Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology (EP) is a specific theoretical framework within the evolutionary sciences. The EP perspective toward understanding human functioning and behavior has several unique features and cardinal assumptions that make it different from other major perspectives in the evolutionary sciences such as behavioral ecology and co-evolution. Scholars who adopt an EP perspective, for example, assume that the human mind has been shaped by tens of thousands of years of rather focused selection pressures. Over time, these selection pressures have generated domain-specific cognitive algorithms (i.e., cognitive, emotional, or behavioral responses that reliably occur in response to a specific environmental stimulus or set of stimuli). These mechanisms, on average, helped our ancestors make adaptive choices, judgments, and decisions that in turn promoted their survival and reproduction (i.e., ...