University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

It examines psychology through the lens of evolution. How the human psyche has come to be through our "iterative development". Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain useful mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, i.e., as the functional products of natural selection.

Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology makes predictions about numerous areas of human behavior. Key domains of study include memory, mate choice, kinship dynamics, friendship and cooperation, parenting, social organization, and status. These areas are investigated to understand how certain behaviors may have evolved as adaptations.

Areas of Focus in Evolutionary Psychology

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”

Evolutionary Psychology’s theoretical tenets

https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/evolutionary_psychology.htm#:~:text=Evolutionary%20psychology%20is%20a%20theoretical,functional%20products%20of%20natural%20selection.

Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology. (2021, July 10). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology

Evolutionary Psychology Wikipedia

Tooby, J.; Cosmides, L. (1989). "Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, part I. Theoretical considerations". Ethology and Sociobiology. 10 (1–3): 29–49. doi:10.1016/0162-3095(89)90012-5

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