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Although researchers have long been aware that the species-typical architecture of the human mind is the product of our evolutionary history, it has only been in the last three decades that advances in such fields as evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and paleoanthropology have made the fact of our evolution illuminating. Converging findings from a variety of disciplines are leading to the emergence of a fundamentally new view of the human mind, and with it a new framework for the behavioral and social sciences. First, with the advent of the cognitive revolution, human nature can finally be defined precisely as the set of universal, species-typical information-processing programs that operate beneath the surface of expressed cultural variability. Second, this collection of cognitive programs evolved in the Pleistocene to solve the adaptive problems regularly faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors - problems such as mate selection, language acquisition, co-operation, and sexual infidelity. Consequently, the traditional view of the mind as a general-purpose computer, tabula rasa, or passive recipient of culture is being replaced by the view that the mind resembles an intricate network of functionally specialized computers, each of which imposes contentful structure on human mental organization and culture. The Adapted Mind explores this new approach - evolutionary psychology - and its implications for a new view of culture.
List of contents
J. Tooby & L. Cosmides: Introduction; Part I: Theoretical framework: J. Tooby & L. Cosmides: The psychological foundations of culture; D. Symons: On the use and misuse of darwinism in the study of human behavior; Part II: Cooperation: L. Cosmides & J. Tooby: Cognitive adaptations for social exchange; W.C. McGrew & A.T.C. Feistner: Two non-human primate models for the evolution of human food-sharing: chimpanzees and callitrichids; Part III: The psychology of mating and sex: D. Buss: Mate preference mechanisms: consequences for partner choice and intrasexual competition; B. Ellis: The evolution of sexual attraction: evaluative mechanisms in women; M. Wilson & M. Daly: The man who mistook his wife for a chattel; Part IV: Parental care and children: M. Profet: Pregnancy sickness as adaptation: a deterrent to maternal ingestion of teratogens; J. Mann: Nurturance or negligence: maternal psychology and behavioral preference among preterm twins; A. Fernald: Human maternal vocalizations to infants as biologically relevant signals: an evolutionary perspective; M.J. Boulton & P.K. Smith: The social nature of play fighting and play chasing: mechanisms and strategies underlying cooperation and compromise; Part V: Perception and language as adaptations: S. Pinker & P. Bloom: Natural language and natural selection; R.N. Shepherd: The perceptual organization of colors: an adaptation to regularities of the terrestrial world?; I. Silverman & M. Eals: Sex differences in spatial abilities: evolutionary theory and data; Part VI: Environmental aesthetics: G.H. Orians & J.H. Heerwagen: Evolved responses to landscapes; S. Kaplan: Environmental preference in a knowledge-seeking, knowledge-using organism; Part VII: Intrapsychic processes: R.M. Nesse & A.T. Lloyd: The evolution of psychodynamic mechanisms; Part VIII: Understanding evolutionary new cultural forms: J.H. Barkow: Beneath new culture is old psychology: gossip, class, and the environment.
Summary
This collection of research essays is centred on the complex, evolved psychological mechanisms that generate human behaviour and culture. It aims to introduce the field of evolutionary psychology to a wider audience and to show how the field connects evolutionary biology to social behaviour.
Additional text
a collection of eighteen papers by twenty-five authors which sum up and illustrate much of the best of our knowledge in the field of evolutionary psychology
