evolutionary psychology
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Author(s):  
Jon D. Wisman

Whereas President Barack Obama identified inequality as “the defining challenge of our time,” this book claims more: it is the defining issue of all human history. The struggle over inequality has been the underlying force driving human history’s unfolding. Drawing on the dynamics of inequality, this book reinterprets history and society. Beyond according inequality the central role in human history, this book is novel in two other respects. First, transcending the general failure of social scientists and historians to anchor their work in explicit theories of human behavior, this book grounds the origins and dynamics of inequality in evolutionary psychology, or, more specifically, Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. Second, this book is novel in according central importance to the critical historical role of ideology in legitimating inequality, a role typically ignored or given little attention by social scientists and historians. Because of the central role of inequality in history, inequality’s explosion over the past 45 years has not been an anomaly. It is a return to the political dynamics by which elites have, since the rise of the state, taken practically everything for themselves, leaving all others with little more than the means with which to survive. Due to elites’ persuasive ideology, even after workers in advanced capitalist countries gained the franchise to become the overwhelming majority of voters, inequality continued to increase. The anomaly is that the only intentional politically driven decline in inequality occurred between the 1930s and 1970s following the Great Depression’s partial delegitimation (this should remain delegitimation globally) of elites’ ideology.


2021 ◽  
pp. 232102222110514
Author(s):  
Sergio Da Silva ◽  
Werley Cordeiro

The frequency of lovemaking minus the frequency of quarrels is claimed to predict marital stability. Here, we set up a family economics model using insights from evolutionary psychology to ground this ad hoc formula. JEL Classifications: D10, D91, J12


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaochun Zhao

The innovation ecosystem is distinct from innovation itself; the former is based on technology, talent and markets, as well as many other elements of innovation that form the organisational system. Current research on the innovation ecosystem has primarily focused on theoretical discussions of the concept and analysis of evolution mechanisms and influential factors; however, research on mechanisms that influence cooperation and competition within the system is limited. Corporation and competition are the critical elements in the acquisition value of the innovation ecosystem and the realisation of innovation breakthroughs. Given the dynamic nature and complexity of the innovation ecosystem, this research is based on the “value co-creation” theory of innovation ecosystems and consistency with the “reciprocity” principle of evolutionary psychology. Understanding the mechanisms that underlie corporation and competition in the innovation ecosystem from the perspective of evolutionary psychology may foster more efficient cooperation and competition among enterprises, enabling them to realise the value of co-creation and innovation breakthroughs.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darcia Narvaez ◽  
David S. Moore ◽  
David C. Witherington ◽  
Timothy I. Vandiver ◽  
Robert Lickliter

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Matt Gers

<p>Human behaviour is largely influenced by culture. Culture evolves cumulatively over time. The origins of culture in our lineage necessitated the evolution of psychological biases so humans could tractably navigate the emerging information environment. I examine the nature of these biases and conclude that they are unlikely to be genetically coded to any significant degree. This is because of the flexibility such biases needed to possess in the face of fluid cultural environments and because of the developmental mechanisms of the brain. I further outline three possible views on what the nature of the information these biases act upon might be. First there is the view that cultural information is constructed and held in individual minds but does not flow in any meaningful replicative fashion between minds. Second is the view that culture is information distributed in a population and cultural evolution is the temporal change of this populationlevel information as a result of low fidelity individual copying events. Finally, I argue that meme theory, which asserts that culture is usefully seen as bits of information that replicate in transmission, is a fruitful model of cultural evolution. Keywords Cognition, cultural evolution, culture, evolutionary psychology, memes, neuroconstructivism, psychological biases.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Matt Gers

<p>Human behaviour is largely influenced by culture. Culture evolves cumulatively over time. The origins of culture in our lineage necessitated the evolution of psychological biases so humans could tractably navigate the emerging information environment. I examine the nature of these biases and conclude that they are unlikely to be genetically coded to any significant degree. This is because of the flexibility such biases needed to possess in the face of fluid cultural environments and because of the developmental mechanisms of the brain. I further outline three possible views on what the nature of the information these biases act upon might be. First there is the view that cultural information is constructed and held in individual minds but does not flow in any meaningful replicative fashion between minds. Second is the view that culture is information distributed in a population and cultural evolution is the temporal change of this populationlevel information as a result of low fidelity individual copying events. Finally, I argue that meme theory, which asserts that culture is usefully seen as bits of information that replicate in transmission, is a fruitful model of cultural evolution. Keywords Cognition, cultural evolution, culture, evolutionary psychology, memes, neuroconstructivism, psychological biases.</p>


