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Research topics at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology

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Scientists at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology specialize in finding new ways that an evolutionary perspective can inform research on the design of the human mind.  In so doing, we have been researching many new topics, as well as trying out new approaches to old topics.  Below we provide a partial list with links to some relevant research papers. 

Principles of evolutionary psychology

A roadmap to principles of evolutionary psychology

Reasoning and rationality

Social exchange reasoning (reciprocation, reciprocal altruism, cooperation)

Judgment under uncertainty  (intuitive statistics; optimal foraging; ecological rationality; heuristics & biases)

Adaptationism, normative theories, and rationality

Emotions—What are they?

Emotion  (emotions as super-ordinate programs solving the problem of mechanism coordination in a multimodular mind)

Emotions—Specific ones

Anger . See also:

Formidability, Strength, and Entitlement . Adaptations for detecting physical strength

Vision and Visual Attention

Visual attention –a system specialized for monitoring animals

Vision : Faces—the case for domain-specific object recognition

Evolutionary Biology

Evolutionary Biology : Intragenomic Conflict , Pathogens & the Evolution of Sexual Recombination; Banker’s Paradox (etc)

Literature and the Arts

Art, Fiction, and Aesthetics

Close social relationships

Kin detection  (as regulator of incest avoidance; altruism)

Friendship and Deep Engagement Relationships

Courtship, Mate Choice, and Human Sexuality

Varieties of Cooperation

Two-person cooperation / reciprocation / reciprocal altruism

Evolution of generosity

Cooperating in Groups:

Coalitional psychology and alliance detection

Adaptations for collective action

Memory  (memory systems; specializations; personality trait database; self-knowledge, episodic memories; amnesia; memory loss )

Spatial cognition

Spatial adaptations for foraging (female advantage in location memory for plants; content effects; optimal foraging)

Tools: Cognitive foundations

Adaptations for tool use  (the artifact concept and inferences about function; design stance; problem solving, dissociation between inferences about function and naming)

Personality

Personality (personality differences and universal human nature; adaptationist framework for personality science; cognitive systems specialized for encoding, storing, and retrieving knowledge of personality traits)

The links below are not live yet—hopefully I will be able to update them soon! LC

Darwinian medicine, Darwinian psychiatry

Development

Economics, Business, and Organizational Behavior

Hazard Management (precautionary reasoning)

Intelligence (improvisational intelligence; dedicated intelligence; decoupled reasoning (counterfactual reasoning, suppositional reasoning, metarepresentation)

Theoretical foundations of psychology and the behavioral sciences

Environments of Evolutionary Adaptedness  (EEA; Why the past explains the present)

Evolutionary psychology: A primer

A brief introduction to the field in  [ English ], [ Español ] and [ Português ].

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Evolutionary Psychology

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• First Online: 24 April 2018
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• Elena Racevska 3  

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Evolutionary psychology is a discipline of psychology that examines psychological mechanisms from an evolutionary perspective. Some authors do not consider it to be a distinct branch of psychology, but rather a “theoretical lens that is currently informing all branches of psychology” (Buss 1998 ). The central aim of evolutionary psychologists is to identify which psychological traits can be considered adaptations – functional products of natural or sexual selection in human evolution.

History of Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology, albeit relatively new as a scientific discipline, dates back to Charles Darwin. In his book The Origin of Species published in 1859, Darwin predicted that “psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of a necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation” (Darwin 1859 ). As an academic discipline, evolutionary psychology developed on the basis of cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology, but its beginnings were also...

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Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1992). The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture . New York: Oxford University Press.

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Barret, D. (2007). Waistland: A (R)evolutionary view of our weight and fitness crisis . London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Barrett, D. (2010). Supernormal stimuli: How primal urges overran their evolutionary purpose . London: W. W. Norton & Company.

Buss, D. M. (1998). The handbook of evolutionary psychology . Hoboken: Wiley.

Buss, D. (1999). Evolutionary psychology: The new science of the mind . Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Buss, D. M., & Schmitt, D. P. (1993). Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating. Psychological Review, 100 , 204–232.

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Buss, D. M., Larsen, R. J., Westen, D., & Semmelroth, J. (1992). Sex differences in jealousy: Evolution, physiology, and psychology. Psychological Science, 3 (4), 251–255.

Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2000). Evolutionary psychology and the emotions. Handbook of Emotions, 2 , 91–115.

Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2005). Social exchange: The evolutionary design of a neurocognitive system. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The new cognitive neurosciences, III (pp. 1295–1308). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of the species by natural selection . London: Murray.

Dunbar, R. I. M. (1992). Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates. Journal of Human Evolution, 22 (6), 469–493.

Dunbar, R. I. M. (1996). Grooming, gossip and the evolution of language . London: Faber and Faber.

Fisher, R. A. (1930). The genetical theory of natural selection: A complete variorum edition . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Book   Google Scholar  

Fitch, W. T. (2004). Kin selection and ‘mother tongues’: A neglected component in language evolution. In U. Griebel & D. O. Kimbrough (Eds.), Evolution of communication systems: A comparative approach . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Gangestad, S. W. (1989). The evolutionary history of genetic variation: An emerging issue in the behavioral genetic study of personality. In D. M. Buss & N. Cantor (Eds.), Personality: Recent trends and emerging directions (pp. 320–332). Berlin: Springer.

Hampton, S. J. (2004). The instinct debate and the standard social science model. Sexualities, Evolution & Gender, 6 (1), 15–44.

Kanazawa, S. (2004). General intelligence as a domain-specific adaptation. Psychological Review, 111 (2), 512–523.

Kanazawa, S., & Perina, K. (2012). Why more intelligent individuals like classical music. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 25 (3), 264–275.

Lloyd, E., Wilson, D.S., & Sober, E. (2011). Evolutionary mismatch and what to do about it: A basic tutorial. Evolutionary Applications , 2–4.

Plotkin, H. (2008). Evolutionary thought in psychology: A brief history. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Shostak, M. (2014). Nisa: The life and words of a! Kung woman . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Symons, D. (1979). The evolution of human sexuality . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Taylor, P. D., & Jonker, L. B. (1978). Evolutionary stable strategies and game dynamics. Mathematical Biosciences, 40 (1–2), 145–156.

Thornhill, R., & Thornhill, N. W. (1983). Human rape: An evolutionary analysis. Ethology and Sociobiology, 4 , 63–99.

Tinbergen, N. (1963). On aims and methods of ethology. Ethology, 20 (4), 410–433.

