8. Evolutionary Psychology in Context
In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, which laid the foundation for evolutionary biology. In a little over a century, scientists would combine much of this information with knowledge regarding the workings of the brain to form the discipline of evolutionary psychology.
The field of psychology emerged in the late 1800s. The first paradigm most are familiar with is Sigmund Freud’s psychodynamic theory. Influenced by Darwin’s work, Freud believed that human behavior centered on life-preserving and sexual instincts. However, he also thought we have a death instinct and that our childhood experiences heavily influence us; evidence today supports neither of those claims.
The focus then shifted to behavior you can observe, giving birth to behaviorism in the early 1900s. The idea was that there are limited internal influences; what you see is learned behavior because of the environment. James Watson and Ivan Pavlov believed in classical conditioning, a single mechanism that created an association between two events. For example, if you pair feeding a dog with ringing a bell, the dog will associate the bell with food. B. F. Skinner followed this up with operant conditioning, claiming that reward and punishment shape behavior. Eventually a series of major experiments demonstrated the limitations of this paradigm.
In the 1950s, cognitive psychology arose along with computer science. It considers the brain an information processing device, and to understand behavior we need to look internally, not to the environment. The focus is on perception, memory, language, and problem-solving. A possible shortcoming is that it believes the brain is made of domain-general machinery as opposed to domain-specific.
The field of evolutionary psychology emerged in the late 1900s and sought to combine psychology with biology. As we know now, the concentration is on the adaptive psychological mechanisms that natural selection shaped. Apart from Charles Darwin some time earlier, William Hamilton made a notable contribution to the field in the 1960s with his theory of inclusive fitness. Robert Trivers published extensively and conducted substantial empirical research on a variety of topics, particularly his theories of parental investment. In 1976, British scientist Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene, an international bestseller that popularized the gene-centered perspective in evolution. He also passionately advocates for atheism. In the 1980s and 1990s, several major evolutionary psychologists worked out of Harvard University. David Buss published The Evolution of Desire in 1994, and Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind in 2011. Steven Pinker is a cognitive psychologist who has written extensively on evolutionary psychology; his most influential books are The Blank Slate, The Language Instinct, and How the Mind Works. John Tooby and Leda Cosmides founded the Center for Evolutionary Psychology and are the married coauthors of The Adapted Mind. In the field of behavioral genetics, Robert Plomin published his magnum opus, Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, in 2018.
Here are a few notable books, podcasts, and websites about or including evolutionary psychology:
Books
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind by David Buss
The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby
The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology by Robert Wright
Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller
Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotion by Victor S. Johnson
The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel E. Lieberman
A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History by Nicolas Wade
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life by Daniel Dennett
Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are by Daniel Nettle
Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are by Robert Plomin
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker
Podcasts
Beat Your Genes with Doug Lisle
Making Sense with Sam Harris
The Poetry of Reality with Richard Dawkins
DarkHorse Podcast with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast with Jordan Peterson
Razib Khan’s Unsupervised Learning with Razib Khan
Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson
Evolution Talk with Rick Coste
Websites
https://nobaproject.com/modules/evolutionary-theories-in-psychology
https://www.animal-ethics.org/evolutionary-reasons-suffering-prevails-nature/
This concludes the final informational section. The last one is about my own evolutionary psychology journey.