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Evolutionary Psych.Rob Quinlan (C611417@MIZZOU1.MISSOURI.EDU)Sun, 16 Oct 1994 18:56:42 CDT
I am sure Jerome Barkow and Lee Cronk could give you a better pithy statement than I can, but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway. 1. Approach. Ev. psych. looks at products of our evolved minds, such as mate choice, through (I guess) fairly standard kinds of psychological instruments. That is, they tend to rely on paper and pen tests which have been rigorously tested regarding reliability/validity. Ev. psychs look for evidence of evolved psychological mechanisms in the statements and expressed preferences of their subjects. Sociobiology (a la Alexander, Trivers and others) as it has been so far applied to humans (e.g. Betzig et al 1988 *Human Reproductive Behavior*) tends to look at *behavior* as the product of our evolved minds. Hence, the label *human behavioral ecology* is the name I, and many others doing this kind of work, favor over sociobiology. 2. Theory. Ev. psychs often argue that the psychological mechanisms they purport to measure are late pleistocene adaptations that may have nothing to do with adaptive behavior today. They rely on the concept of the "enviroment of evolutionary adaptedness" (EEA) as a guide to discovering psychological mechanisms. That is, they suggest that our minds have evolved to solve problems common to human social groups in the late pleistocene and that these problems are different from the problems we face today. One short coming of the approach is that (as psychologists) many ev psychs are rather unclear about what might have gone on in the EEA. In contrast most behavioral ecologists assume that the problems common to any human today (finding mates, caring for children, finding food, calculating schedules of reciprocity, etc) are not so different from those in the EEA. I.e., for the most part, we tend to behave in ways that increase our reproductive success. 3. There are psychologists doing evolution and behavior studies that I would not consider evolutionary psychologists, at least not in the Tooby & Cosmides sense (e.g. Daly and Wilson -- who may not agree with me). Also most human behavioral ecologists are anthropologists (again see Betzig et al 1988); although, some evolution and behavior oriented anthropologists do ev. psych stuff (e.g. Tooby, Barkow, etc). So, the subjects of behavioral ecologists are usually the memebers of societies anthropologists traditionally study (i.e., "Others"). And the subjects of ev. psychs (like David Buss) are usually college students. So, this is kind of a simple charicature, but it's the basic dif as I see it. Mark Flinn et al have a review essay forthcoming this fall in JAR that examines the approaches of *The Adapted Mind* (Barkow et al), *Evolutionary Ecology and Huaman Behavior* (Smith and Winterhalder), and *Coevolution* (Durham). Rob Quinlan, Grad. Student, U. of Missouri-Columbia C611417@MIZZOU1.MISSOURI.EDU
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