Trivers, R. (1972). Parental investment and sexual selection . Cambridge, MA: Biological Laboratories, Harvard University.

Wilson, E. O. (1975). Sociobiology: The new synthesis . Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

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Department of Social Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

Elena Racevska

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Department of Psychology, Oakland University Department of Psychology, Rochester, Michigan, USA

Todd Shackelford

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Racevska, E. (2018). Evolutionary Psychology. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_561-1

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Evolutionary Psychology

Sociobiology

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

The human body evolved over eons, slowly calibrating to the African savanna on which 98 percent of humankind lived and died. So, too, did the human brain. Evolutionary psychology is the study of the ways in which the mind was shaped by pressures to survive and reproduce. Findings in this field often shed light on "ultimate" as opposed to "proximal" causes of behavior. Romantic jealousy and mate guarding are proximally intended to keep one's relationship intact. Ultimately, though, the behavior can be explained by the fact that for most of human history, losing a romantic partner jeopardized one's ability to reproduce and raise children.

• The Science of Evolutionary Psychology
• Concepts In Evolutionary Psychology
• Human Nature, Explained
• Why Evolutionary Psychology Is Controversial

Natural selection has a lot to do with human behavior. In fact, our behavior is naturally selected just as our physical traits are naturally selected. We are much taller and live longer than our ancestors. Through centuries of generations, evolution has helped us pass along adaptive behaviors that promote our reproduction.

Evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers proposed a number of theories on evolutionary psychology , including why we engage in reciprocal altruism , the nature of sex differences, and parent-offspring investment. Altruism among strangers, for example, can naturally develop because people cooperate with the expectation of receiving similar treatment from others.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors passed down behavioral traits that are, for the most part, advantageous to us. For example, we are mindful of danger in dark alleyways. This caution is innate and within our behavioral make-up. And our predetermined response to gravitate to that 800-calorie Cinnabon can wreak havoc, but our ancestors made us do it .

Juggling our ancestral tendencies with the demands of modern-day living can be a struggle. This phenomenon is known as evolutionary mismatch—when we find ourselves in an environment inconsistent with our ancestral conditioning.

A good example of such mismatch is the contemporary diet : Ten thousand years ago, people battled starvation. They had to pile on the necessary calories just to survive certain lean times; high-fat meats and high-sugar foods were a luxury. Today, however, fatty foods and processed sugars are readily available at low cost.

Many of the behaviors people exhibit have been tools for self-preservation: Homo sapiens jealously guard their romantic partners because competition for mates has always been harsh. Everyone cherishes their closest kin because it's in one's best interest to preserve one's genes . Humans also crave social interaction to encourage cooperation , further increasing the chances for survival. Many of these behaviors are innate: How people react and interact with one another is spelled out in DNA.

Fight or flight refers to the human body’s built-in response to a perceived threat: It prepares the body to either face danger or quickly run from it. During flight or flight , the brain releases stress hormones , pushing the body into high alert. The heart rate rises, muscles tense, and thoughts race. While the modern-day human does not face the same threats as our ancestors did, the fight-or-flight response system remains intact.

Any fearful situation can trigger it, whether it is physical danger or a stressful event, like running late for a meeting. In people with anxiety , the fight-or-flight response is more readily triggered, the brain sees certain situations as threatening, even when there's no actual present danger. In fact, there is a tendency for this response to move into overdrive in anxious individuals.

Kin selection is the theory that our calculations about genetic relatedness to others (conscious or unconscious ) are powerful drivers of behavior. Most people favor, and will make sacrifices for, immediate kin as opposed to distant relatives, and blood relatives over strangers. This ensures the survival of genes through the survival of the people who are closely related to us.  

In evolutionary parlance, reproductive success is called reproductive fitness, a measure of how well an organism or a person is adapted to their environment. Men committing foolish or heroic acts that increase status or attractiveness are acting in ways that increase the odds of reproduction, and attempting to maximize reproductive fitness.  Reproductive fitness  also measures how well an organism is adapted to its environment.

The differences in parental investment —the energy and resources invested in an offspring—lead the sex that invests more (females, in most species) to focus on mate quality and the sex that invests less (males) to seek quantity. In humans, we expect choosiness in females and aggression between males as they vie for females.

Our emotional complexity differentiates us from other members of the animal kingdom. Evolutionary psychology seeks to explain how our emotions and other aspects of being human served as advantages to our ancestors. Like other social primates, we experience emotions beyond primal fear and anger.

Through evolving as a group, we have developed empathy and altruism, which allow us to commiserate with each other’s circumstances and act in ways that are not self-serving. What is better for the group as a whole, is better for a person as an individual.

We have also developed emotions to help keep us in line —for example, shame motivates us to atone for past transgressions, while pride pushes us to remain in the high regard of our peers. And as our social structures developed, so did our value systems and what we define as “right” and “wrong.”

Trivers also suggested that complex strategies of cheating , detecting cheating, and the false accusation of cheating (itself a form of cheating) pushed the development of intelligence and helped increase the size of the human brain.

People reject evolutionary psychology for ideological reasons. With sexual behavior, for example, there is the notion that the field justifies people’s behaviors and actions. Our present-day traits and characteristics had survival value for our ancestors, and these traits survived because the genes they are linked to were selected and now remain part of our genetic makeup. Shouting evolution made me do it seems so convenient.

This refers to common but faulty logic wherein people assume that because something is "natural" it is therefore "good" or just. Violence and aggression are found in all human societies, but that does not make this acceptable behavior. No endorsement is implied in a discovery of what is natural. The general public commits the naturalistic fallacy in thinking that evolutionary psychologists endorse certain findings (such as violence or rape), when in fact evolutionary psychologists are simply outlining reasons that these behaviors may occur.

The moralistic fallacy is the false belief that the world operates as we wish it would, that what ought to be is in fact the truth, or that because we wish something were not true, it cannot be true. People sometimes reject evolutionary theorists' findings about human nature because they do not want to believe that said findings are true.

Both sides of the political aisle accuse evolutionary psychology of numerous ills. Among many arguments, for example, conservatives on the right fear that this field of study absolves people of responsibility , while liberals on the left fear that accepting inherited differences hinders the goal of social equality.

Feminists are not keen on the idea that women are inherently different from men. Such differences, they think, would force women back in time, losing ground in equal opportunity and equal pay, for example. They also feel that people can use evolutionary psychology to explain away misogyny, poverty, sexual misbehavior, among many areas.

