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The history of evolutionary psychology began with Charles Darwin, who said that humans have social instincts that evolved by natural selection.Darwin's work inspired later psychologists such as William James and Sigmund Freud but for most of the 20th century psychologists focused more on behaviorism and proximate explanations for human behavior.
The study of the evolution of emotions dates back to the 19th century. Evolution and natural selection has been applied to the study of human communication , mainly by Charles Darwin in his 1872 work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals . [ 1 ]
The history of the debate from a critic's perspective is detailed by Gannon (2002). [2] Critics of evolutionary psychology include the philosophers of science David Buller (author of Adapting Minds), [3] Robert C. Richardson (author of Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology), [4] and Brendan Wallace (author of Getting Darwin Wrong: Why Evolutionary Psychology Won't Work).
Evolutionary psychologists consider Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection to be important to an understanding of psychology. [1] Natural selection occurs because individual organisms who are genetically better suited to the current environment leave more descendants, and their genes spread through the population, thus explaining why organisms fit their environments so closely. [1]
Charles Robert Darwin (/ ˈ d ɑːr w ɪ n / [5] DAR-win; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, [6] widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology.
The theories on which evolutionary psychology is based originated with Charles Darwin's work, including his speculations about the evolutionary origins of social instincts in humans. Modern evolutionary psychology, however, is possible only because of advances in evolutionary theory in the 20th century.
He is also the author of Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, whose fourth edition was released in 2011. In 2005, Buss edited a reference volume, The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. [4] His latest book is When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault.
Mainstream evolutionary psychology grew out of earlier movements which applied the principles of evolutionary biology to understand the mind and behavior such as sociobiology, ethology, and behavioral ecology, [5] differing from these earlier approaches by focusing on identifying psychological adaptations rather than adaptive behavior. [20]