Title: Evolutionary Theory and Psychology
Headings: Evolutionary Theory and Psychology
Science Briefs
Evolutionary Theory and Psychology
Darwin’s Influence on Modern Psychological Science
By David M. Buss
Reference
Evolutionary Psychology and the Evolution of Psychology
By Daniel J. Kruger
References
Darwinizing the Social Sciences
By Robert Kurzban
Darwinian Psychology: Where the Present Meets the Past
By Debra Lieberman and Martie Haselton
Reference
Psychology's Best Discovery Heuristic
By Edouard Machery
Reference
Survival of the Fittest?
Just what does Darwin tell us about the human mind?
By Gary Marcus
Reference
References
Evolution of Human Sex Differences
By Wendy Wood and Alice H. Eagly
References

Content: More generally, evolutionary psychology breaks down the barriers between the traditional sub-disciplines of psychology. A proper description of psychological adaptations must include identifying perceptual input, cognitive processing, and developmental emergence. Many mechanisms evolved to solve social adaptive problems, such as when social anxiety functions to motivate behavior that prevents an individual from losing status within a group. And all adaptations can malfunction, as when social anxiety becomes paralyzing rather than functional, making clinical psychology relevant. The key point is that organizing psychology around adaptive problems and evolved psychological solutions, rather than around the somewhat arbitrary sub-fields such as cognitive, social, and developmental, dissolves historically restrictive branch boundaries. Evolutionary psychology provides a metatheory for psychological science that unites these fields, and justifies why the seemingly disparate branches of psychology truly belong within the covers of introductory psychology books and within the same departments of psychology. Reference
Buss, D. M. (2009). The great struggles of life: Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary psychology. American Psychologist, 64, 140-148.