More and more studies show that homosexuality is genetic. However, being gay doesn’t fit so neatly into the theory of natural selection. Why would nature select for homosexuality if reproductive success is a moot point? But there are valid reasons according to evolutionary biologists. For example, gay aunts and uncles can invest more time and resources in rearing the offspring of close relatives with whom they share part of their genetic makeup. Maybe homosexuality emerged because it benefits entire groups.

How much effort should we devote to looking after our health? Everyone has a different answer. Find out why.

The notion of irony is often linked to both laughter and humor. What is it about being ironic, or having a plan fall short in a spectacular way, that so often cultivates giddiness?

Is our obsession with sexual history rooted in our ancestral past? Dive into the evolutionary significance of "body count."

It is important to recognize that symbols in archaeology must be interpreted in terms of a cognitive hierarchy, the highest level being fully immersed symbolic thinking.

Assuming the worst-case scenario can be unpleasant and problematic. But when you see this kind of thinking from an evolutionary lens, it actually makes a lot of sense. Here's why.

A growing division spread by “us vs. them” thinking has left the country far from united. This approach could help.

Social learning and individual learning play similar roles; they transmit existing knowledge and catalyze the creative generation of new knowledge and, thereby, cultural change.

What does it mean if snakes pass a self-recognition test, and how might that ability relate to their social lives?

Social media may play a major role in anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts, but platforms like TikTok and Instagram are habits that are hard to break.

To build the cultural equivalent of evolutionary trees, it is necessary to distinguish the individual learning of existing information from the creation of new information.

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Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology is one of many biologically informed approaches to the study of human behavior. Along with cognitive psychologists, evolutionary psychologists propose that much, if not all, of our behavior can be explained by appeal to internal psychological mechanisms. What distinguishes evolutionary psychologists from many cognitive psychologists is the proposal that the relevant internal mechanisms are adaptations—products of natural selection—that helped our ancestors get around the world, survive and reproduce. To understand the central claims of evolutionary psychology we require an understanding of some key concepts in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. Philosophers are interested in evolutionary psychology for a number of reasons. For philosophers of science —mostly philosophers of biology—evolutionary psychology provides a critical target. Although here is a broad consensus among philosophers of biology that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise, this does not entail that these philosophers completely reject the relevance of evolutionary theory to human psychology. For philosophers of mind and cognitive science evolutionary psychology has been a source of empirical hypotheses about cognitive architecture and specific components of that architecture. However, some philosophers of mind are also critical of evolutionary psychology but their criticisms are not as all-encompassing as those presented by philosophers of biology. Evolutionary psychology is also invoked by philosophers interested in moral psychology both as a source of empirical hypotheses and as a critical target.

In what follows I briefly explain evolutionary psychology’s relations to other work on the biology of human behavior and the cognitive sciences. Next I introduce the research tradition’s key theoretical concepts. In the following section I take up discussions about evolutionary psychology in the philosophy of mind, specifically focusing on the debate about the massive modularity thesis. I go on to review some of the criticisms of evolutionary psychology presented by philosophers of biology and assess some responses to those criticisms. I then go on to introduce some of evolutionary psychology’s contributions to moral psychology and human nature and, finally, briefly discuss the reach and impact of evolutionary psychology.

1. Evolutionary Psychology: One research tradition among the various biological approaches to explaining human behavior

2. evolutionary psychology’s theory and methods, 3. the massive modularity hypothesis, 4. philosophy of biology vs. evolutionary psychology, 5. moral psychology and evolutionary psychology, 6. human nature, 7. applications of evolutionary psychology and prospects for further debate, other internet resources, related entries.

This entry focuses on the specific approach to evolutionary psychology that is conventionally named by the capitalized phrase “Evolutionary Psychology”. This naming convention is David Buller’s (2000; 2005) idea. He introduces the convention to distinguish a particular research tradition (Laudan 1977) from other approaches to the biology of human behavior. [ 1 ] This research tradition is the focus here but lower case is used throughout as no other types of evolutionary psychology are discussed. Evolutionary psychology rests upon specific theoretical principles (presented in section 2 below) not all of which are shared by others working in the biology of human behavior (Laland & Brown 2002; Brown et al. 2011). For example, human behavioral ecologists present and defend explanatory hypotheses about human behavior that do not appeal to psychological mechanisms (e.g., Hawkes 1990; Hrdy 1999). Behavioral ecologists also believe that much of human behavior can be explained by appealing to evolution while rejecting the idea held by evolutionary psychologists that one period of our evolutionary history is the source of all our important psychological adaptations (Irons 1998). Developmental psychobiologists take yet another approach: they are anti-adaptationist. (Michel & Moore 1995; but see Bateson & Martin 1999; Bjorklund & Hernandez Blasi 2005 for examples of developmentalist work in an adaptationist vein.) These theorists believe that much of our behavior can be explained without appealing to a suite of specific psychological adaptations for that behavior. Instead they emphasize the role of development in the production of various human behavioral traits. From here on, “evolutionary psychology” refers to a specific research tradition among the many biological approaches to the study of human behavior.

Paul Griffiths argues that evolutionary psychology owes theoretical debt to both sociobiology and ethology (Griffiths 2006; Griffiths 2008). Evolutionary psychologists acknowledge their debt to sociobiology but point out that they add a dimension to sociobiology: psychological mechanisms. Human behaviors are not a direct product of natural selection but rather the product of psychological mechanisms that were selected for. The relation to ethology here is that in the nineteen fifties, ethologists proposed instincts or drives that underlie our behavior; [ 2 ] evolutionary psychology’s psychological mechanisms are the correlates to instincts or drives. Evolutionary psychology is also related to cognitive psychology and the cognitive sciences. The psychological mechanisms they invoke are computational, sometimes referred to as “Darwinian algorithms” or as “computational modules”. This overt cognitivism sets evolutionary psychology apart from much work in the neurosciences and from behavioral neuroendocrinology. In these fields internal mechanisms are proposed in explanations of human behavior but they are not construed in computational terms. David Marr’s (e.g., 1983) well known three part distinction is often invoked to distinguish the levels at which researchers focus their attention in the cognitive and neurosciences. Many neuroscientists and behavioral neuroendocrinologists work at the implementation level while cognitive psychologists work at the level of the computations that are implemented at the neurobiological level (see Griffiths 2006).

