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Evolutionary approaches to human behavior were, and to some extent continue to be, considered a form of genetic determinism and dismissive of the role of culture and experience in shaping human behavior (see Standard social science model). [5] [17]
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.
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 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.
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).
On the one hand, function and evolution are often presented as separate and distinct explanations of behaviour. [4] On the other hand, the common definition of adaptation is a central concept in evolution: a trait that was functional to the reproductive success of the organism and that is thus now present due to being selected for; that is ...
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]
In the 1970s and 1980s, with the groundbreaking works of E.O. Wilson. Hamilton and R. Dawkins, a shift occurred from social-cultural explanation of human behavior to the return of biological, reductionist explanations based on neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. [8] This is sometimes called the sociobiology approach.