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Viren Swami trained as an evolutionary psychologist, and for his doctorate examined the roles that body shape and weight play in judgements of physical attractiveness across cultures. Viren’s current research in the area focuses on the influence of evolution, culture, and individual psychology on perceptions of human beauty, and his work has been widely discussed in national and international media. Viren is also currently conducting research in other fields of interpersonal attraction, including identifying predictors of positive body image, the effect of romantic love on partner perceptions, weight-based discrimination, and the history of beauty in art and sculpture. Other current projects include research on sociocultural adjustment among sojourners, and cross-cultural differences in lay beliefs about various topics, including intelligence, conspiracy theories, mental illness, and extraterrestrial life.

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The last decade has witnessed an exciting change in our understanding of the way in which the mind operates the reasons behind a myriad of human behaviours. The traditional idea that nurture trumps nature in explanations of human behaviour has been supplanted by Evolutionary Psychologists, who argue that human beings share evolved mental architectures that govern their behaviour. Indeed, Evolutionary Psychological explanations have been postulated for all manner of human behaviour, from mate choice preferences to jealousy, cheater detection to suicide bombing. Yet, not all research groups are in agreement with this perspective: some authors have challenged the Evolutionary Psychological focus on biological or genetic explanations of behaviour, while others suggest that the Evolutionary Psychological paradigm is methodologically flawed. To be sure, it is now possible to find critiques of Evolutionary Psychology from different viewpoints, and a common theme shared by such critiques is that an evolutionary approach to psychology is welcome but not sufficient. This volume, which will serve as an introduction to evolutionary approaches to psychology, will bring together seminal work in the field and explore the ways in which evolutionary psychological research can illuminate our understanding of human behaviours and nature. Together, the chapters in this volume will present a fresh perspective on evolutionary approaches to psychology, critically evaluating the extant literature while maintaining the need for evolutionary psychologies.

Most introductions to evolutionary approaches to psychology tend to take an uncritical stand, stemming from what has been dubbed ‘Evolutionary Psychological’ viewpoints. The current volume begins from the same vantage point – that an evolutionary psychology is required – but nevertheless critically examines the extant literature from different evolutionary perspectives (e.g., developmental systems sciences, evolutionary biology, evolutionary developmental psychology, cultural studies, etc). The list of potential authors (see attached document) has been compiled to reflect this critical approach.

Aus dem Klappentext

The last decade has witnessed an exciting change in our understanding of the way in which the mind operates the reasons behind a myriad of human behaviours. The traditional idea that nurture trumps nature in explanations of human behaviour has been supplanted by Evolutionary Psychologists, who argue that human beings share evolved mental architectures that govern their behaviour. Indeed, Evolutionary Psychological explanations have been postulated for all manner of human behaviour, from mate choice preferences to jealousy, cheater detection to suicide bombing. Yet, not all research groups are in agreement with this perspective: some authors have challenged the Evolutionary Psychological focus on biological or genetic explanations of behaviour, while others suggest that the Evolutionary Psychological paradigm is methodologically flawed. To be sure, it is now possible to find critiques of Evolutionary Psychology from different viewpoints, and a common theme shared by such critiques is that an evolutionary approach to psychology is welcome but not sufficient. This volume, which will serve as an introduction to evolutionary approaches to psychology, will bring together seminal work in the field and explore the ways in which evolutionary psychological research can illuminate our understanding of human behaviours and nature. Together, the chapters in this volume will present a fresh perspective on evolutionary approaches to psychology, critically evaluating the extant literature while maintaining the need for evolutionary psychologies.

Most introductions to evolutionary approaches to psychology tend to take an uncritical stand, stemming from what has been dubbed ‘Evolutionary Psychological’ viewpoints. The current volume begins from the same vantage point – that an evolutionary psychology is required – but nevertheless critically examines the extant literature from different evolutionary perspectives (e.g., developmental systems sciences, evolutionary biology, evolutionary developmental psychology, cultural studies, etc). The list of potential authors (see attached document) has been compiled to reflect this critical approach.

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Evolutionary Psychology

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 5 Plasticity and evolution 12

FITNESS, SOCIOBIOLOGY AND LIFE HISTORY THEORY 16

EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY 21

CONCLUSION 25

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 27

REFERENCES 27

Evolutionary theory was first applied to the behavioural sciences by Darwin (1871, 1872). Since then the field of evolutionary behavioural science has blossomed. The history of this field is detailed and well-rehearsed within the literature (e.g. Buss, 2008; Dennett, 1995) and it would not be possible to do it justice within the confines of a chapter. Instead, this chapter will introduce a particular perspective on evolutionary behavioural science in the hope that it will act as a stimulus to discussion and help the reader to unravel subsequent chapters in this volume. Inevitably, there is some historical detail in order to contextualise certain points, but this chapter is far from a complete history. I hope that historically minded readers will forgive this.