Evolutionary psychologists sometimes present their approach as potentially unifying, or providing a foundation for, all other work that purports to explain human behavior (e.g., Tooby & Cosmides 1992). This claim has been met with strong skepticism by many social scientists who see a role for a myriad of types of explanation of human behavior, some of which are not reducible to biological explanations of any sort. This discussion hangs on issues of reductionism in the social sciences. (Little 1991 has a nice introduction to these issues.) There are also reasons to believe that evolutionary psychology neither unifies nor provides foundations for closely neighboring fields such as behavioral ecology or developmental psychobiology. (See the related discussion in Downes 2005.) In other work, evolutionary psychologists present their approach as being consistent with or compatible with neighboring approaches such as behavioral ecology and developmental psychobiology. (See Buss’s introduction to Buss 2005.) The truth of this claim hangs on a careful examination of the theoretical tenets of evolutionary psychology and its neighboring fields. We now turn to evolutionary psychology’s theoretical tenets and revisit this discussion in section 4 below.

Influential evolutionary psychologists, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, provide the following list of the field’s theoretical tenets (Tooby & Cosmides 2005):

• The brain is a computer designed by natural selection to extract information from the environment.
• Individual human behavior is generated by this evolved computer in response to information it extracts from the environment. Understanding behavior requires articulating the cognitive programs that generate the behavior.
• The cognitive programs of the human brain are adaptations. They exist because they produced behavior in our ancestors that enabled them to survive and reproduce.
• The cognitive programs of the human brain may not be adaptive now; they were adaptive in ancestral environments.
• Natural selection ensures that the brain is composed of many different special purpose programs and not a domain general architecture.
• Describing the evolved computational architecture of our brains “allows a systematic understanding of cultural and social phenomena” (16–18).

Tenet 1 emphasizes the cognitivism that evolutionary psychologists are committed to. 1 in combination with 2 directs our attention as researchers not to parts of the brain but to the programs run by the brain. It is these programs—psychological mechanisms—that are products of natural selection. While they are products of natural selection, and hence adaptations, these programs need not be currently adaptive. Our behavior can be produced by underlying psychological mechanisms that arose to respond to particular circumstances in our ancestors’ environments. Tenet 5 presents what is often called the “massive modularity thesis” (see, e.g., Samuels 1998; Samuels 2000). There is a lot packed into this tenet and we will examine this thesis in some detail below in section 3. In brief, evolutionary psychologists maintain that there is an analogy between organs and psychological mechanisms or modules. Organs perform specific functions well and are products of natural selection. There are no general purpose organs, hearts pump blood and livers detoxify the body. The same goes for psychological mechanisms; they arise as responses to specific contingencies in the environment and are selected for to the extent that they contribute to the survival and reproduction of the organism. Just as there are no general purpose organs, there are no general purpose psychological mechanisms. Finally, tenet 6 introduces the reductionist or foundational vision of evolutionary psychology, discussed above.

There are numerous examples of the kinds of mechanisms that are hypothesized to underlie our behavior on the basis of research guided by these theoretical tenets: the cheater-detection module; the mind-reading module; the waist/hip ratio detection module; the snake fear module and so on. A closer look at the waist/hip ratio detection module illustrates the above theoretical tenets at work. Devendra Singh (Singh 1993; Singh & Luis 1995) presents the waist/hip ratio detection module as one of the suite of modules that underlies mate selection in humans. This one is a specifically male psychological mechanism. Men detect variations in waist/hip ratio in women. Men’s preferences are for women with waist/hip ratios closer to .7. Singh claims that the detection and preference suite are adaptations for choosing fertile mates. So our mate selection behavior is explained in part by the underlying psychological mechanism for waist/hip ratio preference that was selected for in earlier human environments.

What is important to note about the research guided by these theoretical tenets above is that all behavior is best explained in terms of underlying psychological mechanisms that are adaptations for solving a particular set of problems that humans faced at one time in our ancestry. Also, evolutionary psychologists stress that the mechanisms they focus on are universally distributed in humans and are not susceptible to much, if any, variation. They maintain that the mechanisms are a product of adaptation but are no longer under selection (Tooby & Cosmides 2005, 39–40). Clark Barrett’s (2015) accessible and wide ranging introduction to evolutionary psychology sustains this emphasis on evolved mechanisms as the main focus of evolutionary psychology research. Barrett also expands the scope of evolutionary psychology and notes the addition of research methods developed since Cosmides and Tooby first set out the parameters for research in the field. Some of Barrett’s proposals are discussed in sections 6 and 7 below. Todd Shackleford and Viviana Weekes-Shackleford (2017) have just completed a huge compendium of work in the evolutionarily based psychological sciences. In this volume a vast array of different research methods are presented and defended and there are a number of entries comparing the merits of alternative approaches to evolutionary psychology.

The methods for testing hypotheses in evolutionary psychology come mostly from psychology. For example, in Singh’s work, male subjects are presented with drawings of women with varying waist hip ratios and ask to give their preference rankings. In Buss’s work supporting several hypothesized mate selection mechanisms, he performed similar experiments on subjects, asking for their responses to various questions about features of desired mates (Buss 1990). Buss, Singh and other evolutionary psychologists emphasize the cross cultural validity of their results, claiming consistency in responses across a wide variety of human populations. (But see Yu & Shepard 1998; Gray et al. 2003 for alternate conflicting results to Singh’s.) For the most part standard psychological experimental methods are used to test hypotheses in evolutionary psychology. This has raised questions about the extent to which the evolutionary component of evolutionary psychologists’ hypotheses is being tested (see, e.g., Shapiro & Epstein 1998; Lloyd 1999; Lloyd & Feldman 2002). A response profile may be prevalent in a wide variety of subject populations but this says nothing about whether or not the response profile is a psychological mechanism that arose from a particular selective regimen.

Claims that the mind has a modular architecture, and even massively modular architecture, are widespread in cognitive science (see, e.g., Hirshfield & Gelman 1994). The massive modularity thesis is first and foremost a thesis about cognitive architecture. As defended by evolutionary psychologists, the thesis is also about the source of our cognitive architecture: the massively modular architecture is the result of natural selection acting to produce each of the many modules (see, e.g., Barrett & Kurzban 2006; Barrett 2012). Our cognitive architecture is composed of computational devices, that are innate and are adaptations (Samuels 1998; Samuels et al. 1999a; Samuels et al. 1999b; Samuels 2000). This massively modular architecture accounts for all of our sophisticated behavior. Our successful navigation of the world results from the action of one or more of our many modules.

