been harsh. Everyone cherishes their closest kin because it's in one's best interest to preserve one's genes . Humans also crave social interaction to encourage cooperation , further increasing the chances for survival. Many of these behaviors are innate: How people react and interact with one another is spelled out in DNA.

Fight or flight refers to the human body’s built-in response to a perceived threat: It prepares the body to either face danger or quickly run from it. During flight or flight , the brain releases stress hormones , pushing the body into high alert. The heart rate rises, muscles tense, and thoughts race. While the modern-day human does not face the same threats as our ancestors did, the fight-or-flight response system remains intact.

Any fearful situation can trigger it, whether it is physical danger or a stressful event, like running late for a meeting. In people with anxiety , the fight-or-flight response is more readily triggered, the brain sees certain situations as threatening, even when there's no actual present danger. In fact, there is a tendency for this response to move into overdrive in anxious individuals.

Kin selection is the theory that our calculations about genetic relatedness to others (conscious or unconscious ) are powerful drivers of behavior. Most people favor, and will make sacrifices for, immediate kin as opposed to distant relatives, and blood relatives over strangers. This ensures the survival of genes through the survival of the people who are closely related to us.  

In evolutionary parlance, reproductive success is called reproductive fitness, a measure of how well an organism or a person is adapted to their environment. Men committing foolish or heroic acts that increase status or attractiveness are acting in ways that increase the odds of reproduction, and attempting to maximize reproductive fitness.  Reproductive fitness  also measures how well an organism is adapted to its environment.

The differences in parental investment —the energy and resources invested in an offspring—lead the sex that invests more (females, in most species) to focus on mate quality and the sex that invests less (males) to seek quantity. In humans, we expect choosiness in females and aggression between males as they vie for females.

Our emotional complexity differentiates us from other members of the animal kingdom. Evolutionary psychology seeks to explain how our emotions and other aspects of being human served as advantages to our ancestors. Like other social primates, we experience emotions beyond primal fear and anger.

Through evolving as a group, we have developed empathy and altruism, which allow us to commiserate with each other’s circumstances and act in ways that are not self-serving. What is better for the group as a whole, is better for a person as an individual.

We have also developed emotions to help keep us in line —for example, shame motivates us to atone for past transgressions, while pride pushes us to remain in the high regard of our peers. And as our social structures developed, so did our value systems and what we define as “right” and “wrong.”

Trivers also suggested that complex strategies of cheating , detecting cheating, and the false accusation of cheating (itself a form of cheating) pushed the development of intelligence and helped increase the size of the human brain.

People reject evolutionary psychology for ideological reasons. With sexual behavior, for example, there is the notion that the field justifies people’s behaviors and actions. Our present-day traits and characteristics had survival value for our ancestors, and these traits survived because the genes they are linked to were selected and now remain part of our genetic makeup. Shouting evolution made me do it seems so convenient.

This refers to common but faulty logic wherein people assume that because something is "natural" it is therefore "good" or just. Violence and aggression are found in all human societies, but that does not make this acceptable behavior. No endorsement is implied in a discovery of what is natural. The general public commits the naturalistic fallacy in thinking that evolutionary psychologists endorse certain findings (such as violence or rape), when in fact evolutionary psychologists are simply outlining reasons that these behaviors may occur.

The moralistic fallacy is the false belief that the world operates as we wish it would, that what ought to be is in fact the truth, or that because we wish something were not true, it cannot be true. People sometimes reject evolutionary theorists' findings about human nature because they do not want to believe that said findings are true.

Both sides of the political aisle accuse evolutionary psychology of numerous ills. Among many arguments, for example, conservatives on the right fear that this field of study absolves people of responsibility , while liberals on the left fear that accepting inherited differences hinders the goal of social equality.

Feminists are not keen on the idea that women are inherently different from men. Such differences, they think, would force women back in time, losing ground in equal opportunity and equal pay, for example. They also feel that people can use evolutionary psychology to explain away misogyny, poverty, sexual misbehavior, among many areas.

More and more studies show that homosexuality is genetic. However, being gay doesn’t fit so neatly into the theory of natural selection. Why would nature select for homosexuality if reproductive success is a moot point? But there are valid reasons according to evolutionary biologists. For example, gay aunts and uncles can invest more time and resources in rearing the offspring of close relatives with whom they share part of their genetic makeup. Maybe homosexuality emerged because it benefits entire groups.

Living an affluent lifestyle may rule our activities. This sense of privilege takes priority over behaving like good environmental stewards.

Expressing a sense of mutual vulnerability with laughter usually follows a drop or a rise in status, but sometimes it’s done in anticipation of such a change. Why should that be?

Canine mothers can recognize the whines and whimpers of puppies from their own litter, and they trigger a strong caregiving response.

In psychology, the elephant IS the room: The dirty secret is that no psychologist has an explanation for what a motivation physically is.

It takes two to tango, entangle, and sustain-go. Mutual balanced limitations sustain marriages, arguments, wars, and governments.

Ireland has many similarities to Finland, except that the Irish are not nearly as happy. Why?

A new study of videos of people hugging dogs showed frequent signs of stress and anxiety, and two thirds of the dogs responded by nipping or biting the hugger.

From double bind theory to ecological insights, Gregory Bateson's interdisciplinary approach remains relevant today.

That little voice inside your head? The puzzle of consciousness would still be there without it. Here's why.

The influence of politics, personal history, and personality.

