Evolutionary Psychology: Evolution By Natural Selection

924 Words4 Pages
Evolutionary Psychology Evolutionary psychology is the psychological approach that emphasizes the significance of behavioral and mental adaptiveness based on the supposition that mental capabilities evolved over millions of years for particular adaptive aims (gerrig and zimbardo). Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection That is why; it is originated from evolutionary biology that underlies Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Natural selection can be defined as process that if organisms have traits which help people to adapt their environments including some problems such as predators, competition for food and climate changes better than others who have not, they become more chance to survive and produce. Therefore,…show more content…
There are also three products of evolution including adaptation, by-products and noise. Most important product of evolution is adaptations which are inherited characteristics that help to solve problems of survival or reproduction. By- products are characteristic that do not solve adaptive problems. Noise or random effects can be produced by impacts like mutation, environmental alterations and accidents in developmental process. Although some of noises do not affect adaptive functions, some of them can be detrimental. (buss 39-41). Features of evolved psychological mechanisms Human beings have a unique nature that is different from each species. Evolution by selection is the causal factor that produces the nature and its fundamental components. In psychological perspective, human mind is a collection of evolved psychological mechanisms (EPM) like whole human existence.. (buss 49) EPM can be defined as a totality of adaptations which are product of natural selection over evolutionary process in ancestral environments. EPM is activated by adaptive problems and generate behaviors to solve them.(adaptedmind…show more content…
For example, the input of seeing snake warns the organism that it is a survival problem resulted with physical damage or death. This procedure occurs unconsciously. The input of EPM is shaped through decision rules into output that can be physiological activity, information to evaluate behavioral options or action. For instance, if people realize a snake, they decide to attack it, run away from it or freeze. EMP is problem specific, because adaptation problems are specific like food selection or mate selection, as a result solutions must be specific to avoid lots of errors. Also, there are many evolved psychological mechanisms owing to crowd of adaptive problems. Due to specificity, complexity and numerousness of EPM, people have behavioral flexibility. It is also reason of decision rules to response to effect used several options. Thus, psychological mechanisms are not rigid instincts which invariably demonstrate in behavior. Culture is a product of EMP because functionally specialized EMP is structured in a content specific way, so it creates some of the particular content of human culture like certain behaviors, artifacts and transmitted linguistic representations (adapted mind

More about Evolutionary Psychology: Evolution By Natural Selection

Open Document