History of evolutionary psychology - wikipedia History of evolutionary psychology The history of evolutionary psychology began with Charles Darwin, who said that humans have social instincts that evolved by natural selection. Darwin 's work inspired later psychologists such as William James and Sigmund Freud but for most of the 20th century psychologists focused more on behaviorism and proximate explanations for human behavior. E.O. Wilson 's landmark 1975 book, Sociobiology, synthesized recent theoretical advances in evolutionary theory to explain social behavior in animals, including humans. Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby popularized the term `` evolutionary psychology '' in their 1992 book The Adapted Mind : Evolutionary Psychology and The Generation of Culture. Like sociobiology before it, evolutionary psychology has been embroiled in controversy, but evolutionary psychologists see their field as gaining increased acceptance overall. Contents 1 19th century 2 20th century 3 Post world war II 4 Sociobiology 5 Modern use of the term `` evolutionary psychology '' 6 See also 7 Notes 19th century After his seminal work in developing theories of natural selection, Charles Darwin devoted much of his final years to the study of animal emotions and psychology. He wrote two books ; The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex in 1871 and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals in 1872 that dealt with topics related to evolutionary psychology. He introduced the concepts of sexual selection to explain the presence of animal structures that seemed unrelated to survival, such as the peacock 's tail. He also introduced theories concerning group selection and kin selection to explain altruism. Darwin pondered why humans and animals were often generous to their group members. Darwin felt that acts of generosity decreased the fitness of generous individuals. This fact contradicted natural selection which favored the fittest individual. Darwin concluded that while generosity decreased the fitness of individuals, generosity would increase the fitness of a group. In this case, altruism arose due to competition between groups. The following quote, from Darwin 's Origin of Species, is often interpreted by evolutionary psychologists as indication of his foreshadowing the emergence of the field : In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. -- Darwin, Charles ( 1859 ). The Origin of Species. Wikisource. p. 488. 20th century Darwin 's theory inspired William James 's functionalist approach to psychology. At the core of his theory was a system of `` instincts. '' James wrote that humans had many instincts, even more than other animals. These instincts, he said, could be overridden by experience and by each other, as many of the instincts were actually in conflict with each other. In their Evolutionary Psychology Primer Tooby and Cosmides make note of James ' perspective, and also quote him : `` We do not realize that ' normal ' behavior needs to be explained at all. This `` instinct blindness '' makes the study of psychology difficult. To get past this problem, James suggested that we try to make the `` natural seem strange '' : It takes... a mind debauched by learning to carry the process of making the natural seem strange, so far as to ask for the why of any instinctive human act. To the metaphysician alone can such questions occur as : Why do we smile, when pleased, and not scowl ? Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as we talk to a single friend ? Why does a particular maiden turn our wits so upside - down ? The common man can only say, Of course we smile, of course our heart palpitates at the sight of the crowd, of course we love the maiden, that beautiful soul clad in that perfect form, so palpably and flagrantly made for all eternity to be loved ! And so, probably, does each animal feel about the particular things it tends to do in the presence of particular objects... To the lion it is the lioness which is made to be loved ; to the bear, the she - bear. To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating and precious and never - to - be-too - much - sat - upon object which