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Evolutionary Psychology’s theoretical tenets

  1. The brain is a computer designed by natural selection to extract information from the environment.
  2. Individual human behavior is generated by this evolved computer in response to information it extracts from the environment. Understanding behavior requires articulating the cognitive programs that generate the behavior.
  3. The cognitive programs of the human brain are adaptations. They exist because they produced behavior in our ancestors that enabled them to survive and reproduce.
  4. The cognitive programs of the human brain may not be adaptive now; they were adaptive in ancestral environments.
  5. Natural selection ensures that the brain is composed of many different special purpose programs and not a domain general architecture.
  6. Describing the evolved computational architecture of our brains “allows a systematic understanding of cultural and social phenomena”

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Updated 2021-07-11

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