This volume is about evolutionary psychology, but I have chosen to write a chapter about evolutionary behavioural science. Psychology is, of course, a behavioural science and much activity within the discipline is solely about measuring behaviour. However, psychology is also interested in endocrine, neurological and cognitive mechanisms that all cause behaviour, and these mechanisms are discussed in computational or information-processing terms. These mechanisms can be said to mediate inputoutput relations, with the final outputs being behavioural. Evolutionary theory is used in order to discuss the functions of behaviour – what any given behaviour is designed to achieve – and to determine the functional limits for underlying psychological mechanisms. Evolutionary theory, then, gives us an ultimate explanation (Tinbergen, 1963) that helps us to develop accounts of the kinds of proximate mechanisms that constitute, in this case, the psychology of an organism; it does not tell us the detail of those mechanisms, which is a task left to the proximate methods of the discipline of psychology. This chapter discusses the breadth of this application, hence its focus on evolutionary behavioural science as a whole.

Evolutionary theory is a theory of design. Before moving on to discuss the process of evolution, it is important to clarify this key notion of design. Design is not confined to organic life, and an unnatural example will help to abstract the fundamental features of this concept. Think of a simple robot with the task of moving across a room whilst avoiding various obstacles (see Dickins and Dickins, 2008, for a fuller treatment of this example; and also Braitenberg, 1984). One possible design for such a robot would be based around a simple car chassis. It would have four wheels, two at the front and two at the back. The back wheels would be attached to a motor each, to power them independently. At the front of the robot, there would be two depression paddles. The left paddle would be connected to the back right motor; the right paddle would be connected to the back left motor. These connections would be inhibitory, such that depressing the left paddle would stop the right motor. As the left motor is still going, the robot would turn to the right (see Figure 1.1). In the same way, depressing the right paddle would cause the robot to turn left. In this way, obstacles would be avoided and the robot could continue its travels across the room.

The robot clearly has a function and has been designed, by an engineer, to meet this function. The depression paddles are an essential part of this design for they are the robot's only source of inputs from the outside world and, to this extent, they act as a sensory system. The only knowledge this robot has of the outside world, through which it has to move, is through these paddles. To this end, its only experience of the world is tactile and such inputs are the only inputs of any importance. The robot could be bathed in light and sound but such things will have no effect because the robot has not been designed to use them.

There is much discussion about the relationship between function and knowledge in the philosophical literature (e.g. see Millikan, 1993). I am using the term loosely in this chapter to imply a meeting of design and environment such that the robot, in this case, can deliver its functions. So, if a design provides a good fit to the environment the design embodies facts about that environment and in this sense represents something about the environment. This relates to the difference between environment and ecology that is mentioned later. I am not seeking to discuss notions of content, concepts, meta-representational states and all else associated with high-order cognition. However, the astute reader will realise that there is a relationship to be drawn out.

We can characterise the robot's design as a series of conditional rules, such that the robot's architecture embodies a number of possible decisions. Informally, we can say:

If (P1: the right paddle is depressed) then (Q1: turn left) If (P2: the left paddle is depressed) then (Q2: turn right)

These conditional rules can readily be translated into more technical terminology that captures the actual mechanical actions made to move from P to Q. This may appear superfluous or, worse still, an exercise in artificial formalism. It is certainly a simple point that this robot can be described in this way. However, the point extends to all organisms and all biological systems. Think of a bat; bats navigate and hunt using echolocation. They emit pulses of sound and listen for a returning echo in order to locate the distance and direction of moths. Distance is easy enough to calculate as sound travels at a constant speed; so, simply timing the duration from utterance to received echo and then dividing it by two will give the distance. Bats have cognition that enables them to calculate the distance and, to some extent, you could argue that bat cognition encompasses this simple mathematical algorithm; it represents a truth about the world.

Bats determine direction of prey by calculating whether the echo reaches their right or left ear sooner. Folds within the ear help to determine the vertical positioning of the bat owing to the angle at which the sound hits the ear. Smaller objects reflect sound less intensely than larger ones and inbuilt knowledge of the sizes of suitable prey determines whether the bat will treat the echo as indicative of food. The sounds that bats emit are at very high frequencies, often too high for human ears. They are also at extremely loud volumes – indeed, if they were within the human frequency range but at the same volume, they would be damaging. This is clearly an issue for the bats. To counter this, they temporarily deafen themselves whilst emitting the sound, and then switch their hearing back on to receive the echo.

There is more to say about the biology of bat echolocation (see Altringham, 1999), but from this account you can see that we are dealing with systems that deliver outputs and that they are describable in terms of decision rules. So, for example, horizontal location during hunting can be characterised as follows:

If (P1: left ear input first) then (Q1: dip left wing and raise...