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The Scientific Revolution of Evolutionary Psychology: Current Status and Future Directions. A Commentary on Zagaria (2024)

• Published: 30 May 2024

Cite this article

• William Costello 1 , 2 &
• Andrew G. Thomas 2  

11 Altmetric

Objectives: A bibliometric analysis by Zagaria (2024) claimed that research in Evolutionary Psychology (EP) lags behind research grounded in the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) in prevalence and growth rate, questioning EP’s status as a scientific revolution. This commentary aims to re-evaluate Zagaria’s findings and conclusions. We raise two major concerns about his analysis. First, Zagaria’s EP syntax excluded key EP terms like fitness, psychological adaptation, and parental investment, while the SSSM syntax included homonyms (e.g., culture) not always relevant to SSSM (e.g., tissue culture in medicine). Second, the analysis included non-scientific journals from fields like gender studies, skewing results since EP is not intended to influence non-scientific fields like dance therapy or tourism studies. Focusing on high-impact psychology journals would better reflect EP’s influence. Methods: We revised the SSSM syntax to “cultural” and updated the EP syntax by adding “inclusive fitness,” “parental investment,” and “psychological adaptation.” Our analysis also used year-by-year data and 5- and 10-year rolling averages to assess trends more accurately. Results: Our analysis found that growth in EP and SSSM research is comparable over time, and the ratio of SSSM to EP papers was overstated by at least 23%. Conclusion: We highlight metrics that should be weighted more heavily than publication quantity, such as effect magnitude, universality, and replicability. By these metrics, EP is arguably outperforming the SSSM and embodies elements of the Kuhnian scientific revolution discussed by Zagaria (2024). This commentary offers a more optimistic vision for EP’s current status and future direction.

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Data Availability

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Note that in the year 2000 there was a large “jump” in recorded research papers of both kinds. While we are unsure why this occurred, it does support our case that greater temporal acuity is needed with this type of work.

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Costello, W., Thomas, A.G. The Scientific Revolution of Evolutionary Psychology: Current Status and Future Directions. A Commentary on Zagaria (2024). Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-024-00240-7

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Psychology Research Paper Topics

In the list of psychology research paper topics below we have attempted to capture psychology’s vast and evolving nature in the 16 categories and more than 100 topics.

100+ Psychology Research Paper Topics

Research Paper Topics in History of Psychology

• Psychology Before 1900
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• Women and Minorities in Psychology
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• Biological Psychology
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Research Paper Topics in Sensory Processes and Perception

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Research Paper Topics in Evolution and Behavior

• Evolutionary Psychology: The Impact of Evolution on Human Behavior
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• Comparative Psychology

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Research Paper Topics in  Individual Differences and Personality

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• Memory: A Look Into the Past, Present, and Future
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• Artificial Intelligence

Developmental Psychology Research Paper Topics

• Prenatal Development and Infancy
• Childhood and Adolescence
• Adulthood and Aging: Perspectives on Adult Development
• Disabilities
• Death, Dying, and Bereavement
• Nature Versus Nurture
• Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Myth or Mental Disorder?

Social Psychology Research Paper Topics

• Social Cognition
• Attitudes and Attitude Change
• Group Processes
• Social Influence
• The Nature of Love
• Prejudice and Stereotyping
• Leadership: Theory and Practice

Research Paper Topics in Health, Stress, and Coping

• Health Psychology
• Stress and Stressors
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• Human Performance in Extreme Environments

Behavior Disorders and Clinical Psychology Research Paper Topics

• Abnormal Psychology
• Ethics of Therapists
• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
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• Family Therapy and Therapy With Children
• Pharmacotherapy
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• Sexual Offending Behavior

Applied Psychology Research Paper Topics

• Industrial and Organizational Psychology
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• Sport Psychology
• Environmental Psychology
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• Applied Behavior Analysis
• Organizational Behavior Management

Research Paper Topics in Human Diversity

• Gender and Sexual Orientation
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• Psychology and Religion
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Mental Health Research Paper Topics

• Agoraphobia
• Alcohol Problems
• Alzheimer’s Disease
• Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa
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• Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders
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• Panic Attacks
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• Child Sexual Abuse
• Classifying Mental Disorders
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• Couples Therapy
• Depression—Applied Aspects
• Domestic Violence Intervention
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• Hypnosis and the Psychological Unconscious
• Meditation and the Relaxation Response
• Personality Assessment
• Premenstrual Syndrome Treatment Interventions
• Psychoanalysis
• Psychopharmacology
• Sexual Dysfunction Therapy
• Standards for Psychotherapy
• Support Groups

For example, the early years of the 20th century witnessed the development and popularization of the now classic “schools of psychology” such as structuralism, functionalism, Gestalt psychology, and behaviorism. World War II and the Korean War spurred the development of modern clinical psychology. In the middle of the 20th century, individual schools rose to prominence and tended to dominate psychological research and theorizing. These dominant schools often clashed with clinical psychology. For example, disagreements between behaviorists and clinicians, which have their roots in the 1940s and 1950s, still persist.

Toward the end of the 1960s, the nature of the field began to change, and the face of modern psychology was forever altered. First, Ulrich Neisser’s 1967 book, Cognitive Psychology, ushered in the “cognitive revolution” and put behaviorism on the decline. Technological advances in computer technology, which allowed researchers to simulate human thought and memory processes and to create images of neurological processes, played an inestimable role in modern psychology’s metamorphosis. Likewise, advances in social concern and action increased psychologists’ awareness of psychology’s diversity and its ability to make significant contributions in these areas. To be sure, the face of contemporary psychology was changing drastically. In fact, in 1992 former American Psychological Association (APA) president George A. Miller believed that psychology had become “an intellectual zoo” (p. 40). Clearly, that situation has not changed, as psychology is evolving in the 21st century.

