Evolutionary Psychology

Groups the studies whose central finding tests a hypothesis about how a psychological trait or behavior pattern was shaped by evolutionary selection pressures acting over the human species' ancestral past. Belongs here: Buss's Thirty-Seven Cultures Mate Preference Study, which tested evolutionary hypotheses about sex differences in human mating preferences across dozens of cultures worldwide. A study of mating, aggression or another behavior that does not frame its central hypothesis in evolutionary terms is filed under the branch that most directly investigates it instead.