2021 ◽  
pp. 174569162199711
Author(s):  
David Pietraszewski ◽  
Annie E. Wertz

A debate surrounding modularity—the notion that the mind may be exclusively composed of distinct systems or modules—has held philosophers and psychologists captive for nearly 40 years. Concern about this thesis—which has come to be known as the massive modularity debate—serves as the primary grounds for skepticism of evolutionary psychology’s claims about the mind. In this article we argue that the entirety of this debate, and the very notion of massive modularity itself, is ill-posed and confused. In particular, it is based on a confusion about the level of analysis (or reduction) at which one is approaching the mind. Here we provide a framework for clarifying at what level of analysis one is approaching the mind and explain how a systemic failure to distinguish between different levels of analysis has led to profound misunderstandings of not only evolutionary psychology but also of the entire cognitivist enterprise of approaching the mind at the level of the mechanism. We furthermore suggest that confusions between different levels of analysis are endemic throughout the psychological sciences—extending well beyond issues of modularity and evolutionary psychology. Therefore, researchers in all areas should take preventive measures to avoid this confusion in the future.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Nettle ◽  
Thom Scott-Phillips

The last thirty years has seen the emergence of a self-styled ‘evolutionary’ paradigm within psychology (henceforth, EP). EP is often presented and critiqued as a distinctive, contentious paradigm, to be contrasted with other accounts of human psychology. However, little attention has been paid to the sense in which those other accounts are not evolutionary, or at least evolutionalizable. We distinguish between a commitment to evolution, and a more specific commitment to adaptationism. We argue that all formulable accounts of human psychology are evolutionary in a real sense: non-evolutionary psychology is impossible. Not all psychologies are explicitly adaptationist, but those that are not still draw on informal notions of organismal function, and thus implicitly require at least a weak version of adaptationism. We argue that the really distinctive and contentious feature of EP is not its commitment to evolution, or even adaptationism. It is the commitment to domain-specificity and the associated multiplicity of innately specialized psychological mechanisms. This commitment entails a narrow parsing of what an adaptive problem is, and has the consequence that the science of psychology ends up consisting of many narrow proximal explanations, rather than a few broad ones. We illustrate this thesis by examining a range of paradigms that can be seen as competitors to canonical EP: social role theory; cultural evolutionary psychology and dual inheritance theory; Bayesian cognitive science; and Giddens’ social theory. Narrow versus broad functional specialization emerges as the central locus of difference between the different psychologies we review.


2021 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-253
Author(s):  
Tamás Bereczkei ◽  
József Topál

Tanulmányunkban arra teszünk kísérletet, hogy áttekintsük a hazai pszichológiai életben megjelenő és egyre markánsabb szerepet játszó evolúciós megközelítéseket. Bemutatjuk a 30 évvel ezelőtti állapotokat és azokat a neves kutatókat, akik az evolúciós pszichológia magyarországi létrejötte mellett bábáskodtak. Ezt követően részletesen is beszámolunk azokról a kutatásokról, amelyek a két nagy hazai evolúciós kutatóműhelyben jöttek létre, nevezetesen a Pécsi Evolúciós Pszichológia Kutatócsoportban és az MTA–ELTE Összehasonlító Etológiai Kutatócsoportból kinőtt teamekben. Végül röviden bemutatjuk azokat az eredményeket, amelyek e két nagy műhelyen kívül születtek egy-egy pszichológiai jelenség evolúciós értelmezése kapcsán. In our paper, we make an attempt to overview those evolutionary approaches that have developed and become increasingly influencing in the Hungarian psychological life. We show the conditions 30 years ago, and those gifted scholars who contributed to the development of evolutionary psychology in Hungary. Then, we give a detailed review on the studies that have been fulfilled in the two basic research centers in Hungary: the Evolutionary Psychology Research Group of Pécs, and the MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethological Team. Finally, we describe the scientific results that have been achieved in the interpretation of specific psychological phenomena outside these main research centers.


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