Nowhere are psychology’s expansion and change seen more clearly than in the evolution of the APA. Founded in 1892 by G. Stanley Hall at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, the APA began with 31 charter members. Currently, there are over 60,000 APA members and 56 divisions with which these members and other interested psychologists can affiliate. The diversity of the APA divisions clearly reflects the changing face of contemporary psychology as well as represents wide subjects of psychological research. They include General Psychology (Division 1), the Study of Social Issues (Division 9), Clinical Psychology (Division 12), Pharmacology and Substance Abuse (Division 28), Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (Division 33), Media Psychology (Division 46), International Psychology (Division 52), and Trauma Psychology (Division 56). Clearly, psychology research topics in the 21st century continue to be diverse and evolving.

We believe that our choice of traditional and cutting-edge research paper topics reflects contemporary psychology’s diverse nature. For example, the “traditional”  research paper topics include the following:

The cutting-edge research paper topics include the following:

Browse examples of psychology research papers to find sample research paper on all topics in the list above. Whether the research paper deals with a traditional topic or a cutting-edge topic, you will find that it presents the materials in a decidedly contemporary manner. We hope that students will enjoy reading the research papers on different topics in psychology as much as we have enjoyed collecting them for you.

Evolutionary Psychology Research Paper

This sample evolution research paper on evolutionary psychology features: 7000 words (approx. 23 pages) and a bibliography with 47 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

Evolutionary psychology (EP) uses the theory of evolution to predict and explain human behavior. EP posits that the brain, just like any other organ (e.g., lungs, heart, etc.), has been shaped by natural selection and thus can be best understood from an evolutionary framework. This research-paper outlines the theory of evolution and provides a number of concrete examples of EP using the latest research, complete with clinical and societal implications. Additionally, there is a separate section that addresses many common criticisms of EP and evolution.

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Forget everything you thought you knew about evolution. Evolution does not create ideal creatures or abilities, nor is it based on the “survival of the fittest.” Nobody is perfect and everybody dies; death and failure are an inevitable consequence of life. When it comes to evolution, it is not a question of whether you live, die, succeed, or fail; it is a question of whether you reproduce. Evolution is not about competition for food or other scarce resources but rather competition for genetic representation in subsequent generations. It is ultimately based on the perpetuation of genes, not individuals.

In its most rudimentary sense, evolution implies change. The simplest way to define evolution and represent such change is in terms of gradual changes in the composition of a gene pool over time. A gene pool is a hypothetical conglomerate of all of the genes being carried by all of the members of a particular species. In any particular gene pool, if individuals carrying certain configurations of genes leave relatively more (or relatively fewer) descendants than those carrying another configuration of genes, these gene frequencies will become progressively more (or less) prevalent in subsequent generations. In other words, the composition of the gene pool at any particular point in time is a direct reflection of the reproductive success of individuals in the immediately preceding generation. You could be the strongest, most disease resistant, most intelligent person alive, but if you don’t reproduce your contribution to evolution is zero. This means that the decision to remain childless is equivalent to committing genetic suicide; the unique configuration of genes that make you who you are will not be included in the human gene pool in the future.

In order for anything to evolve, the probability of passing on its genes must be positively reinforced. An adaptive trait, therefore, is one that confers a reproductive advantage by increasing the probability of passing on one’s genes, while a maladaptive trait is one that diminishes the likelihood of producing descendants. From this vantage point, selection can be defined as a correlation between the genetic basis for a trait and the probability of reproductive success. The size of the correlation determines the rate of selection, whereas the sign of the correlation determines the direction of selection. If the correlation is positive, there will be selection for the trait and it will become more prevalent; if the correlation is negative, there will be selection against the trait and it will eventually disappear. A few examples of adaptive traits that have been important to the evolution of modern humans are increased cranial capacity, bipedalism, and self-awareness.

Common Misconceptions of EP

Evolution works to improve the species. Evolution does not occur by design. Evolution occurs by selection, and the raw material for such selection consists of nothing more than random genetic accidents (mutations). Evolution does not work to improve the species, only the probability of reproductive success. The fact that over 99 percent of all the species that ever lived have gone extinct suggests that evolution works to the demise of most life forms.

Evolution has a purpose. Evolution lacks a conscious, intentional, or deliberate component. Each species is a byproduct of a complex array of random genetic accidents. Differential reproduction is the key to evolution and what promotes and maintains various adaptations.

Evolution sustains human contentment. Evolution does not work to promote human happiness. The capacity for happiness, sadness, jealousy, envy, and all of the other human emotions are a by-product of evolution. For example, the ability to experience pain is an adaptive capacity. Organisms that experience pain learn to refrain from engaging in behaviors that are not in their biological best interests, such as putting one’s hand on a hot stove. Likewise, happiness has been shaped by selection to occur when it is in our best interest to engage in a specific behavior.

EP tells “just-so stories.” A common criticism of EP is that it generates an adaptive story that conveniently explains all the data amassed to date, and then claims that it has generated a perfect theory because all the data are explained! EP is based on science, not artful storytelling. Any hypotheses generated by EP must be parsimonious and testable, and the research results must be replicable by other scientists. If the results of research do not fit the theory, then either the theory must be modified to fit the evidence or the theory must be discarded. Furthermore, a theory must generate novel predictions. If a theory fails to fulfill any of these tenets, then the problem is not with science, but rather the theory.

Evolution is only a theory. The common usage of the word “theory” implies that there is no strong evidence in favor of the idea or concept, or that plausible alternatives exist. Evolution is based on a huge body of accumulating evidence from many scientific disciplines, including biology, geology, mathematics, genetics, and of course paleontology. There is no other scientific theory that can even begin to explain this body of evidence.

