Evolutionary Psychology

Natural Selection and Evolutionary Biology

Driving evolutionary psychology is evolutionary theory. Critical to the theory of evolution is the fact that humans' primitive ancestors were faced with various selection pressures that compromised their survival. Charles Darwin described evolutionary theory as the progressive modification of species in which design features are altered over time to enable species to adapt to their environment. For improved designs to accumulate and be transferred to kin through genes, members of a species must be able to propagate. An adaptation is simply a successful design feature at a particular moment in time that aids the species to continue. Natural selection is the process by which successful features are passed down from one generation to the next and less successful features eventually are phased out. Over countless generations, the natural selection process designs organisms that are continuously better suited to coping with the current environment. Each design modification serves a particular purpose, or function, for coping with the surroundings. These new designs are transferred from one generation to the next through sexual reproduction. Traits useful to a species cannot be sustained by the species if its members do not reproduce.

Evolutionary biology is specifically concerned with the formation and perpetuation of physical traits in the development of a species. Traits such as humans' eyes, sense of smell, and hands all served a purpose for our ancestors and aided in their survival. These physical features enabled our ancestors to solve adaptive problems in the prehistoric environment, such as [Page 824]locating food and enemies and grasping objects. Researchers in the field of evolutionary biology induce the physical design features of organisms by discovering the adaptive problems those structures and traits solved in the Pleistocene environment.

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