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Branches of Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology

Animal Experimental and Comparative Psychology

Evolutionary psychology is the branch of psychology that explains human cognition and behavior as the product of psychological adaptations shaped by natural selection to solve problems faced by ancestral humans, treating the brain as composed of many specialized mechanisms rather than a single general-purpose learning device.

Facts
Disputed
Key Debate
Whether a proposed evolutionary explanation for a psychological trait can actually be tested, given how little is directly known about the ancestral environments in which the trait supposedly evolved. 1
Critics collected in the article's Reception and Criticism section raise testability concerns, doubts about a strictly modular brain, uncertainty about ancestral environments, and the importance of non-genetic and non-adaptive factors; the field's defenders dispute each in turn, and the disagreement is not resolved.
Central Question
Which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations shaped by natural selection to solve recurring problems faced by ancestral humans? 1
Evolutionary Psychology
Filter Results8 entries
Connections

Associated With

David Buss, Psychologists

His cross-cultural mate-preference research is a landmark body of work in evolutionary psychology.

Includes

Source Wikipedia: Agent detection
Source Cinderella effect (Wikipedia)
Source Coolidge effect (Wikipedia)
Source Douglas T. Kenrick (Wikipedia)
Source Dunbar's Number (Wikipedia)
Source Geoffrey Miller (psychologist) (Wikipedia)
Source Wikipedia: John Tooby
Source Wikipedia: Leda Cosmides
Source Margo Wilson (Wikipedia)
Source Social contagion - Wikipedia
Source Steven Pinker (Wikipedia)
Source Todd K. Shackelford (Wikipedia)
Source Wikipedia: Variability Hypothesis
Source Westermarck effect, Wikipedia
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Evolutionary Psychology
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Lead section
    the human brain is composed of many specialized mechanisms that were shaped by natural selection over a vast period of time
  • Reception and Criticism section
    Criticism of evolutionary psychology involves questions of testability, cognitive and evolutionary assumptions
Wikipedia: Leda Cosmides
Wikimedia FoundationIncludes: Leda Cosmides, Lead section
Quote, Includes: Leda Cosmides, Lead section
Leda Cosmides (born May 1957) is an American psychologist, who, together with anthropologist husband John Tooby, pioneered the field of evolutionary psychology.
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Wikipedia: John Tooby
Wikimedia FoundationIncludes: John Tooby, Biography section
Quote, Includes: John Tooby, Biography section
together with his psychologist wife Leda Cosmides, pioneered the field of evolutionary psychology
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Douglas T. Kenrick (Wikipedia)
Includes: Douglas Kenrick, Article lead
Quote, Includes: Douglas Kenrick, Article lead
His research and writing integrate three scientific syntheses of the last few decades: evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, and dynamical systems theory.
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Wikipedia: David Buss
Wikimedia FoundationIncludes: Buss's Thirty-Seven Cultures Mate Preference Study, Lead section
Quote, Includes: Buss's Thirty-Seven Cultures Mate Preference Study, Lead section
David Michael Buss (born April 14, 1953) is an American evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, researching human sex differences in mate selection.
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Wikipedia: Agent detection
Wikimedia FoundationIncludes: Agent Detection Bias, Lead section
Quote, Includes: Agent Detection Bias, Lead section
Agent detection is the inclination for animals, including humans, to presume the purposeful intervention of a sentient or intelligent agent in situations that may or may not involve one.
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Wikipedia: Variability Hypothesis
Includes: Variability Hypothesis, Lead section
Quote, Includes: Variability Hypothesis, Lead section
The variability hypothesis, also known as the greater male variability hypothesis, is the hypothesis that human males generally display greater variability in traits than human females do.
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Cinderella effect (Wikipedia)
Includes: Cinderella Effect, Lead section
Quote, Includes: Cinderella Effect, Lead section
In evolutionary psychology, the Cinderella effect describes the phenomenon of a higher incidence of child abuse and mistreatment by stepparents than biological parents.
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Coolidge effect (Wikipedia)
Includes: Coolidge Effect, Lead section
Quote, Includes: Coolidge Effect, Lead section
The Coolidge effect is a biological phenomenon seen in some animals, including humans, whereby males exhibit renewed sexual interest whenever a new female of reproductive availability is introduced, even after sex with prior but still available sexual partners.
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Westermarck effect, Wikipedia
Includes: Westermarck Effect, Lead section
Quote, Includes: Westermarck Effect, Lead section
The Westermarck effect, also known as reverse sexual imprinting, is a psychological hypothesis that states that people tend not to be attracted to peers with whom they lived like siblings before the age of six.
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Social contagion - Wikipedia
Includes: Social Contagion, Lead section
Quote, Includes: Social Contagion, Lead section
Social contagion involves behaviour, emotions, or conditions spreading spontaneously through a group or network.
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Steven Pinker (Wikipedia)
Includes: Steven Pinker, Lead section
Quote, Includes: Steven Pinker, Lead section
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual.
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Margo Wilson (Wikipedia)
Includes: Margo Wilson, Lead section
Quote, Includes: Margo Wilson, Lead section
Margo Wilson (1942-2009) was a Canadian evolutionary psychologist.
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Dunbar's Number (Wikipedia)
Includes: Dunbar's Number, Lead section
Quote, Includes: Dunbar's Number, Lead section
Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships-relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.
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Geoffrey Miller (psychologist) (Wikipedia)
Includes: Geoffrey Miller, Lead
Quote, Includes: Geoffrey Miller, Lead
Geoffrey Franklin Miller (born 1965) is an American evolutionary psychologist, author, and associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico.
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Todd K. Shackelford (Wikipedia)
Includes: Todd Shackelford, Lead
Quote, Includes: Todd Shackelford, Lead
He is best known for his work in evolutionary psychology.
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Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Key Debate

Historian Lynn Hunt, evaluating attempts to apply evolutionary and psychological explanation to historical questions, concluded that such "psychohistory" projects collapsed under the weight of their own presuppositions: the ancestral conditions a trait is said to have evolved to solve are asserted rather than independently observed, so an evolutionary account can read history backward from a present-day trait to a conveniently fitting ancestral problem rather than testing the claim against evidence. Evolutionary psychologists reply that convergent evidence across cross-cultural, comparative and cognitive-mechanism studies constrains which adaptive stories are plausible, so the charge of unfalsifiability is overstated. The Wikipedia source frames the underlying disagreement as unresolved: the field's defenders dispute each testability, modularity and ancestral-environment objection in turn, and neither side has settled it.

A dissenting reading, from Lynn Hunt (historian)Wikipedia: Evolutionary Psychology, Wikimedia Foundation
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