Evolutionists don’t all agree on what evolution is (or, there are scientists who disagree with evolution). In any science, progress is based on controversy and disagreement. New ideas are tested, old ones rejected. EP is the same in this regard. However, one idea that is never disregarded or dismissed is evolutionary theory. Scientists disagree all the time about the nuances of evolutionary theory, but they never question evolution itself because there is so much diverse evidence in support of it.

Intelligent design disproves evolution. Intelligent design, try as it might, is simply not science. At some level it ultimately relies upon an unknown, unseen, and unproven agent that supposedly directs cosmic affairs. In the last analysis, intelligent design is based on faith, not fact. Evolution, on the other hand, is based entirely on scientific evidence.

EP is immoral. EP and evolution use science to describe the world around them, including human behavior. Just because EP finds that humans have violent impulses or that murder is a way to increase your fitness does not mean that this is the way society or humanity ought to be. EP can provide valuable insight into why people break the law, but it can’t be used to condemn or condone breaking the law. Do not fall victim to the naturalistic fallacy: Simply because something evolved does not mean that it is right or justifiable. Nor does it mean that it cannot be changed.

EP is antifeminist. That males and females are biologically different is a fact. There is also a lot of evidence to show that males and females are psychologically different. EP does not attempt to justify such differences; rather, it is an attempt to study and better understand these differences. Males can be great parents and females great generals. Denying EP simply on ideological grounds is unscientific.

EP is antireligious. Simply because EP is based on science does not mean that there is an inherent disconnect between it and religion. Indeed, the mere existence of religion may be a by-product of evolution (Maser & Gallup, 1990). EP explains the adapted mind, and religion attempts to find the place of humanity in the cosmos. Perhaps the best way to resolve the issue is to ask whom one would rather see for a serious medical illness—a doctor or a priest? Many people would answer both, yet while both perform important roles, only one can legally practice medicine. Additionally, most major religions now concede that the tenets of evolution are not contrary to their religious teachings, including such a statement by Pope John Paul II.

Evolution and EP

In laymen’s terms, EP looks for the adaptive benefits of specific human behaviors. Adaptiveness can be measured by determining the genetic fitness of the individual, or how many copies of an organism’s genes are passed on to subsequent generations as a result of the behavior in question. In lieu of actual progeny, EP frequently employs substitute measurements such as the number of sexual partners a person has had, his or her attractiveness or status (as rated by members of either or both sexes), or his or her success in a particular endeavor or field (e.g., salary, GPA). However, as we will outline, there are myriad ways to measure fitness. EP also looks for and explains why some behaviors in a modern setting appear to be maladaptive.

Maladaptive Behaviors

Many people are afraid of spiders and snakes. Most people are far less afraid of speeding cars or driving above the posted speed limit. However, the chances of being killed in a traffic accident are much higher than of being killed or injured by a snake or a spider. Why do people show such “maladaptive” fearlessness of traffic? The answer is quite simple: Snakes and spiders posed significant problems to people during human evolutionary history; automobiles did not. Evolution is not a forward-looking process. Current adaptations were shaped by what has happened in the past. Novel situations, like weightlessness, crack-cocaine, or automobiles, would take thousands of years to shape specific evolutionary adaptations.

Costs and Benefits of Adaptations

Evolution never creates a perfectly adapted organism, even in a traditional environment. This is because each adaptation entails costs as well as benefits. For example, the benefits that derive from increased cranial capacity in humans had to be balanced against the increased risk of mortality during childbirth; bigger heads have a greater chance of getting stuck in the birth canal, which can result in the deaths of both mother and child. Even something purely behavioral, like a susceptibility to arachnophobia, incurs costs to the organism; it has to set aside space in the brain to maintain the behavior and spend energy to develop it while maturing. Add to this the chance that the behavior may never be used or that the behavior may develop incorrectly (many people often lose consciousness when suddenly confronted with a snake or spider) and the benefits do not always outweigh the costs. However, if, on average, the benefits exceed the costs, then the behavior in question will contribute toward genetic fitness and the trait will be maintained in the gene pool. The cost benefit ratio can be illustrated by examining your behaviors and their reproductive consequences. People who go to college have fewer children, on average, than people who do not, which would suggest that they have reduced genetic fitness. On the other hand, people who go to college tend to make more money, which increases the likelihood of the survival of each child, thereby increasing his or her chances of marrying and having children as well. Therefore, the reproductive costs of attending college can be offset by resulting economic advantages, which can increase your genetic fitness by increasing the chances that your progeny and their progeny will live to reproduce. During evolution, organisms that consistently behaved in ways in which the reproductive costs exceeded the benefits would have been selected against, and only those that behaved in ways in which the benefits more than compensated for the costs were able to prevail.

Inclusive Fitness and Cost/Benefit Ratios

Competition with other individuals for genetic representation in the next generation involves more than your reproductive success. Through a process known as kin selection, you also have a vested interest in the reproductive success of your relatives. This is because you share approximately 50 percent of your genes in common with members of your immediate family. Therefore, if you behave in ways that enable your brother or sister to produce two children that they would not otherwise have had, it would be equal to producing a child of your own. Likewise, because you share 25 percent of your genes in common with each of your nieces and nephews, any action that costs you one child but produces four children for one of your nieces would be neutral from a cost/benefit point of view. Taken together, this means that every human has a selfish, vested interest in aiding his relatives as long as the benefits outweigh the costs.

Sex Differences

Contrary to popular opinion, there is no such thing as equality when it comes to sex and reproduction. Because men and women have very different reproductive best interests, the ways in which they maximize their fitness can be very different; each sex faces different constraints in reproduction and thus has different costs and benefits associated with the same action or choice. In order to understand these cost/benefit differences, the three underlying biological dimensions that distinguish males from females will be examined.