Jerry Fodor was the first to mount a sustained philosophical defense of modularity as a theory of cognitive architecture (Fodor 1983). His modularity thesis is distinct from the massive modularity thesis in a number of important ways. Fodor argued that our “input systems” are modular—for example, components of our visual system, our speech detection system and so on—these parts of our mind are dedicated information processors, whose internal make-up is inaccessible to other related processors. The modular detection systems feed output to a central system, which is a kind of inference engine. The central system, on Fodor’s view is not modular. Fodor presents a large number of arguments against the possibility of modular central systems. For example, he argues that central systems, to the extent that they engage in something like scientific confirmation, are “Quinean” in that “the degree of confirmation assigned to any given hypothesis is sensitive to properties of the entire belief system” (Fodor 1983, 107). Fodor draws a bleak conclusion about the status of cognitive science from his examination of the character of central systems: cognitive science is impossible. So on Fodor’s view, the mind is partly modular and the part of the mind that is modular provides some subject matter for cognitive science.

A distinct thesis from Fodor’s, the massive modularity thesis, gets a sustained philosophical defense from Peter Carruthers (see especially Carruthers 2006). Carruthers is well aware that Fodor (see e.g. Fodor 2000) does not believe that central systems can be modular but he presents arguments from evolutionary psychologists and others that support the modularity thesis for the whole mind. Perhaps one of the reasons that there is so much philosophical interest in evolutionary psychology is that discussions about the status of the massive modularity thesis are highly theoretical. [ 3 ] Both evolutionary psychologists and philosophers present and consider arguments for and against the thesis rather than simply waiting until the empirical results come in. Richard Samuels (1998) speculates that argument rather than empirical data is relied on, because the various competing modularity theses about central systems are hard to pull apart empirically. Carruthers exemplifies this approach as he relies heavily on arguments for massive modularity often at the expense of specific empirical results that tell in favor of the thesis.

There are many arguments for the massive modularity thesis. Some are based upon considerations about how evolution must have acted; some are based on considerations about the nature of computation and some are versions of the poverty of the stimulus argument first presented by Chomsky in support of the existence of an innate universal grammar. (See Cowie 1999 for a nice presentation of the structure of poverty of the stimulus arguments.) Myriad versions of each of these arguments appear in the literature and many arguments for massive modularity mix and match components of each of the main strands of argumentation. Here we review a version of each type of argument.

Carruthers presents a clear outline of the first type of argument “the biological argument for massive modularity”: “(1) Biological systems are designed systems, constructed incrementally. (2) Such systems, when complex, need to have massively modular organization. (3) The human mind is a biological system and is complex. (4) So the human mind will be massively modularly in its organization” (Carruthers 2006, 25). An example of this argument is to appeal to the functional decomposition of organisms into organs “designed” for specific tasks, e.g. hearts, livers, kidneys. Each of these organs arises as a result of natural selection and the organs, acting together, contribute to the fitness of the organism. The functional decomposition is driven by the response to specific environmental stimuli. Rather than natural selection acting to produce general purpose organs, each specific environmental challenge is dealt with by a separate mechanism. All versions of this argument are arguments from analogy, relying on the key transitional premise that minds are a kind of biological system upon which natural selection acts.

The second type of argument makes no appeal to biological considerations whatsoever (although many evolutionary psychologists give these arguments a biological twist). Call this the computational argument, which unfolds as follows: minds are computational problem solving devices; there are specific types of solutions to specific types of problems; and so for minds to be (successful) general problem solving devices, they must consist of collections of specific problem solving devices, i.e. many computational modules. This type of argument is structurally similar to the biological argument (as Carruthers points out). The key idea is that there is no sense to the idea of a general problem solver and that no headway can be made in cognitive science without breaking down problems into their component parts.

The third type of argument involves a generalization of Chomsky’s poverty of the stimulus argument for universal grammar. Many evolutionary psychologists (see, e.g., Tooby & Cosmides 1992) appeal to the idea that there is neither enough time, nor enough available information, for any given human to learn from scratch to successfully solve all of the problems that we face in the world. This first consideration supports the conclusion that the underlying mechanisms we use to solve the relevant problems are innate (for evolutionary psychologists “innate” is usually interchangeable with “product of natural selection” [ 4 ] ). If we invoke this argument across the whole range of problem sets that humans face and solve, we arrive at a huge set of innate mechanisms that subserve our problem solving abilities, which is another way of saying that we have a massively modular mind.

There are numerous responses to the many versions of each of these types of arguments and many take on the massive modularity thesis head on without considering a specific argument for it. I will defer consideration of responses to the first argument type until section 4 below, which focuses on issues of the nature of evolution and natural selection – topics in philosophy of biology.

The second type of argument is one side of a perennial debate in the philosophy of cognitive science. Fodor (2000, 68) takes this argument to rest on the unwarranted assumption that there is no domain-independent criterion of cognitive success, which he thinks requires an argument that evolutionary psychologists do not provide. Samuels (see esp. Samuels 1998) responds to evolutionary psychologists that arguments of this type do not sufficiently discriminate between a conclusion about domain specific processing mechanisms and domain specific knowledge or information. Samuels articulates what he calls the “library model of cognition” in which there is domain specific information or knowledge but domain general processing. The library model of cognition is not massively modular in the relevant sense but type two arguments support it. According to Samuels, evolutionary psychologists need something more than this type of argument to warrant their specific kind of conclusion about massive modularity. Buller (2005) introduces further worries for this type of argument by tackling the assumption that there can be no such thing as a domain general problem solving mechanism. Buller worries that in their attempt to support this claim, evolutionary psychologists fail to adequately characterize a domain general problem solver. For example, they fail to distinguish between a domain general problem solver and a domain specific problem solver that is over generalized. He offers the example of social learning as a domain general mechanism that would produce domain specific solutions to problems. He uses a nice biological analogy to drive this point home: the immune system is a domain general system in that it allows the body to respond to a wide variety of pathogens. While it is true that the immune system produces domain specific responses to pathogens in the form of specific antibodies, the antibodies are produced by one domain general system. These and many other respondents conclude that type two arguments do not adequately support the massive modularity thesis.

