Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology emerged in the 1980s out of the young field of sociobiology, the study of evolved biological determinants of human social behavior. Evolutionary psychologists study how and why human beings evolved to use important resources in order to cognitively construct an individual identity. The field of evolutionary psychology has progressed into an independent discipline and has become increasingly popular in both academic research and popular culture. The basic precept is that much of modern human behavior has its roots in the emergence of human social conditions between 20,000 and 100,000 years ago. Scholars in the field refer not only to Darwin's principles of natural (survival) and sexual (reproductive) selection but also to principles of kin selection to describe how much of modern human behavior is related to these basic modes of adaptation in human ancestral environments. Evolution has long described the development of organs and biological systems related to species transmutation. Yet, considering how the brain itself is an organ that is the product of natural and sexual selection has been a relatively recent approach to human behavior. In his study of ant colonies, biologist Edward Wilson saw that evolution is not just the process of individuals but also of the collective social organisms.

Evolutionary psychologists look at specific social behaviors, such as gendered patterns of mating (sexual strategies), that can be explained through biological determinants of reproduction, such as women bearing fetal responsibility. Thus, males tend to benefit from frequency of mating opportunities, and females benefit from selectivity of mating opportunities. Rejecting pure social construction paradigms, evolutionary psychologists describe gendered patterns of aggression, care, and infidelity through mating strategies where males are wired to defend offspring, fight predators, and provide resources until a next mating opportunity arises. Research has also given insight into evolved patterns of racism, group size preferences, and ingroup resource administration.

Critiques of the field have been numerous. The popularity of social construction models in the humanities is evidence of the return of 19th-century modernist approaches that explain all things through biological reasons. In addition, much of the research is criticized for justifying sexist and racist behavior. To defend it, scholars in the field are interested in (a) scientific explanations of behavior that give reasons for unethical behavior free of these social justice concerns, and (b) the description of gendered and social proclivities that can never be used for specific conclusions about any one person. For example, male aggression and patriarchy are seen by social constructionists as purely arbitrary constructions of a culture that affects perceptions of gender, whereas evolutionary psychologists see them as proclivities of humans related to mating patterns in which some societies may not be patriarchal but most will be because of the wired evolved roots of human mating behavior. One important challenge has been to demonstrate evolutionary reasons for human behaviors such as music, art, and religion. The argument is that genetic drift and patterns of evolutionary adaptations can explain such behaviors that should be directly related to survival and mating. For example, Pascal Boyer argues that religion is a by-product of evolution that parallels several specific, evolved patterns of thinking.

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