Genetic Assurance

Females have a significant advantage when it comes to the question of sharing genes in common with their offspring. Maternity is always certain. Mothers have an ironclad guarantee of sharing 50 percent of their genes in common with each of their children. Paternity, on the other hand, is rarely certain. Because of the possibility of rape or female infidelity, males have to contend with the prospect of being cuckolded (i.e., being duped into caring for children sired by other males). The incidence of nonpaternity can be substantial. Among males with low paternity confidence (i.e., those that believe they have reason to question the paternity of their ostensible children), the worldwide incidence of nonpaternity is as high as 30 percent (Anderson, 2006).

Parental Investment

Another important underlying biological dimension that distinguishes males from females is the issue of investment in children. Whereas the benefits that accrue to your fitness as a consequence of producing a child are the same whether you are a male or a female, the costs are not equally distributed. Females pay the lion’s share of the parental investment tab. There is no such thing as a “Dutch treat” when it comes to reproduction. Females are the ones who get pregnant, experience childbirth, and serve as the primary caretaker for the child. This latter point is particularly true of mammals, for which the mother’s milk is the primary source of nutrition for the offspring. Among many sexually reproducing species, the male’s role in reproduction is to simply serve as a source of complementary gametes. Whereas the male’s role in reproduction often focuses on insemination, for females insemination is the mere beginning of the reproductive process, a process that can take years of investment coupled with extended periods of caring and commitment by the female until the child reaches adolescence and can begin to fend for itself.

Reproductive Potential

Sperm are plentiful, but eggs are scarce. A single human ejaculate can contain as many as 250 million or more sperm. Every male produces millions of gametes on a daily basis. In stark contrast, females are born with all of the eggs they will ever have, and ovulation usually involves the release of a single ovum. Women typically ovulate only once during a normal menstrual cycle.

When a woman gets pregnant, it puts her capacity for further reproduction on hold. Pregnancy produces hormonal changes that serve to inhibit further ovulation, and as a consequence pregnancy prevents reimpregnation. Moreover, breast-feeding also leads to hormonal changes that serve to inhibit ovulation (a result called lactational anovulation), and during human evolutionary history mothers probably breast-fed infants for two to three years or longer.

Not only do males have an almost (theoretically) unlimited capacity to reproduce, but they also remain reproductively viable much longer than females. Assuming the typical male begins to produce viable semen at 15 years of age, many males continue to be capable of having children well into their 60s and even 70s. Thus a male who lives to be 75 years old may be reproductively viable for up to 80 percent of his life. If given access to enough reproductively viable women, a man could produce hundreds of offspring in a lifetime. Females, however, have to contend with a much more limited reproductive capacity and a truncated reproductive life span. As a consequence of menopause, most females lose the capacity to reproduce long before they die. Assuming that females begin to ovulate at about age 15 and menopause can occur in the late 30s and early 40s, females are capable of having children for only about 35 percent of their lives.

Reproduction is very costly for females. Unlike males, females can ill afford to make many reproductive mistakes. Thus females have a strong interest in the other 50 percent of their child’s genes that derive from the father. Evolutionary theory would predict that women should be careful comparison shoppers when it comes to mate selection. Whether a woman’s children can compete effectively for a limited number of reproductive opportunities in subsequent generations and perpetuate her genes would be influenced not only by the genes that she gives them but also by the characteristics they get from the father. Clearly, females who made judicious mate choices would have left more descendants than those who were indiscriminant about whom they had sex with.

On the other hand, because paternity is uncertain and males have an enormous capacity to reproduce, men have been selected to be opportunistic maters. This point is made in a compelling way by the results of the following classic study (Clark & Hatfield, 1989). Both male and female college students were approached individually by an attractive member of the opposite sex (a confederate of the experimenter), who then made one of three graded hypothetical invitations. Students were invited to (a) date the person, (b) go back to the person’s apartment, or (c) have sex with the person. Whereas 50 percent of both the male and female students agreed to the date, only 6 percent of the females agreed to return to the person’s apartment, and none accepted the invitation to have sex with someone they did not know. In stark contrast, more than 67 percent of the males agreed to go back to the person’s apartment, and 75 percent agreed to have sex.

Mental Modules

The next four sections examine a specific adaptive behavior. The section on incest avoidance introduces the concept of a mental module—an adaptive behavior that has evolved to solve a specific problem, task, or environmental feature encountered by most members of a species or sex. A mental module can evolve if the same situation is encountered over many generations; the preceding example of our species’ susceptibility to arachnophobia is a good example of a mental module.

Incest Avoidance

A good example of the ability of evolutionary psychology to explain existing data, discount alternative theories, as well as generate and test novel hypotheses can be found by examining incest avoidance. There is ample evidence to suggest that the incest taboo is the result of an innate, evolved mental module, as opposed to a result of cultural values or society (e.g., the environment).

To begin with, there are large fitness costs associated with close-relative mating (i.e., between full siblings or offspring and parents). Much of this cost is due to inbreeding depression. All individuals carry a number of deleterious mutations that are masked because they also have a functional copy of the gene. Most of these mutations are inherited from parents and grandparents. Thus, if you mate with a close relative, you dramatically increase the chances of receiving two defective copies of the same gene. Researchers have documented inbreeding depression in many species. In humans, hemophilia, infertility, and microcephaly have all been traced to inbreeding. Additionally, a number of genes such as those that regulate the immune system maximize an organism’s fitness when they are all different (i.e., the organism is heterozygous for the genes in question). Acquiring a novel set of these genes requires mating with a nonrelative (Potts, Manning, & Wakeland, 1991). As with inbreeding depression, mating with a close relative would increase your chances of receiving two copies of the same gene, and lead to a depressed immune system. In humans, matings between close relatives result in at least twice the rate of mortality and morbidity compared to control populations (Adams & Neel 1967; Seemanova, 1971).