Fodor (2000) and Kim Sterelny (2003) provide different responses to type three arguments. Fodor’s response is that poverty of the stimulus type arguments support conclusions about innateness but not modularity and so these arguments can not be used to support the massive modularity thesis. He argues that the domain specificity and encapsulation of a mechanism and its innateness pull apart quite clearly, allowing for “perfectly general learning mechanisms” that are innate and “fully encapsulated mechanisms” that are single stimulus specific and everything in between. Sterelny responds to the generalizing move in type three arguments. He takes language to be the exception rather than the rule in the sense that while the postulation of an innate, domain specific module may be warranted to account for our language abilities, much of our other problem solving behavior can be accounted for without postulating such modules (Sterelny 2003, 200). [ 5 ] Sterelny’s counter requires invoking alternate explanations for our behavioral repertoire. For example, he accounts for folk psychology and folk biology by appealing to environmental factors, some of which are constructed by our forebears, that allow us to perform sophisticated cognitive tasks. If we can account for our success at various complex problem solving tasks, without appealing to modules, then the massive modularity thesis is undercut. Sterelny sharpens his response to massive modularity by adding more detail to his accounts of how many of our uniquely human traits may have evolved (see, e.g., Sterelny 2012). Sterelny introduces his “evolved apprentice” model to account for the evolution of many human traits that many assume require explanation in terms of massive modularity, for example, forming moral judgments. Cecilia Heyes adopts a similar approach to Sterenly in attacking massive modularity. Rather than presenting arguments against massive modularity, she offers alternative explanations of the development of folk psychology that do not rely on the massive modularity thesis (Heyes 2014a; Heyes 2014b).

Heyes and Sterelny not only reject massive modularity but also have little expectation that any modularity theses will bear fruit but there are many critics of the massive modularity thesis who allow for the possibility of some modularity of mind. Such critics of evolutionary psychology do not reject the possibility of any kind of modularity, they just reject the massive modularity thesis. There is considerable debate about the status of the massive modularity thesis and some of this debate centers around the characterization of modules. If modules have all the characteristics that Fodor (1983) first presented, then he may be right that central systems are not modular. Both Carruthers (2006) and Barrett and Kurzban (2006) present modified characterizations of modules, which they argue better serve the massive modularity thesis. There is no agreement on a workable characterization of modules for evolutionary psychology but there is agreement on the somewhat benign thesis that “the language of modularity affords useful conceptual groundwork in which productive debates surrounding cognitive systems can be framed” (Barrett and Kurzban 2006, 644).

Many philosophers have criticized evolutionary psychology. Most of these critics are philosophers of biology who argue that the research tradition suffers from an overly zealous form of adaptationism (Griffiths 1996; Richardson 1996; Grantham & Nichols 1999; Lloyd 1999; Richardson 2007), an untenable reductionism (Dupré 1999, 2001), a “bad empirical bet” about modules (Sterelny 1995; Sterelny & Griffiths 1999; Sterelny 2003), a fast and loose conception of fitness (Lloyd 1999; Lloyd & Feldman 2002); and most of the above and much more (Buller 2005). (See also Downes 2005.) [ 6 ] All of these philosophers share one version or other of Buller’s view: “I am unabashedly enthusiastic about efforts to apply evolutionary theory to human psychology” (2005, x). [ 7 ] But if philosophers of biology are not skeptical of the fundamental idea behind the project, as Buller’s quote indicates, what are they so critical of? What is at stake are differing views about how to best characterize evolution and hence how to generate evolutionary hypotheses and how to test evolutionary hypotheses. For evolutionary psychologists, the most interesting contribution that evolutionary theory makes is the explanation of apparent design in nature or the explanation of the production of complex organs by appeal to natural selection. Evolutionary psychologists generate evolutionary hypotheses by first finding apparent design in the world, say in our psychological make up, and then presenting a selective scenario that would have led to the production of the trait that exhibits apparent design. The hypotheses evolutionary psychologists generate, given that they are usually hypotheses about our psychological capacities, are tested by standard psychological methods. Philosophers of biology challenge evolutionary psychologists on both of these points. I introduce a few examples of criticisms in each of these two areas below and then look at some responses to philosophical criticisms of evolutionary psychology.

Adaptation is the one biological concept that is central to most debates over evolutionary psychology. Every theoretical work on evolutionary psychology presents the research tradition as being primarily focused on psychological adaptations and goes on to give an account of what adaptations are (see, e.g., Tooby & Cosmides 1992; Buss et al. 1998; Simpson & Campbell 2005; Tooby & Cosmides 2005). Much of the philosophical criticism of evolutionary psychology addresses its approach to adaptation or its form of adaptationism. Let us quickly review the basics from the perspective of philosophy of biology.

Here is how Elliott Sober defines an adaptation: “characteristic c is an adaptation for doing task t in a population if and only if members of the population now have c because, ancestrally, there was selection for having c and c conferred a fitness advantage because it performed task t ” (Sober 2000, 85). Sober makes a few further clarifications of the notion of adaptation that are helpful. First, we should distinguish between a trait that is adaptive and a trait that is an adaptation . Any number of traits can be adaptive without those traits being adaptations. A sea turtle’s forelegs are useful for digging in the sand to bury eggs but they are not adaptations for nest building (Sober 2000, 85). Also, traits can be adaptations without being currently adaptive for a given organism. Vestigial organs such as our appendix or vestigial eyes in cave dwelling organisms are examples of such traits (Sterelny and Griffiths 1999). Second, we should distinguish between ontogenic and phylogenetic adaptations (Sober 2000, 86). The adaptations of interest to evolutionary biologists are phylogenetic adaptations, which arise over evolutionary time and impact the fitness of the organism. Ontogenetic adaptations, including any behavior we learn in our lifetimes, can be adaptive to the extent that an organism benefits from them but they are not adaptations in the relevant sense. Finally, adaptation and function are closely related terms. On one of the prominent views of function—the etiological view of functions—adaptation and function are more or less coextensive; to ask for the function of an organ is to ask why it is present. On the Cummins view of functions adaptation and function are not coextensive, as on the Cummins view, to ask what an organ’s function is, is to ask what it does (Sober 2000, 86–87). (See also Sterelny & Griffiths 1999, 220–224.)

Evolutionary psychologists focus on psychological adaptations. One consistent theme in the theoretical work of evolutionary psychologists is that “adaptations, the functional components of organisms, are identified […] by […] evidence of their design: the exquisite match between organism structure and environment” (Hagen 2005, 148). The way in which psychological adaptations are identified is by evolutionary functional analysis, which is a type of reverse engineering. [ 8 ] “Reverse engineering is a process of figuring out the design of a mechanism on the basis of an analysis of the tasks it performs. Evolutionary functional analysis is a form of reverse engineering in that it attempts to reconstruct the mind’s design from an analysis of the problems the mind must have evolved to solve” (Buller 2005, 92). Many philosophers object to evolutionary psychologists’ over attribution of adaptations on the basis of apparent design. Here some are following Gould and Lewontin’s (1979) lead when they worry that accounting for apparent design in nature in terms of adaptation amounts to telling just-so stories but they could just as easily cite Williams (1966), who also cautioned against the over attribution of adaptation as an explanation for biological traits. While it is true that evolutionary functional analysis can lend itself to just-so story telling, this is not the most interesting problem that confronts evolutionary psychology, several other interesting problems have been identified. For example, Elisabeth Lloyd (1999) derives a criticism of evolutionary psychology from Gould and Lewontin’s criticism of sociobiology, emphasizing the point that evolutionary psychologists’ adaptationism leads them to ignore alternative evolutionary processes. Buller takes yet another approach to evolutionary psychologists’ adaptationism. What lies behind Buller’s criticisms of evolutionary psychologists’ adaptationism is a different view than theirs about what is important in evolutionary thinking (Buller 2005). Buller thinks that evolutionary psychologists overemphasize design and that they make the contentious assumption that with respect to the traits they are interested in, evolution is finished, rather than ongoing.

