Title: Evolutionary Psychology [The Human Condition]
Headings: Evolutionary Psychology
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Table of Contents
Evolutionary Psychology
What We Think
So it's all about Sex?
Selfishness, Violence and Prejudice
Internal Controversies
Discussion
The Development of Consciousness

Content: Most people are kind, decent, peaceful and law-abiding, yet evolutionary psychologists explain self-serving and violent behavior as just another strategy for reproductive success. Furthermore, evolutionary psychology has had big problems with altruism, and at time seems to say that everything we do either has some hidden selfish motive (such as favoring relatives) or is basically a mistake. The convergence of evolutionary psychology with anthropology and social psychology has resulted a tentative solution to the “problem of altruism”, but only by pushing the violence and competition up a level, so that it is now between social groups. Paradoxically, one of the clearest examples of altruistic behavior is risking death in battle to defend the community. Furthermore, evolutionary social psychology argues that humans are not only innately selfish, but also innately groupish, tending to favor whatever group we find ourselves part of. This is unpleasantly like racism and other forms of prejudice. The question of morality and whether humans are basically good or evil is big enough that it must be discussed elsewhere (see Good Or Evil? ). Here we ask why evolutionary psychology is so obsessed with the unsavory side of human behavior. Some degree of selfishness is necessary to sustain human life; with no selfishness there is no life, and the moral discussion is cut short.