Second, incest is a universal taboo (Brown, 1991) and is rarely practiced in human cultures. In almost every society, both past and present, there are very stringent rules prohibiting either sexual relationships or marriages between closely related individuals (Bixler, 1981). Furthermore, in the few societies that do condone a form of incest, the incestuous relationships have been almost entirely limited to the royalty or nobility (Bixler, 1982a, 1982b). Likewise, in the multitude of animal species examined to date, close-relative incestuous matings generally comprise less than 2 percent of all matings (Harvey & Ralls, 1996)

Third, there is also a large body of evidence that incest avoidance is triggered by mechanisms activated by cohabitation at a young age; for example, if you lived together with someone as a child, you will not be sexually interested in them as an adult. In other words, the fact that familiarity breeds contempt may be the result of selection against inbreeding. Some of the best evidence in support of this comes from a detailed study of the marriage patterns of former members of a kibbutz (a communal housing complex for children in Israel). Sherper (1971a, 1971b, 1983) found that out of 2,769 subjects, not a single one married a peer with whom they had been continuously raised for the first six years of life. Furthermore, detailed interviews with 65 individuals found only one incidence of postpubertal heterosexual activity among them, in which the person in question joined the kibbutz group at age 10.

Another line of evidence comes from Sim Pua marriages in China. These marriages, known as “minor form” marriages, involve the transfer of the bride to the groom’s home at a young age, often as young as three years old. Wolf (1966, 1968, 1970, 1995) compared 132 Sim Pua marriages to 172 traditional marriages and found higher rates of divorce, separation, and adultery in Sim Pua marriages. Most interestingly, Sim Pua marriages produced 30 percent fewer children than regular marriages. These results are consistent with the suggestion that there is an innate incest taboo mechanism operating in humans mediated by early childhood rearing experiences.

There are a number of implications that arise from this analysis. Because the formation of the innate incest taboo requires cohabitation at young ages, families that don’t expose siblings to one another as young children risk the possibility of incestuous relationships between the siblings later in life. Likewise, there is a risk of “quasi”-incestuous relationships between stepsiblings if they were not raised together as young children.

What we know about inbreeding depression demonstrates that the biblical account of human origins based on the story of Adam and Eve is untenable. This account implies that human origins were inherently incestuous. After Adam and Eve reproduced and had children, the only way to get to the next generation would have been for their children to have sex with one another, or for the children to have sex with their parents. Because there simply are no other alternative means by which their genes could be propagated, the resulting inbreeding depression would have had disastrous consequences for the human species.

Signaling And Measuring Genetic Litoess

The next three sections examine how humans detect genetic fitness in others and signal their own genetic fitness. There are many mental modules that function to determine the genetic fitness of other people. We selected these modules to focus on honest signals of fitness, signals that are truly indicative of the ability of an individual to pass on his or her genes. Each remaining section title is an example of an honest signal of genetic fitness. However, humans have also been selected to subvert honest signal detection modules. This is frequently accomplished by employing dishonest signals of fitness, signals that mimic honest signals in order to fool other people into thinking you (or your kin) are more genetically fit than you really are.

Paternal Resemblance

A common refrain among mothers is that all of their children look like their father, not them. In order to appreciate why this is the case, recall that women have at least one substantial reproductive advantage over men: Females can be virtually certain of sharing 50 percent of their genes in common with each of their children. However, as a consequence of rape or female infidelity, males have to contend with paternal uncertainty and being cuckolded (investing in offspring sired by other males).

Paternal resemblance, or the degree to which children look like their father, is one hypothesized phenotypic feature that fathers could use to gauge relatedness to their purported offspring. By presenting people with pictures of infants and asking them to identify their parents out of an array of adult photos, Christenfeld and Hill (1995) found that participants were better at matching children’s pictures to their father than to their mother, although researchers have not always replicated this finding (Bredart & French, 1999). However, another study that had third parties directly compare the degree of resemblance of children to both parents found that after the age of three, boys resemble their fathers more than their mothers (Alvergne, Faurie, & Raymond, in press). If children show a paternal resemblance bias it may be a consequence of the fact that during human evolutionary history males invested preferentially in children who looked like them. Because of the enormous costs of cuckoldry, males who were indifferent to the question of paternity would have been at a significant disadvantage compared to males who cared about the paternity of their mate’s children.

To test this hypothesis, Platek, Burch, Panyavin, Wasserman, and Gallup (2002) combined individual pictures of college students with one of several infant pictures using a computerized morphing program. Students were then presented with an array of five baby pictures that had been morphed with different adult faces, including the one that had been combined with their own face. When asked to make hypothetical investment decisions about the babies in these pictures (e.g., which one of these children would you adopt, or spend $50 on?), men, in direct contrast to women, showed a clear preference for investing in children who shared some of their own facial features. Another study that interviewed British men found paternal investment increased the more a father believed his children resembled him, and this effect was more pronounced for divorced fathers (Apicella & Marlowe, 2003). These results suggest that men do in fact invest preferentially in children as a function of their shared resemblance.

The existence of a paternal resemblance investment bias has been replicated in several subsequent studies (e.g., Anderson, Kaplan, & Lancaster, 2007; Platek, Critton, et al., 2003), and has been extended to show that male (but not female) brains are uniquely activated by pictures of children they resemble (Platek, Rainesa, et al., 2003).