Sober’s definition of adaptation is not constrained only to apply to organs or other traits that exhibit apparent design. Rather, clutch size (in birds), schooling (in fish), leaf arrangement, foraging strategies and all manner of traits can be adaptations (Seger & Stubblefield 1996). Buller argues the more general point that phenotypic plasticity of various types can be an adaptation, because it arises in various organisms as a result of natural selection. [ 9 ] The difference here between Buller (and other philosophers and biologists) and evolutionary psychologists is a difference in the explanatory scope that they attribute to natural selection. For evolutionary psychologists, the hallmark of natural selection is a well functioning organ and for their critics, the results of natural selection can be seen in an enormous range of traits ranging from the specific apparent design features of organs to the most general response profiles in behavior. According to Buller, this latter approach opens up the range of possible evolutionary hypotheses that can account for human behavior. Rather than being restricted to accounting for our behavior in terms of the joint output of many specific modular mechanisms, we can account for our behavior by appealing to selection acting upon many different levels of traits. This difference in emphasis on what is important in evolutionary theory also is at the center of debates between evolutionary psychologists and behavioral ecologists, who argue that behaviors, rather than just the mechanisms that underlie them, can be adaptations (Downes 2001). Further, this difference in emphasis is what leads to the wide range of alternate evolutionary hypotheses that Sterelny (Sterelny 2003) presents to explain human behavior. Given that philosophers like Buller and Sterelny are adaptationists, they are not critical of evolutionary psychologists’ adaptationism. Rather, they are critical of the narrow explanatory scope of the type of adaptationism evolutionary psychologists adopt (see also Downes 2015).

Buller’s criticism that evolutionary psychologists assume that evolution is finished for the traits that they are interested in connects worries about the understanding of evolutionary theory with worries about the testing of evolutionary hypotheses. Here is Tooby & Cosmides’ clear statement of the assumption that Buller is worried about: “evolutionary psychologists primarily explore the design of the universal, evolved psychological and neural architecture that we all share by virtue of being human. Evolutionary psychologists are usually less interested in human characteristics that vary due to genetic differences because they recognize that these differences are unlikely to be evolved adaptations central to human nature. Of the three kinds of characteristics that are found in the design of organisms – adaptations, by-products, and noise – traits caused by genetic variants are predominantly evolutionary noise, with little adaptive significance, while complex adaptations are likely to be universal in the species” (Tooby & Cosmides 2005, 39). This line of thinking also captures evolutionary psychologists’ view of human nature: human nature is our collection of universally shared adaptations. (See Downes & Machery 2013 for more discussion of this and other, contrasting biologically based accounts of human nature.) The problem here is that it is false to assume that adaptations cannot be subject to variation. The underlying problem is the constrained notion of adaptation. Adaptations are traits that arise as a result of natural selection and not traits that exhibit design and are universal in a given species (Seger & Stubblefield 1996). As a result, it is quite consistent to argue, as Buller does, that many human traits may still be under selection and yet reasonably be called adaptations. Finally, philosophers of biology have articulated several different types of adaptationism (see, e.g., Godfrey-Smith 2001; Lewens 2009; Sober 2000). While some of these types of adaptationism can be reasonably seen placing constraints on how evolutionary research is carried out, Godfrey-Smith’s “explanatory adaptationism” is different in character (Godfrey-Smith 2001). Explanatory adaptationism is the view that apparent design is one of the big questions we face in explaining our natural world and natural selection is the big (and only supportable) answer to such a big question. Explanatory adaptationism is often adopted by those who want to distinguish evolutionary thinking from creationism or intelligent design and is the way evolutionary psychologists often couch their work to distinguish it from their colleagues in the broader social sciences. While explanatory adaptationism does serve to distinguish evolutionary psychology from such markedly different approaches to accounting for design in nature, it does not place many clear constraints on the way in which evolutionary explanations should be sought (Downes 2015). So far these are disagreements that are located in differing views about the nature and scope of evolutionary explanation but they have ramifications in the discussion about hypothesis testing.

If the traits of interest to evolutionary psychologists are universally distributed, then we should expect to find them in all humans. This partly explains the stock that evolutionary psychologists put in cross cultural psychological tests (see, e.g., Buss 1990). If we find evidence for the trait in a huge cross section of humans, then this supports our view that the trait is an adaptation —on the assumption that adaptations are organ-like traits that are products of natural selection but not subject to variation. But given the wider scope view of evolution defended by philosophers of biology, this method of testing seems wrong-headed as a test of an evolutionary hypothesis. Certainly such testing can result in the very interesting results that certain preference profiles are widely shared cross culturally but the test does not speak to the evolutionary hypothesis that the preferences are adaptations (Lloyd 1999; Buller 2005).

Another worry that critics have about evolutionary psychologists’ approach to hypothesis testing is that they give insufficient weight to serious alternate hypotheses that fit the relevant data. Buller dedicates several chapters of his book on evolutionary psychology to an examination of hypothesis testing and many of his criticisms center around the introduction of alternate hypotheses that do as good a job, or a better job, of accounting for the data. For example, he argues that the hypothesis of assortative mating by status does a better job of accounting for some of evolutionary psychologists’ mate selection data than their preferred high status preference hypothesis. This debate hangs on how the empirical tests come out. The previous debate is more closely connected to theoretical issues in philosophy of biology.

I said in my introduction that there is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise and some philosophers of biology continue to remind us of this sentiment (see, e.g., Dupré 2012). However the relevant consensus is not complete, there are some proponents of evolutionary psychology among philosophers of science. One way of defending evolutionary psychology is to rebut criticism. Edouard Machery and Clark Barrett (2007) do just that in their sharply critical review of Buller’s book. Another way to defend evolutionary psychology is to practice it (at least to the extent that philosophers can, i.e. theoretically). This is what Robert Arp (2006) does in a recent article. I briefly review both responses below.

