Branches of Psychology
Evolutionary Psychology
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Evolutionary psychology is the branch of psychology that explains human cognition and behavior as the product of psychological adaptations shaped by natural selection to solve problems faced by ancestral humans, treating the brain as composed of many specialized mechanisms rather than a single general-purpose learning device.
Facts
Disputed
Key DebateWhether a proposed evolutionary explanation for a psychological trait can actually be tested, given how little is directly known about the ancestral environments in which the trait supposedly evolved. 1 Critics collected in the article's Reception and Criticism section raise testability concerns, doubts about a strictly modular brain, uncertainty about ancestral environments, and the importance of non-genetic and non-adaptive factors; the field's defenders dispute each in turn, and the disagreement is not resolved. Central QuestionWhich human psychological traits are evolved adaptations shaped by natural selection to solve recurring problems faced by ancestral humans? 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Evolutionary Psychology
Wikimedia FoundationLead sectionQuote, Lead section
the human brain is composed of many specialized mechanisms that were shaped by natural selection over a vast period of time
1. Wikipedia: Evolutionary Psychology
Wikimedia FoundationReception and Criticism sectionQuote, Reception and Criticism section
Criticism of evolutionary psychology involves questions of testability, cognitive and evolutionary assumptions
Wikipedia: Leda Cosmides
Wikimedia FoundationIncludes: Leda Cosmides, Opening paragraphQuote, Includes: Leda Cosmides, Opening paragraph
Leda Cosmides is an American psychologist who, together with anthropologist husband John Tooby, pioneered the field of evolutionary psychology.
Wikipedia: John Tooby
Wikimedia FoundationIncludes: John Tooby, Biography sectionQuote, Includes: John Tooby, Biography section
together with his psychologist wife Leda Cosmides, pioneered the field of evolutionary psychology
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Key Debate
Historian Lynn Hunt, evaluating attempts to apply evolutionary and psychological explanation to historical questions, concluded that such "psychohistory" projects collapsed under the weight of their own presuppositions: the ancestral conditions a trait is said to have evolved to solve are asserted rather than independently observed, so an evolutionary account can read history backward from a present-day trait to a conveniently fitting ancestral problem rather than testing the claim against evidence. Evolutionary psychologists reply that convergent evidence across cross-cultural, comparative and cognitive-mechanism studies constrains which adaptive stories are plausible, so the charge of unfalsifiability is overstated. The Wikipedia source frames the underlying disagreement as unresolved: the field's defenders dispute each testability, modularity and ancestral-environment objection in turn, and neither side has settled it.
A dissenting reading, from Lynn Hunt (historian)Wikipedia: Evolutionary Psychology, Wikimedia Foundation
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