it is to her. Thus we may be sure that, however mysterious some animals ' instincts may appear to us, our instincts will appear no less mysterious to them. ( William James, 1890 ) In our view, William James was right about evolutionary psychology. Making the natural seem strange is unnatural -- it requires the twisted outlook seen, for example, in Gary Larson cartoons. Yet it is a pivotal part of the enterprise. Many psychologists avoid the study of natural competences, thinking that there is nothing there to be explained. '' According to Noam Chomsky, perhaps Anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin could be credited as having founded evolutionary psychology, when in his 1902 book Mutual Aid : A Factor of Evolution he argued that the human instinct for cooperation and mutual aid could be seen as stemming from evolutionary adaption. William McDougall made a reference to `` evolutionary psychology '' in his 1919 book An Introduction to Social Psychology : `` It is only a comparative and evolutionary psychology that can provide the needed basis ( for psychology ) ; and this could not be created before the work of Darwin had convinced men of the continuity of human with animal evolution as regards all bodily characters, and had prepared the way for the quickly following recognition of the similar continuity of man 's mental evolution with that of the animal world. '' ( p. 16 ) Post world war ii While Darwin 's theories on natural selection gained acceptance in the early part of the 20th century, his theories on evolutionary psychology were largely ignored. Only after the second world war, in the 1950s, did interest increase in the systematic study of animal behavior. It was during this period that the modern field of ethology emerged. Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen were pioneers in developing the theoretical framework for ethology for which they would receive a Nobel prize in 1973. Desmond Morris 's book The Naked Ape attempted to frame human behavior in the context of evolution, but his explanations failed to convince academics because they were based on a teleological ( goal - oriented ) understanding of evolution. For example, he said that the pair bond evolved so that men who were out hunting could trust that their mates back home were not having sex with other men. Sociobiology In 1975, E.O. Wilson built upon the works of Lorenz and Tinbergen by combining studies of animal behavior, social behavior and evolutionary theory in his book Sociobiology : The New Synthesis. Wilson included a chapter on human behavior. Wilson 's application of evolutionary analysis to human behavior caused bitter debate. With the publication of Sociobiology, evolutionary thinking for the first time had an identifiable presence in the field of psychology. E.O. Wilson argues that the field of evolutionary psychology is essentially the same as `` human sociobiology ''. Edward H. Hagen writes in The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology that sociobiology is, despite the public controversy regarding the applications to humans, `` one of the scientific triumphs of the twentieth century. '' `` Sociobiology is now part of the core research and curriculum of virtually all biology departments, and it is a foundation of the work of almost all field biologists '' Sociobiological research on nonhuman organisms has increased dramatically and appears continuously in the world 's top scientific journals such as Nature and Science. The more general term behavioral ecology is commonly used as substitute for the term sociobiology in order to avoid the public controversy. Modern Use of the term `` evolutionary psychology '' The term evolutionary psychology was used by American biologist Michael Ghiselin in a 1973 article published in the journal Science. Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby popularized the term `` evolutionary psychology '' in their 1992 book The Adapted Mind : Evolutionary Psychology and The Generation of Culture. In contrast to sociobiology and behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology emphasizes that organisms are `` adaptation executors '' rather than `` fitness maximizers. '' In other words, organisms have emotional, motivational and cognitive adaptations that generally increased inclusive fitness in the past but may not do so in the present. This distinction may explain some maladaptive behaviors that are the result of `` fitness lags '' between ancestral and modern environments. For example, our ancestrally developed desires for fat, sugar and salt often lead to health problems in modern environment where these are readily available in large quantities. Also, in contrast to sociobiology and behavioral ecology ( which mostly study non-human animal behavior ), rather than focus primarily on overt behavior, EP attempts to identify underlying psychological adaptations ( including emotional, motivational and cognitive mechanisms ), and how these mechanisms interact with the developmental and current environmental influences to produce behavior. Before 1990, introductory psychology textbooks scarcely mentioned Darwin. In the 1990s, evolutionary psychology was treated as a fringe theory, and evolutionary psychologists depicted themselves as an embattled minority. Coverage in psychology textbooks was largely hostile. According to evolutionary psychologists, current coverage in psychology textbooks is usually neutral or balanced. The presence that evolutionary theory holds in psychology has been steadily increasing. According to its proponents, evolutionary psychology now occupies a central place in psychological science. See also Evolutionary biology portal Book : Evolutionary psychology Behavioural genetics Biocultural evolution Dual inheritance theory Ethnic nepotism Evolutionary economics Evolutionary developmental psychology Evolutionary educational psychology Evolutionary neuroscience Evolutionary psychology research groups and centers Gene - centered view of evolution Human behavioral ecology List of evolutionary psychologists Memetics Multiple discovery Universal Darwinism Darwinian literary studies Notes ^ Jump up to : Tooby, John ; Barkow, Jerome H. ; Cosmides, Leda ( 1995 ). The Adapted mind : evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. Oxford ( Oxfordshire ) : Oxford University Press. ISBN 0 - 19 - 510107 - 3. ^ Jump up to : Wright, Robert. The Moral Animal : Why We Are, the Way We Are : The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. Vintage. 1995. Jump up ^ Shermer ( 2004 ). The Science of Good and Evil. Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 978 - 0 - 8050 - 7769 - 8. ^ Jump up to : Schacter, Daniel L, Daniel Wegner and Daniel Gilbert. 2007. Psychology. Worth Publishers. pp. 26 - 27 ^ Jump up to : Buss, David M. Evolutionary psychology : the new science of the mind. Pearson. 2008. Chapter 1, p. 2 - 35. Jump up ^ http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/200401--.htm Jump up ^ Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate. New York : Penguin. 2002 Jump up ^ Diamond, Jared. The Third Chimpanzee. Jump up ^ Wilson, E.O. ( 2000 ). Sociobiology. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978 - 0 - 674 - 00235 - 7. Human sociobiology, now often called evolutionary psychology, has in the last quarter of a century emerged as its own field of study, drawing on theory and data from both biology and the social sciences. Jump up ^ The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, edited by David M. Buss, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005. Chapter 5 by Edward H. Hagen. Jump up ^ Ghiselin MT ( 1973 ). `` Darwin and Evolutionary Psychology : Darwin initiated a radically new way of studying behavior ''. Science. 179 ( 4077 ) : 964 -- 968. doi : 10.1126 / science. 179.4077. 