--- title: Evolutionary Psychology description: Evolutionary psychology explains the mind as a product of natural selection. You will learn its core hypotheses on mating, cooperation and cognition, the evidence for and against, and the main critiques. category: social-sciences subcategory: psychology difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/evolutionary-psychology --- # Evolutionary Psychology Evolutionary psychology explains the mind as a product of natural selection. You will learn its core hypotheses on mating, cooperation and cognition, the evidence for and against, and the main critiques. ## Available Resources 3 Books • 1 Websites • 2 Papers ## Youtubes ### 1. Human Behavioral Biology, Lecture 2: Behavioral Evolution **Author:** Robert Sapolsky Stanford lecture on the evolutionary logic behind social behavior: individual selection, kin selection, reciprocal altruism and sexual selection, with examples from animal behavior. This lecture gives the evolutionary-biology basis (kin selection, reciprocity, sexual selection) that the mating and cooperation hypotheses depend on, and it is the most-recommended free lecture series in these communities. It is evolutionary biology of behavior, not evolutionary psychology specifically. Lecture 3, Behavioral Evolution II, continues with infanticide, sperm competition and group selection. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Oa4Lp5fLE **Tags:** behavioral-biology, kin-selection, reciprocal-altruism, sexual-selection, natural-selection ## Books ### 1. Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature **Author:** David J. Buller A philosopher of science takes apart the Tooby-Cosmides program. He tests its methodology and its flagship findings, including mate preferences, jealousy, cheater detection and stepparent abuse, against the data, and argues that minds keep adapting instead of being fixed in the Pleistocene. It engages the empirical studies directly rather than making ideological objections. **Difficulty:** Advanced | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262524600?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** evolutionary-psychology, philosophy-of-biology, massive-modularity, adaptationism, mate-preferences ### 2. Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind (7th Edition) **Author:** David M. Buss The standard undergraduate textbook. It is organized by adaptive problem: survival, mating, parenting, kinship, cooperation, aggression, status and culture. Each chapter reviews the empirical studies, and the 7th edition (2024) covers hypotheses that have been empirically disconfirmed. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1032137916?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** evolutionary-psychology, mating-strategies, kin-selection, cooperation, adaptive-problems ### 3. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst **Author:** Robert M. Sapolsky Stanford neuroendocrinologist's account of human behavior, working backward from the neural activity in the seconds before an act through hormones, development, genes, culture and evolution. Readers learn to explain violence, cooperation and morality across multiple biological timescales at once. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/009957506X?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** behavioral-neuroscience, neuroendocrinology, human-behavior, evolution, aggression, morality ## Websites ### 1. Evolutionary Psychology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) **Author:** Stephen M. Downes Peer-reviewed philosophy-of-science entry. It separates evolutionary psychology from behavioral ecology and related programs, examines the massive modularity hypothesis and adaptationist reasoning, and surveys critiques from philosophy of biology, applications to moral psychology, and debates about human nature. This is the best free, current and balanced map of the critiques, and it gives readers the frame to weigh the Primer against Buller. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolutionary-psychology/ **Tags:** evolutionary-psychology, philosophy-of-biology, massive-modularity, adaptationism, human-nature ## Papers ### 1. Evolutionary Psychology: Controversies, Questions, Prospects, and Limitations **Author:** Jaime C. Confer, Judith A. Easton, Diana S. Fleischman, Cari D. Goetz, David M. G. Lewis, Carin Perilloux, David M. Buss American Psychologist review (2010) that takes the most common objections one by one: testability, just-so stories, the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, modularity and genetic determinism. It also sets out the field's own acknowledged limitations and open questions. This is the field's own peer-reviewed reply to its critics, and it pairs directly with Buller and the SEP entry so readers see both sides. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://labs.la.utexas.edu/buss/files/2015/09/evolutionary_psychology_AP_2010.pdf **Tags:** evolutionary-psychology, environment-of-evolutionary-adaptedness, adaptationism, modularity, scientific-method ### 2. Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer **Author:** Leda Cosmides, John Tooby This is the program as its founders state it, free and short, so it is the natural first read. The founders of the field set out its core claims: the mind as information-processing mechanisms shaped by natural selection, the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, domain-specific adaptations, and why the approach differs from older behavioral and cultural explanations. 36-page PDF. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.cep.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Evolutionary-Psychology-A-Primer-CosmidesTooby1993.pdf **Tags:** evolutionary-psychology, domain-specific-adaptations, environment-of-evolutionary-adaptedness, cognitive-science, natural-selection --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/evolutionary-psychology