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Content: Evolutionary psychology is the science that seeks to explain through universal mechanisms
of behavior why humans act the way they do (See, Assumptions About EP to Help Guide
You). Evolutionary psychology seeks to reconstruct problems that our ancestors faced in their
primitive environments, and the problem-solving mechanisms they created to meet those
particular challenges. From these reconstructed problem-solving adaptations, the science
then attempts to establish the common roots of our ancestral behavior, and how those
common behavioral roots are manifested today in the widely scattered cultures of the
planet. The goal is to understand human behavior that is
universally aimed at the passing of one's genes
into the next generation. As defined by Tooby and Cosmides:"Evolutionary 
  psychology is simply psychology that is informed by the additional knowledge 
  that evolutionary biology has to offer, in the expectation that understanding 
  the process that designed the human mind will advance the discovery of its architecture." "( The 
  Adapted Mind,Barkow, J.H., Cosmides, L., and Tooby, J. (eds) 1992, 
  Oxford University Press, New York) 
A MORE DETAILED EXPLANATION: At the core of evolutionary psychology is the
belief that all humans on the planet have innate areas in their brains which
have specific knowledge that help them adapt to local environments. These areas
are highly specialized, and only activate when the information is needed. These
areas give the brain specific algorithmic (step by step)
instructions that have evolved from our ancestral pasts to adapt to all
situations, including the situations that we face today. But since our brains
were conditioned to live in deep history, as E.O. Wilson has named our ancestral
past, and not to modern conditions, the result is a gray area between genes and
culture that drives some humans into depressive states.