Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

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Psychology is often a lot of very separate pieces of experimental work about how a mind does this or that. I think evolutionary psychology is necessarily the theory that’s got to underpin all that, because for the bits of our mind with lots of specialized mechanisms to have evolved, they must have given our ancestors some benefit. Evolutionary psychology is very good at proposing hypotheses for how humans might behave on a large basis and testing those; and also for explaining some of the narrower questions, why there are particular quirks in our brain, or why we behave in a particular way. Fascinating. In terms of understanding homicide as a psychological phenomenon, this is not to suggest that murderers are actually making evolutionary calculations in an explicit way, right? Albeit probably Pinker knows better and would deny the above claims, “How the Mind Works” gives readers the idea that organisms are perfect, machine-like adaptations and that evolution works better than any humanly engineered system. And from the same author, but slightly more focused on “ sexual conflict“, also see “ When Men Behave Badly“.

Evolutionary Psychology (233 books) - Goodreads Evolutionary Psychology (233 books) - Goodreads

Your next evolutionary psychology book recommendation is Martin Daly and Margo Wilson’s Homicide. This looks at the possible motives for murder as a product of the process of evolution. Is that a fair way to summarise it? The Illusion of Conscious Will is ostensibly a social psychology book, as opposed to an evolutionary psychology book. Wegner was at Harvard, and is one of the greatest ever psychologists. He argues that we are usually mistaken about this impression of conscious will; we usually infer an intention to do something from our actions, rather than from actually being able to consciously make something happen. The “perfect designer fallacy”: the idea that evolution will always shape organisms to be the best possible adaptations for the environment Evolutionary psychology is a revolutionary new science, a true synthesis of modern principles of psychology and evolutionary biology. Since the publication of the award-winning first edition of Evolutionary Psychology, there has been an explosion of research within the field. In this book, David M. Buss examines human behavior from an evolutionary perspective, providing students with the conceptual tools needed to study evolutionary psychology and apply them to empirical research on the human mind.

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Bust most of the basic tenets of evolutionary psychology are still the same, and they are well represented in “The Moral Animal”. And still live in a world where the truth must be defended tooth and claw -ironic since the leftist blank slate dogma denies humans have any inherent drive towards conflict and competition-. The first one is a well-accepted and well-supported concept in evolutionary psychology -and by any intelligent person-, so it feels like making a case against a strawman. But overall… All good there. This is known as Lanchester’s square law. It was discovered in the First World War. It’s about the use of bullets, but it applies more broadly and means that the cost of punishing people, when you are in agreement that someone should be punished, are dramatically lower for humans than for other animals. And if the costs are lower, it’s more likely to evolve. Other academics have done some of the numerical simulations and, again, show what he predicted from that basic premise. So that’s the central idea. But when he pretends he is being a neutral and evidence-based writer, then he is doing a disservice to science. Sperm Wars

Essential Evolutionary Psychology | SAGE Publications Ltd Essential Evolutionary Psychology | SAGE Publications Ltd

If I had to put these two head to head, I frankly wouldn’t know which one is better -they’re both just great. For example, the standard model of courtship communication was that animals (and humans) communicate about themselves to facilitate mating. However, Dawkins and Krebs realized that communication is sometimes cooperative and sometimes about the deception of one’s true fitness and intentions ( Dawkins & Krebs, 1978). Diamond thinks that the public, you and I, need his convincing. Or you might never know that we espouse one of those ugly racist theories daring to say that genes matter and that different people might differ. Genetic mutations are not always an “evolution” of the past in the sense of “being better” but they develop as simple variations that can either be helpful, harmful, or neutral.When I first read “ The Social Animal” by Elliot Aronson I thought there could be no better book on psychology, social psychology, and people.