Evolutionary Psychology

What is Evolutionary Psychology?

Evolutionary psychology is the attempt to understand or explain human behavior from an evolutionary standpoint. An evolutionary psychologist might, for example, try to explain arachnophobia (fear of spiders and scorpions) as an evolutionary adaptation: when our ape-like ancestors encountered spiders, they were often dangerous and extremely poisonous. Those that kept their distance even from harmless spiders were better-protected from the dangers, and so more likely to pass on their genes. Evolutionary psychology is based on the premise that much of our human psychology can be explained in a similar manner – or at least that we can gain insight into our own minds by studying the evolutionary history of our species. This approach is rapidly gaining traction in psychology, and most sub-fields have to one degree or another accepted the basic “adaptationist” premise underpinning evolutionary psychology.

Evolutionary psychology is a dynamic field with far-reaching implications. Many philosophers, for example, are interested in what evolutionary psychology can tell us about moral behavior and the difference between belief and knowledge. Evolutionary psychology is also interesting to philosophers because it plays at the boundaries between human and animal – when, exactly, in our evolutionary lineage, did we become creatures that a modern person would recognize as human? This philosophical quality makes evolutionary psychology an exciting area to study, but is also the source of many objections to evolutionary psychology. Some critics argue that evolutionary psychologists seek to prove too much based on too little evidence. Given that we know so little about our own evolutionary background, can we really derive theories about things as grand as ethics, spirituality, and the human condition from fossilized bones and tools? This is a line of criticism to which future evolutionary psychologists will almost certainly have to respond.

Who should study Evolutionary Psychology?

Evolutionary psychology is a highly academic field, and tends to be only indirectly interested in practical application. If you got into psychology because you wanted to become a psychotherapist or a school counselor, then a career in evolutionary psychology is probably not right for you. Even so, the insights of evolutionary psychologists can be both intellectually stimulating and professionally informative, so most applied psychologists can still benefit from learning about evolutionary psychology.

If, on the other hand, you became interested in psychology because of its philosophical implications – questions about human nature, consciousness, thought, and morality – then evolutionary psychology might prove to be a particularly exciting branch of the discipline. Students who specialize in evolutionary psychology often go on to pursue academic careers in psychology, philosophy, sociology, or neuroscience, and some go into medical or private practice. The field of evolutionary psychology itself, however, exists mainly in academia, so if your dream is to research evolutionary theories and teach students about the biological adaptations of the human mind, you should be ready to go all the way to the PhD level.

The History of Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology inevitably traces its roots back to Charles Darwin, who first formulated the idea of evolution through natural selection. Darwin himself believed that someday his theories might help to explain the human mind, in much the same way that knowing your family history can help you understand your own personality. Darwin also had a profound influence on Sigmund Freud, the father of all psychology, and so in a sense Darwinism has been a part of psychology right from the start. Evolutionary psychology itself, however, was in many ways an offshoot of the study of animal behavior (“ethology”) rather than a branch of traditional psychology. Studies of social and adaptive behavior in animals in the 1960s and 70s, along with steady advances in the field of paleoanthropology (the study of human evolution and ancestry), were the seed for sophisticated evolutionary theories about human behavior.

One of the key theories that has defined recent work in evolutionary psychology is the idea that our evolutionary adaptations are often a hindrance to our success in a modern context. For example, our love of sweet and fatty foods may have been useful in an evolutionary environment where sugar and fat were scarce – it would have encouraged us to stock up on fruits and meat when the opportunity arose – but now, in an industrial world where we have infinite access to these foods, our desire to eat them in abundance leads to serious health problems. Evolutionary psychologists conjecture that many of our psychological distresses spring from a similar mismatch of environments: we may have adapted to behave a certain way a few million years ago, but now that adaptation has become a burden rather than an asset.