There is even evidence that males modulate the importance of specific physical features based on how relevant these cues are to their specific phenotype in determining paternal certainty. Laeng, Mathisen, and Johnsen (2007) found that blue-eyed men (but not brown-eyed men or women of either eye color) found pictures of women with blue eyes more attractive than the same pictures featuring the same women with brown eyes. These findings remained statistically significant even after controlling for the color of either parent’s eyes. Researchers hypothesized that blue-eyed men showed this difference because a blue-eyed man who mated with a blue-eyed woman would have only blue-eyed offspring. Thus, a child who exhibited a different eye color would obviously not be his. It is interesting to note that brown-eyed men, who would not gain any additional information by preferring blue-eyed women, exhibited no preference for eye color. The same study also found evidence for assortative mating: Blue-eyed men preferentially choose light-eyed partners.

Given the importance of paternal certainty, it is no wonder that there is a substantial body of evidence that mothers and the matriline comment more frequently on an infant’s purported paternal resemblance than on its maternal resemblance (Daly & Wilson, 1982; Regalski & Gaulin, 1993). For example, McLain, Settersa, Moultona, and Pratt (1999) found that mothers of one- to three-day-old newborns made more comments about paternal than maternal resemblance, particularly when the father was present.

Preferential investment based on paternal resemblance has some interesting practical implications: In the case of adoption, by matching features of the adopted children (e.g., hair color, eye color) with features of the adoptive father there is reason to believe you might be able to promote better adoption outcomes. Indeed, these findings would even suggest that the risk of child abuse might be inversely proportional to the degree of paternal resemblance. There is some evidence to support this hypothesis: Burch and Gallup (2000) found that for men enrolled in a domestic violence treatment program, paternal resemblance was positively correlated with the self-reported quality of the men’s relationships with their children and inversely proportional to the severity of injuries suffered by their spouses. In light of this study and the findings of Laeng, Mathisen, and Johnsen (in press), social service agencies might do well to target instances of obvious failures to show paternal resemblance for special intervention.

Both fathers and mothers act in ways that suggest paternal resemblance is very important. As with all evolved behaviors, the mental processes involved in assessing paternal resemblance need not be explicitly known to the individual. However, as both fathers and mothers actively and easily assess paternal resemblance, and modulate their behavior accordingly, it is quite probable that paternal resemblance is an example of an evolutionary adaptive behavior that is, at some level, consciously processed.

Fluctuating Asymmetry

Not everyone has features on one side of their body that perfectly mirror the features on the other side. For example, the length of the ring finger, the diameter of the wrist, or the length of the ear lobe may be slightly different from one side to the other. Researchers believe that random morphological deviations from perfect bilateral symmetry, known as fluctuating asymmetry (FA), are a consequence of stress-induced developmental instabilities that occur primarily during prenatal growth. Although the body is programmed to develop symmetrically, it is thought that environmental stressors (e.g., diseases, parasites, malnutrition) disrupt the normal developmental program. Individual differences in the magnitude of FA are taken as evidence for underlying genetic differences in the ability to buffer against such stressors. An individual with high FA thus would have either an increased exposure or a compromised ability to mitigate the effects of environmental stressors. Whatever the cause, it would be an indicator of decreased fitness. Indeed, there is a wealth of evidence that low FA individuals have increased fitness.

Researchers have correlated elevated FA with increased vulnerability to disease as well as higher levels of morbidity (Livshits & Kobyliansky, 1991), whereas low FA has been correlated with increased genetic, physical, and mental health (Thornhill & Moller, 1997) as well as increased fertility (Thornhill & Gangestad, 1994) and athleticism. Additionally, intelligence appears to be related to fluctuations in FA, with low FA males scoring significantly higher on standardized intelligence tests (Furlow, Gangestad, & Thornhill,1997).

In light of this evidence, it should not be surprising that people preferentially respond to low FA (high fitness) individuals. For example, men and women with low FA are consistently judged as being more attractive than those with high FA (Thornhill & Gangestad, 1994). Low FA men have more sexual partners, and they are more likely to engage in instances of sexual infidelity (Gangestad & Thornill, 1997). Women who are in committed sexual relationships with low FA men experience more frequent orgasms than those with high FA partners (Thornhill, Gangestad, & Comer, 1995). Even dancing ability appears to be related to FA—low FA dancers were rated as better dancers than their high FA counterparts, particularly by low FA individuals (Brown et al., 2005).

Low FA is even related to body odor. Thornhill and Gangestad (1999a) had a sample of male volunteers agree to wear freshly laundered T-shirts to bed and return the shirts to the laboratory the next day. The shirts were placed in coded plastic bags and each of the donors was measured for deviations from bilateral symmetry across a variety of physical traits. Women, who did not know the source of the shirts or the identity of the men who had worn them, smelled the shirts and rated the extent to which they found the odor of the different T-shirts to be attractive. Women who were not taking birth control pills and were in the ovulatory phase of their menstrual cycle rated the shirts worn by low FA men as smelling more attractive than those worn by high FA men. In other words, fertile women found the body odor of low FA men more attractive.

People also find that low FA individuals sound more attractive. Hughes, Harrison, and Gallup (2002) measured FA in male and female college students and had them individually count from 1 to 10 while their voices were being recorded. These recordings were then rated for attractiveness by a sample of men and women who did not know and had not seen the people whose voices had been recorded. Hughes et al. discovered that the voices of people with low FA were rated as being more attractive than those of people with high FA.

