"Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective."
It explores the evolutionary basis of behavior and how it has adapted to the environment.
Natural selection: The process by which certain traits become more or less common in a population over time as they affect survival and reproduction.
Adaptation: Any trait that has been shaped by natural selection in order to help organisms better survive and reproduce in their environment.
Genetic drift: The effect of chance events on the frequencies of alleles (versions of genes) in a population over time.
Sexual selection: A type of natural selection that concerns the traits that make individuals more likely to obtain mates and reproduce.
Kin selection: The idea that natural selection can act on traits that benefit not only an individual's own survival and reproduction, but also those of their relatives who share their genes.
Eusociality: A social organization in which individuals within a colony or group divide labor and cooperate in rearing offspring, with a reproductive division of labor (for example, sterile worker ants and bees).
Parental investment: Any investment of time, energy, or resources that benefits an individual's offspring at the expense of the parent's own ability to invest in additional offspring.
Mating strategies: The behaviors and tactics individuals use to attract, choose, and compete for mates.
Life history theory: The study of how organisms allocate limited resources to various life activities such as growth, reproduction, and survival.
Cognitive adaptations: Mental processes and structures that have been shaped by natural selection to efficiently solve recurrent problems in the environment.
Emotion: A complex psychological state that involves a subjective feeling, a physiological response, and often an observable behavior, that is associated with a particular situation or experience.
Sensory adaptations: Physical changes that increase the sensitivity of an organism's sensory systems to information that is relevant to survival and reproduction.
Culture: The beliefs, values, behaviors, and artifacts that make up the shared way of life of a group of people, which can be transmitted across generations.
Evolutionary mismatch: The idea that some traits and behaviors that were adaptive in ancestral environments may be maladaptive in modern environments, leading to physical and psychological problems.
"It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evolved to solve."
"Psychological traits and mechanisms are either functional products of natural and sexual selection or non-adaptive by-products of other adaptive traits."
"Evolutionary psychologists apply the same thinking in psychology, arguing that just as the heart evolved to pump blood, and the liver evolved to detoxify poisons, there is modularity of mind in that different psychological mechanisms evolved to solve different adaptive problems."
"Much of human behavior is the output of psychological adaptations that evolved to solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments."
"Behaviors or traits that occur universally in all cultures are good candidates for evolutionary adaptations."
"Abilities to infer others' emotions, discern kin from non-kin, identify and prefer healthier mates, and cooperate with others."
"Economics, environment, health, law, management, psychiatry, politics, and literature."
"Questions of testability, cognitive and evolutionary assumptions, importance of non-genetic and non-adaptive explanations, as well as political and ethical issues due to interpretations of research results."
"Evolutionary psychologists frequently engage with and respond to such criticisms."
"Evolutionary theory can provide a foundational, metatheoretical framework that integrates the entire field of psychology in the same way evolutionary biology has for biology."
"There is modularity of mind in that different psychological mechanisms evolved to solve different adaptive problems."
"Findings have been made regarding human social behavior related to infanticide, intelligence, marriage patterns, promiscuity, perception of beauty, bride price, and parental investment."
"Economics, environment, health, law, management, psychiatry, politics, and literature."
"Psychological traits and mechanisms are either functional products of natural and sexual selection or non-adaptive by-products of other adaptive traits."
"Evolutionary psychology examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective."
"Psychological traits and mechanisms are either functional products of natural and sexual selection or non-adaptive by-products of other adaptive traits."
"Abilities to infer others' emotions, discern kin from non-kin, identify and prefer healthier mates, and cooperate with others."
"Economics, environment, health, law, management, psychiatry, politics, and literature."
"Questions of testability, cognitive and evolutionary assumptions, importance of non-genetic and non-adaptive explanations, as well as political and ethical issues due to interpretations of research results."