Evolutionary psychology
From RationalWiki
Evolutionary psychology is the science of attempting to explain complex human behaviour in terms of the survival advantages that such behavior gives up, i.e., by natural selection. In the broadest sense, behaviors or social constructs, such as altruism, condemnation of crime or patriarchal social structure, are seen as adaptations in the same way as physical adaptations. The long term evolutionary effects of such behaviors go a long way to explaining why some behaviours are universally seen among all humans or some groups of animals.
Contents |
[edit] Use of evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology has been quite successful at explain previously unexplained things such as altruism, partially replacing ideas such as group selection. Mating rituals and the differences between genders are also a major focus of evolutionary psychology.
[edit] Problems with popular evolutionary psychology
In general, the idea of applying natural selection to behaviour is controversial. In some cases it works, in others it doesn't and it is important to keep this in mind. This is not to say that behaviours can't confer an advantage in the natural selection process, it's just that the law of "I'm sorry, it's a little more complicated than that" applies very well to evolutionary psychology.
The mainstream media and pop science loves evolutionary psychology. In the specific cases or studies brought to the public's attention in newspaper articles, situations are often over-simplified to the point of being plain silly. An example being a supposed "study" which explains why boys prefer blue and girls prefer pink. In the view of pop-evolutionary psychology, this is because women being gatherers and men being hunters, liking pink was most likely to allow you to find berries so women grew to be attracted to pink. So far, so common sense, however, the idea completely ignores many established facts. Such that colour preferences change from place to place, and even that in the western world (where the concept of gender specific colours is strongest) 100 years ago it was reversed; i.e., a soft colour such as blue was for girls, while men preferred associations with strong, passionate colours such as red and pink.[1]
