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Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evolved to solve.
Evolutionary psychology seeks to explain how our emotions and other aspects of being human served as advantages to our ancestors.
- Evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers proposed a number of theories on evolutionary psychology , including why we engage in reciprocal altruism ,...
- Our hunter-gatherer ancestors passed down behavioral traits that are, for the most part, advantageous to us. For example, we are mindful of dange...
- Juggling our ancestral tendencies with the demands of modern-day living can be a struggle. This phenomenon is known as evolutionary mismatch—when...
- A good example of such mismatch is the contemporary diet : Ten thousand years ago, people battled starvation. They had to pile on the necessary ca...
- Fight or flight refers to the human body’s built-in response to a perceived threat: It prepares the body to either face danger or quickly run from...
- Any fearful situation can trigger it, whether it is physical danger or a stressful event, like running late for a meeting. In people with anxiet...
- Kin selection is the theory that our calculations about genetic relatedness to others (conscious or unconscious ) are powerful drivers of behavio...
- In evolutionary parlance, reproductive success is called reproductive fitness, a measure of how well an organism or a person is adapted to their en...
- The differences in parental investment —the energy and resources invested in an offspring—lead the sex that invests more (females, in most species...
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Your brain’s purpose is to analyze information from the environment like a computer would process information. The brain is a physical system, and its pathways to process information are fine-tuned through natural selection. “Pathways” refers to the connections between brain cells, or neurons, that allow messages to travel from one region of the ne...
Your behaviors are a response to the information your brain has gathered from both its internal and external environment. This suggests that understanding your behavior means understanding how you process information, as well as understanding your thought pathways or patterns.
The pathways your brain has created from gathering and processing information have been influenced over time by ancestral environments. These evolutionary thought processes have roots in two main goals: survival and reproduction.
Some evolutionary behaviors may hold no benefit in current environments. But, since cognitive programming may come from your ancestors, it may still contribute to handling modern-day challenges.
The brain has manyevolutionary pathways, each one intended to solve a particular problem your ancestors faced. The more diverse your pathways, the more challenges you’re able to overcome. In other words, you may have pathways in your brain that have not been created by your behaviors but come from the behaviors and experiences of your ancestors.
Each of your preprogrammed pathways allows your brain to categorize your individual experiences. You’re able to compare, analyze, recognize patterns, and develop concepts based on the framework you’ve inherited.
Learn how evolutionary psychology explains human behavior based on natural selection and ancestral traits. Explore the main ideas, examples, and controversies of this theoretical approach in psychology.
Evolutionary psychology is the study of how human behaviour, thought, and feeling are shaped by evolutionary biology. Learn about the origins, methods, and applications of this interdisciplinary field, and explore some examples of evolutionary explanations for social phenomena.
Feb 8, 2008 · Evolutionary psychology is one of many biologically informed approaches to the study of human behavior. Along with cognitive psychologists, evolutionary psychologists propose that much, if not all, of our behavior can be explained by appeal to internal psychological mechanisms.
5 days ago · Evolutionary Psychology is an open access, peer-reviewed journal which focuses on original, empirical research addressing human psychology guided by an evolutionary perspective. View full journal description. This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Learn about evolutionary psychology, an approach to studying human behavior and cognition based on Darwinian adaptationism. Find resources, links, and faculty at Penn who apply evolutionary psychology to various domains.
