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Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. [1] [2] It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evolved to solve.
Evolution and Human Behavior is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering research in which evolutionary perspectives are brought to bear on the study of human behavior, ranging from evolutionary psychology to evolutionary anthropology and cultural evolution.
Evolutionary developmental psychology (EDP) is a research paradigm that applies the basic principles of evolution by natural selection, to understand the development of human behavior and cognition.
Human behavioral ecology (HBE) or human evolutionary ecology applies the principles of evolutionary theory and optimization to the study of human behavioral and cultural diversity. HBE examines the adaptive design of traits , behaviors , and life histories of humans in an ecological context.
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]
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.
Evolutionary psychology proposes that the human psychology consists primarily of psychological adaptations, [2] which is opposed by the tabula rasa or blank slate model of human psychology. Early behaviourists, like B.F. Skinner , tended to the blank slate model and argued that innate behaviors and instincts were few, some behaviourists ...
The theoretical foundations of evolutionary psychology are discussed in the introduction, by Cosmides, Tooby and Barkow, in an essay by Tooby and Cosmides on "The Psychological Foundations of Culture", and an essay by anthropologist Donald Symons "On the Use and Misuse of Darwinism in the Study of Human Behavior".