biology

History of evolutionary psychology

History of evolutionary psychology is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand History of evolutionary psychology rather than just read about it. In short: The history of evolutionary psychology began with Charles Darwin, who argued that all the most human of human capacities—the human intellect, rationality, human sexual behaviour, emotional expressions, moral behaviour, language, culture, and conscience—had evolutionary foundations, highlighting in particular those which had originated due to the unusual ways natural selection operates in social animals, that is, by…

Key takeaways

History of evolutionary psychology belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
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Connect History of evolutionary psychology to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of History of evolutionary psychology from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The history of evolutionary psychology began with Charles Darwin, who argued that all the most human of human capacities—the human intellect, rationality, human sexual behaviour, emotional expressions, moral behaviour, language, culture, and conscience—had evolutionary foundations, highlighting in particular those which had originated due to the unusual ways natural selection operates in social animals, that is, by different kinds of group selection, including kin selection and reciprocal altruism. Darwin's work inspired many later psychologists such as Wilhelm Wundt, James Mark Baldwin, William James, Sigmund Freud, George Herbert Mead, Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen but, in the early 1900s, American psychologists widely rejected Darwin's style of naturalistic observation in favour of laboratory experimentation. Henceforth, 20th century psychologists focused more on behaviorism and proximate explanations for human behavior. Then, in 1975, E. O. Wilson's landmark book, Sociobiology, synthesized recent theoretical advances in evolutionary theory to explain social behavior in animals, including humans. Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby popularized the term "evolutionary psychology" in their 1992 book The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and The Generation of Culture. Like sociobiology before it, evolutionary psychology has been embroiled in controversy, but evolutionary psychologists see their field as gaining increased acceptance overall.

19th century After his seminal work in developing theories of natural selection, Charles Darwin devoted much of his final years to studying the evolutionary foundations of what he regarded as the most distinctive human qualities, including aesthetic sensibility, morality, language, intellect, and culture. He wrote two books:The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex in 1871 and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals in 1872, which addressed topics in evolutionary psychology. He also published pathbreaking evolutionary monographs on insect and invertebrate behaviour, and—believing that infant behaviour gives us privileged access to humans' evolutionary endowment—a seminal case-study of his baby son William's behaviour, containing many observations confirmed by recent research, including those on: infant-adult communication and meta-communication; infant emotional expressions; early reasoning; the experimental study of infant jealousy; and the origins of self-knowledge. Darwin introduced the concept of sexual selection to explain the presence of animal and human characteristics that seemed unrelated to survival, such as humans' lack of body hair and the peacock's tail. He argued in terms of parental investment to explain contrasting male and female roles surrounding reproduction. He introduced theories concerning group selection, reciprocal altruism, and kin selection to explain self-sacrifice. Darwin pondered why humans and animals were often generous to their group members. Darwin felt that acts of generosity decreased the fitness of generous individuals. This fact contradicts natural selection, which favored the fittest individual. Darwin concluded that while generosity decreased individual fitness, it would increase group fitness. In this case, altruism arose due to competition between groups. The following quote, from Darwin's Origin of Species, is often interpreted by evolutionary psychologists as an indication of his foreshadowing the emergence of the field:

In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation.

20th century Darwin's theory inspired William James's functionalist approach to psychology. At the core of his theory was a system of "instincts." James wrote that humans had many instincts, even more than other animals. These instincts, he said, could be overridden by experience and by each other, as many of the instincts were actually in conflict with each other. In their Evolutionary Psychology Primer, Tooby and Cosmides make note of James' perspective, and also quote him:

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with History of evolutionary psychology

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what History of evolutionary psychology claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to History of evolutionary psychology before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about History of evolutionary psychology ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of History of evolutionary psychology

In research: History of evolutionary psychology appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses History of evolutionary psychology in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: History of evolutionary psychology is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Evolutionary psychology, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for History of evolutionary psychology outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study History of evolutionary psychology in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what History of evolutionary psychology means in your own words.
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Frequently asked questions

What is History of evolutionary psychology in simple terms?

Why does History of evolutionary psychology matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study History of evolutionary psychology?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on History of evolutionary psychology.