964. PMID 17842154. ^ Jump up to : Buss, D.M. ( 1995 ). Evolutionary psychology : A new paradigm for psychological science. Psychological Inquiry, 6, 1 - 30. Jump up ^ Controversies in the evolutionary social sciences : a guide for the perplexed Jump up ^ Evolutionary Psychology By Lance Workman, Will Reader Jump up ^ Gaulin, Steven J.C. and Donald H. McBurney. Evolutionary psychology. Prentice Hall. 2003. ISBN 978 - 0 - 13 - 111529 - 3, Chapter 1, p 1 - 24. ^ Jump up to : Confer, et al., 2010 Evolutionary psychology Processes Altruism Group selection Kin selection Sexual selection Sociobiology Coevolution Evolutionarily stable strategy Areas Psychological development Morality Religion Depression Developmental psychopathology Educational psychology Evolutionary aesthetics Music Darwinian literary studies Evolution of emotion Biologists / Neuroscientists John Crook Charles Darwin Richard Dawkins Jared Diamond W.D. Hamilton Peter Kropotkin Gordon Orians Jaak Panksepp Margie Profet Giacomo Rizzolatti Randy Thornhill Robert Trivers Carel van Schaik Claus Wedekind Wolfgang Wickler David Sloan Wilson E.O. Wilson George C. Williams Anthropologists Jerome H. Barkow Robert Boyd Robin Dunbar Daniel Fessler Mark Flinn Joseph Henrich Ruth Mace Daniel Nettle Frank Salter Stephen Shennan Donald Symons John Tooby Behavioral economists / Political scientists Samuel Bowles Ernst Fehr Herbert Gintis Dominic D.P. Johnson Gad Saad Literary theory / Aesthetics Joseph Carroll Denis Dutton Psychologists / Cognitive scientists Simon Baron - Cohen Justin L. Barrett Jay Belsky David F. Bjorklund Paul Bloom Pascal Boyer Joseph Bulbulia David Buss Josep Call Anne Campbell Leda Cosmides Martin Daly Daniel Dennett Paul Ekman Anne Fernald David C. Geary Gerd Gigerenzer Jonathan Haidt Judith Rich Harris Aurelio José Figueredo Stephen Kaplan Douglas T. Kenrick Simon M. Kirby Robert Kurzban Michael T. McGuire Geoffrey Miller Randolph M. Nesse Steven Neuberg David Perrett Steven Pinker Paul Rozin Mark Schaller David P. Schmitt Todd K. Shackelford Roger Shepard Peter K. Smith Dan Sperber Anthony Stevens Frank Sulloway Michael Tomasello Mark van Vugt Glenn Wilson Margo Wilson Research centers / organizations Center for Evolutionary Psychology Human Behavior and Evolution Society Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences New England Complex Systems Institute Related subjects and articles The Adapted Mind The Evolution of Human Sexuality Evolutionary Psychology Evolution and Human Behavior Memetics Sociobiology Evolutionary neuroscience Human evolution Sociocultural evolution Evolutionary anthropology Evolutionary medicine Evolutionary linguistics Evolutionary psychology and culture Biosocial criminology Criticism of evolutionary psychology Lists Evolutionary psychologists Evolutionary psychology research groups and centers Bibliography of evolution and human behavior Evolutionary psychology Psychology portal Evolutionary biology portal Evolutionary biology Evolutionary history of life Index of evolutionary biology articles Introduction Outline of evolution Timeline of evolution Evolution Abiogenesis Adaptation Adaptive radiation Cladistics Coevolution Common descent Convergence Divergence Earliest known life forms Evidence of common descent Extinction Event Gene - centered view Homology Last universal common ancestor Macroevolution Microevolution Origin of life Panspermia Parallel evolution Prehistoric Autopsy Speciation Taxonomy Population genetics Biodiversity Gene flow Genetic drift Mutation Natural selection Variation Development Canalisation Evolutionary developmental biology Inversion Modularity Phenotypic plasticity Of taxa Birds origin Brachiopods Molluscs Cephalopods Dinosaurs Fish Fungi Insects butterflies Life Mammals cats canids wolves dogs hyenas dolphins and whales horses primates humans lemurs sea cows Plants Reptiles Spiders Tetrapods Viruses influenza Of organs Cell DNA Flagella Eukaryotes symbiogenesis chromosome endomembrane system mitochondria nucleus plastids In animals eye hair auditory ossicle nervous system brain Of processes Aging Death Programmed cell death Avian flight Biological complexity Cooperation Color vision in primates Emotion Empathy Ethics Eusociality Immune system Metabolism Monogamy Morality Mosaic evolution Multicellularity Sexual reproduction Gamete differentiation / sexes Life cycles / nuclear phases Mating types Sex - determination Snake venom Tempo and modes Gradualism / Punctuated equilibrium / Saltationism Micromutation / Macromutation Uniformitarianism / Catastrophism Speciation Allopatric Anagenesis Catagenesis Cladogenesis Cospeciation Ecological Hybrid Parapatric Peripatric Reinforcement Sympatric History Renaissance and Enlightenment Transmutation of species Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species History of paleontology Transitional fossil Blending inheritance Mendelian inheritance The eclipse of Darwinism Modern synthesis History of molecular evolution Extended evolutionary synthesis Philosophy Darwinism Alternatives Catastrophism Lamarckism Orthogenesis Mutationism Saltationism Structuralism Spandrel Theistic Vitalism Teleology in biology Related Biogeography Ecological genetics Molecular evolution Phylogenetics Tree Polymorphism Protocell Systematics Commons Portal WikiProject Psychology History Philosophy Portal Psychologist Basic psychology Abnormal Affective science Affective neuroscience Behavioral genetics Behavioral neuroscience Behaviorism Cognitive / Cognitivism Cognitive neuroscience Comparative Cross-cultural Cultural Developmental Differential Ecological Evolutionary Experimental Gestalt Intelligence Mathematical Neuropsychology Personality Positive Psycholinguistics Psychophysics Psychophysiology Quantitative Social Theoretical Applied psychology Anomalistic Applied behavior analysis Assessment Clinical Community Consumer Counseling Critical Educational Ergonomics Feminist Forensic Health Industrial and organizational Legal Media Military Music Occupational health Pastoral Political Psychometrics Psychotherapy Religion School Sport and exercise Suicidology Systems Traffic Methodologies Animal testing Archival research Behavior epigenetics Case study Content analysis Experiments Human subject research Interviews Neuroimaging Observation Qualitative research Quantitative research Self - report inventory Statistical surveys Psychologists William James ( 1842 -- 1910 ) Ivan Pavlov ( 1849 -- 1936 ) Sigmund Freud ( 1856 -- 1939 ) Edward Thorndike ( 1874 -- 1949 ) Carl Jung ( 1875 -- 1961 ) John B. Watson ( 1878 -- 1958 ) Clark L. Hull ( 1884 -- 1952 ) Kurt Lewin ( 1890 -- 1947 ) Jean Piaget ( 1896 -- 1980 ) Gordon Allport ( 1897 -- 1967 ) J.P. Guilford ( 1897 -- 1987 ) Carl Rogers ( 1902 -- 1987 ) Erik Erikson ( 1902 -- 1994 ) B.F. Skinner ( 1904 -- 1990 ) Donald O. Hebb ( 1904 -- 1985 ) Ernest Hilgard ( 1904 -- 2001 ) Harry Harlow ( 1905 -- 1981 ) Raymond Cattell ( 1905 -- 1998 ) Abraham Maslow ( 1908 -- 1970 ) Neal E. Miller ( 1909 -- 2002 ) Jerome Bruner ( 1915 -- 2016 ) Donald T. Campbell ( 1916 -- 1996 ) Hans Eysenck ( 1916 -- 1997 ) Herbert A. Simon ( 1916 -- 2001 ) David McClelland ( 1917 -- 1998 ) Leon Festinger ( 1919 -- 1989 ) George Armitage Miller ( 1920 -- 2012 ) Richard Lazarus ( 1922 -- 2002 ) Stanley Schachter ( 1922 -- 1997 ) Robert Zajonc ( 1923 -- 2008 ) Albert Bandura ( b. 1925 ) Roger Brown ( 1925 -- 1997 ) Endel Tulving ( b. 1927 ) Lawrence Kohlberg ( 1927 -- 1987 ) Noam Chomsky ( b. 1928 ) Ulric Neisser ( 1928 -- 2012 ) Jerome Kagan ( b. 1929 ) Walter Mischel ( b. 1930 ) Elliot Aronson ( b. 1932 ) Daniel Kahneman ( b. 1934 ) Paul Ekman ( b. 1934 ) Michael Posner ( b. 1936 ) Amos Tversky ( 1937 -- 1996 ) Bruce McEwen ( b. 1938 ) Larry Squire ( b. 1941 ) Richard E. Nisbett ( b. 1941 ) Martin Seligman ( b. 1942 ) Ed Diener ( b. 1946 ) Shelley E. Taylor ( b. 1946 ) John Anderson ( b. 1947 ) Ronald C. Kessler ( b. 1947 ) Joseph E. LeDoux ( b. 1949 ) Richard Davidson ( b. 1951 ) Susan Fiske ( b. 1952 ) Roy Baumeister ( b. 1953 ) Lists Counseling topics Disciplines Important publications Organizations Outline Psychologists Psychotherapies Research methods Schools of thought Timeline Topics Wiktionary definition Wiktionary category Wikisource Wikiquote Wikinews Wikibooks Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_evolutionary_psychology&oldid=831638435 '' Categories : Branches of psychology Evolutionary biology Evolutionary psychology Sexual attraction Human behavior Talk Contents About Wikipedia বাংলা Български Català Čeština Dansk Deutsch Eesti Ελληνικά Español Esperanto Français 한국어 Íslenska Italiano עברית Magyar Nederlands 日本 語 Norsk Polski Português Русский Simple English Suomi Svenska اردو 中文 18 more Edit links This page was last edited on 21 March 2018, at 15 : 07. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. 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Question: who was a major figure in the evolutionary perspective
Answer: Charles Darwin