It’s probably one of the most worry-inducing yet wildly interesting (curious me, sorry) part of being a woman, whether in a relationship, or single and dating. New fields of science don’t emerge in a flash, and evolutionary psychology-sometimes called modern Darwinism-is no exception.I know we’ve all been through one of the most confusing states that we could ever be in our lifetime one way or another.Īnd that is deciphering whether a man is romantically into us or not. But over the past several years, evolutionary psychology as a discipline has gathered both momentum and respect. A convergence of research and discoveries in genetics, neuropsychology, and paleobiology, among other sciences, evolutionary psychology holds that although human beings today inhabit a thoroughly modern world of space exploration and virtual realities, they do so with the ingrained mentality of Stone Age hunter-gatherers. Homo sapiens emerged on the Savannah Plain some 200,000 years ago, yet according to evolutionary psychology, people today still seek those traits that made survival possible then: an instinct to fight furiously when threatened, for instance, and a drive to trade information and share secrets. Human beings are, in other words, hardwired. You can take the person out of the Stone Age, evolutionary psychologists contend, but you can’t take the Stone Age out of the person. The central proposition of evolutionary psychology-that human beings retain the mentality of their Stone Age forebears-gathers its strength from six convergent sources of scientific research.Īnthropology. By studying societies past and present, Darwinian anthropologists are identifying cultural universals with regard to gender relations, art and ritual, language and thought, and trading and competition. Patterns that recur across all societies, regardless of time and place, are thought to have a strong biogenetic origin.īehavioral Genetics.
Scientists in this field, drawing on research in genetics and on a growing number of studies on twins and adopted children, focus their research on the hereditary components of the mind. They have identified, for instance, several genes thought to control human dispositions, including aspects of temperament and cognitive skills.Ĭomparative Ethology. In particular, they shed light on our basic programming for sexual politics and cooperative behavior and analyzed where they reveal parallels in human behavior.Ĭomparing the mating, status-seeking, and social behaviors of monkeys, chimpanzees and other primates, scientists in this field have observed systematic patterns of behavior and analyzed where they reveal parallels in human behavior.
In particular, they shed light on our basic programming for sexual politics and cooperative behavior. Using a variety of methods, including electrical stimulation, brain surgery, imaging techniques that film the brain in action, scientists in this field try to understand which parts of the brain control emotions and how chemicals in the brain affect thoughts and sensations. Based on their analysis of fossils and ancient human remains, paleontologists believe they have discovered evidence of how human beings lived and how their characteristics adapted to the environment they inhabited. Studying social behavior in experiments and field studies, scientists have tested theories in evolutionary psychology about the conditions under which human beings cooperate, compete, and behave aggressively.
Their findings about universal patterns suggest which impulses and reactions are hardwired into the human psyche.Įven with the convergence of findings in these disciplines, the field of evolutionary psychology is controversial.
Some scientists, for instance, believe that evolutionary psychology overstates the biogenetic origin of cultural mores and norms and understates the capacity of learning and language to shape human nature.
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EARLIEST YEARS OF OUR SPECIES ARE LOST TO TIME FREEįurther, evolutionary psychology clearly challenges what some religions, including Christianity, believe about the creation and free will. And finally, the tenets of evolutionary psychology also directly dispute a great deal of popular management theory, which contends that people can change their personalities if correctly trained or motivated. Thus, evolutionary psychology may not be the only lens through which managers choose to view their work and their world, but it is a challenging perspective that calls for a closer look.
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