Mate choice is an important dimension of fitness. When it comes to competing for genetic representation in subsequent generations it is important to pick a mate who has high-quality genes. Offspring with high-quality parents have a better chance of showing traits that will bode well for their own reproductive success, which in turn will serve to propagate their parents’ genes. The above evidence strongly suggests that humans have been selected to prefer a variety of subtle features in mating partners that are correlated with low FA in order to maximize their genetic fitness.

Facial Attractiveness

Faces are important. We recognize people based on their facial features, and the allure of those features plays an important role in interpersonal attraction. Many people believe that facial attractiveness is a social construction, driven by learned, arbitrary sociocultural influences. However, data have begun to emerge that challenge this position (for an earlier review of this evidence see Thornhill & Gangestad, 1999b). Not only is there relatively good consensus among people as to which faces are attractive, but attractive faces also appear to be a cross-cultural universal. That is, faces that people in Asia find attractive are also rated as attractive by people in North America, and vice versa. Ratings of facial attractiveness are consistent not only across cultures and ethnic groups but across sexes, sexual orientations, and ages as well. Coupled with the fact that even neonates spend more time looking at faces that we judge attractive, these data suggest that facial attractiveness may have a biological component.

There is growing evidence that individual differences in facial attractiveness signal important underlying biological properties. People with attractive faces are healthier (Shackelford & Larsen, 1999), and they tend to have lower FA (Grammer & Thornhill, 1994). Contrary to the social constructionist position, we may have been selected during human evolutionary history to find certain faces attractive because they were associated with honest signals of fitness. In other words, there may have been selective benefits to mating with people based on their facial features.

Several recent studies provide strong support for this position. In one recent study, Soler et al. (2003) took facial photographs and collected semen samples from 66 male college students. Semen quality for each man was determined by measuring sperm count, sperm motility, and sperm morphology. Then, a large sample of women were shown the photos of these men and asked to rate them for attractiveness. As with low FA males, ratings of facial attractiveness were significantly correlated with semen assay results; men with attractive faces tended to have higher-quality semen.

In another study, Henderson and Anglin (2003) selected 50 facial photographs, equally representing men and women, from old high school yearbooks. Using a public database that included the dates of birth and death for the people in these yearbooks, longevity data were calculated to the nearest month. Male and female college students were instructed to rate each of the yearbook photos for attractiveness and health. Ratings of facial attractiveness were highly correlated with ratings of health. Moreover, ratings of facial attractiveness of the high school photos were significantly correlated with longevity. Both men and women with attractive faces tended to live longer.

EP has the ability to explain and predict many facets of human behavior. Based on the principles of evolution, it follows that behavior is also subject to natural selection, just like physical features. EP can be used to suggest new clinical and social treatment programs as well as to examine existing regimes for their efficacy. In recent years, EP has been gaining acceptance in all fields of mainstream psychology. Some people believe it has the potential to unite these disparate fields under a single and overarching theoretical framework.

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A unified account of Darwinism's varieties

A new paper published in The Quarterly Review of Biology examines the question of what Darwinism is and how its nonscientific uses relate to the scientific theory of evolution.

Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859 as a work in biology. However, in the past century and a half, Darwin's ideas have impacted a broad range of domains and stimulated scientists and scholars to advance "evolutionary approaches" in domains as diverse as economics, engineering, psychology, and history. The ideas have been used (and abused) to undermine religiously inspired ideas about the origin of humans and their status concerning other species, to support state-sponsored eugenicist policies, or to support laissez-faire economic policies.

In "The Varieties of Darwinism: Explanation, Logic, and Worldview," authors Hugh Desmond, André Ariew, Philippe Huneman, and Thomas Reydon observe that while some people claim Darwinism's meaning should be limited to scientific content, others call for its abolition altogether. The authors propose a unified account of these varieties of Darwinism. "We show how the theories introduced by Darwin have grounded a 'logic' or style of reasoning about phenomena, as well as various ethically and politically charged 'worldviews.'" They posit that the full meaning of Darwinism and how this meaning has changed over time can only be understood through the interaction between these dimensions.

The authors point out that while it is not novel to ask the question "What is Darwinism?" novel sources of confusion warrant revisiting the question. They provide a framework to make sense of how the different significant uses of the term interrelate and what, if any, such ethical and political uses of the term Darwinism have to do with the underlying scientific dimension of Darwinism.

The authors argue against the view that "they have nothing to do with each other." They advance a "thick" conception of Darwinism, where the scientific, ethical, and political dimensions are understood to be intertwined and constitute Darwinism's full meaning. In their account of the thick conception of Darwinism, the authors rely on Darwinism as an explanatory scheme, Darwinism as logic or methodology, and Darwinism as a worldview or ideology.

The authors conclude that restricting Darwinism to a purely scientific context is not ideal, noting that theoretical elements play a methodological role in structuring scientific inquiry into natural phenomena. They conceded that while the thick conception complicates the analysis of Darwinism it is necessary to do justice to the richness of Darwinism and its influence in the past century and a half.

The premier review journal in biology, The Quarterly Review of Biology has presented insightful historical, philosophical, and technical treatments of important biological topics since 1926. The QRB publishes outstanding review articles of generous length that are guided by an expansive, inclusive, and often humanistic understanding of biology.

• Evolutionary Biology
• Biochemistry Research
• Charles Darwin
• Origin of Life
• Early Climate
• Jacques-Yves Cousteau
• Human evolution
• Unified neutral theory of biodiversity
• Human cloning
• Introduction to genetics

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Materials provided by University of Chicago Press Journals . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Hugh Desmond, André Ariew, Philippe Huneman, Thomas Reydon. The Varieties of Darwinism: Explanation, Logic, and Worldview . The Quarterly Review of Biology , 2024; 99 (2): 77 DOI: 10.1086/730667

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