Machery and Barrett (2007) argue that Buller has no clear critical target as there is nothing to the idea that there is a research tradition of evolutionary psychology that is distinct from the broader enterprise of the evolutionary understanding of human behavior. They argue that theoretical tenets and methods are shared by many in the biology of human behavior. For example, many are adaptationists. But as we saw above, evolutionary psychologists and behavioral ecologists can both call themselves adaptationist but their particular approach to adaptationism dictates the range of hypotheses that they can generate, the range of traits that can be counted as adaptations and impacts upon the way in which hypotheses are tested. Research traditions can share some broad theoretical commitments and yet still be distinct research traditions. Secondly, they argue against Buller’s view that past environments are not stable enough to produce the kind of psychological adaptations that evolutionary psychologists propose. They take this to be a claim that no adaptations can arise from an evolutionary arms race situation, for example, between predators and prey. But again, I think that the disagreement here is over what counts as an adaptation. Buller does not deny that adaptations— traits that arise as a product of natural selection—arise from all kinds of unstable environments. What he denies is that organ-like, special purpose adaptations are the likely result of such evolutionary scenarios.

Arp (2006) defends a hypothesis about a kind of module—scenario visualization—a psychological adaptation that arose in our hominid history in response to the demands of tool making, such as constructing spear throwing devices for hunting. Arp presents his hypothesis in the context of demonstrating the superiority of his approach to evolutionary psychology, which he calls “Narrow Evolutionary Psychology,” over “Broad Evolutionary Psychology,” with respect to accounting for archaeological evidence and facts about our psychology. While Arp’s hypothesis is innovative and interesting, he by no means defends it conclusively. This is partly because his strategy is to compare his hypothesis with archaeologist Steven Mithen’s (1996) non-modular “cognitive fluidity” hypothesis that is proposed to account for the same data. The problem here is that Mithen’s view is only one of the many alternative, evolutionary explanations of human tool making behavior. While Arp’s modular thesis may be superior to Mithen’s, he has not compared it to Sterelny’s (2003; 2012) account of tool making and tool use or to Boyd and Richerson’s (see, e.g., 2005) account and hence not ruled these accounts out as plausible alternatives. As neither of these alternative accounts rely on the postulation of psychological modules, evolutionary psychology is not adequately defended.

Many philosophers who work on moral psychology understand that their topic is empirically constrained. Philosophers take two main approaches to using empirical results in moral psychology. One is to use empirical results (and empirically based theories from psychology) to criticize philosophical accounts of moral psychology (see, e.g., Doris 2002) and one is to generate (and, in the experimental philosophy tradition, to test) hypotheses about our moral psychology (see, e.g., Nichols 2004). For those who think that some (or all) of our moral psychology is based in innate capacities, evolutionary psychology is a good source of empirical results and empirically based theory. One account of the make-up of our moral psychology follows from the massive modularity account of the architecture of the mind. Our moral judgments are a product of domain specific psychological modules that are adaptations and arose in our hominid forebears in response to contingencies in our (mostly) social environments. This position is currently widely discussed by philosophers working in moral psychology. An example of this discussion follows.

Cosmides (see, e.g., 1989) defends a hypothesis in evolutionary psychology that we have a cheater-detection module. [ 10 ] This module is hypothesized to underlie important components of our behavior in moral domains and fits with the massively modular view of our psychology in general. Cosmides (along with Tooby) argues that cheating is a violation of a particular kind of conditional rule that goes along with a social contract. Social exchange is a system of cooperation for mutual benefit and cheaters violate the social contract that governs social exchange (Cosmides & Tooby 2005). The selection pressure for a dedicated cheater-detection module is the presence of cheaters in the social world. The cheater-detection module is an adaptation that arose in response to cheaters. The cheater-detection hypothesis has been the focus of a huge amount of critical discussion. Cosmides and Tooby (2008) defend the idea that cheat detection is modular over hypotheses that more general rules of inference are involved in the kind of reasoning behind cheater detection against critics Ron Mallon (2008) and Fodor (2008). Some criticism of the cheater-detection hypothesis involves rehashing criticisms of massive modularity in general and some treats the hypothesis as a contribution to moral psychology and invokes different considerations. For example, Mallon (2008) worries about the coherence of abandoning a domain general conception of ought in our conception of our moral psychology. This discussion is also ongoing. (See, e.g., Sterelny 2012 for a selection of alternate, non-modular explanations of aspects of our moral psychology.)

Evolutionary psychology is well suited to providing an account of human nature. As noted above (Section 1), evolutionary psychology owes a theoretical debt to human sociobiology. E.O. Wilson took human sociobiology to provide us with an account of human nature (1978). For Wilson human nature is the collection of universal human behavioral repertoires and these behavioral repertoires are best understood as being products of natural selection. Evolutionary psychologists argue that human nature is not a collection of universal human behavioral repertoires but rather the universal psychological mechanisms underlying these behaviors (Tooby & Cosmides 1990). These universal psychological mechanisms are products of natural selection, as we saw in Section 2. above. Tooby and Cosmides put this claim as follows: “the concept of human nature is based on a species-typical collection of complex psychological adaptations” (1990, 17). So, for evolutionary psychologists, “human nature consists of a set of psychological adaptations that are presumed to be universal among, and unique to, human beings” (Buller 2005, 423). Machery’s (2008) nomological account of human nature is based on, and very similar to, the evolutionary psychologists’ account. Machery says that “human nature is the set of properties that humans tend to possess as a result of the evolution of their species” (2008, 323). While Machery’s account appeals to traits that have evolved and are universal (common to all humans), it is not limited to psychological mechanisms. For example, he thinks of bi-pedalism as part of the human nature trait cluster. Machery’s view captures elements of both the sociobiological view and the evolutionary psychology view of human nature. He shares the idea that a trait must be a product of evolution, rather than say social learning or enculturation, with both these accounts.

Some critical challenges to evolutionary psychological accounts of human nature (and the nomological account) derive from similar concerns as those driving criticism of evolutionary psychology in general. In Section 4. we see that discussions of evolutionary psychology are founded on disagreements about how adaptation should be characterized and disagreements about the role of variation in evolution. Some critics charge evolutionary psychologists of assuming that adaptation cannot sustain variation. Buller’s (2005) criticism of evolutionary psychologists’ account of human nature also invokes variation (Here he follows Hull 1986 and Sober 1980). The idea here is that humans, like all organisms, exhibit a great deal of variation, including morphological, physiological, behavioral and cultural variation (see also Amundson 2000). Buller argues that the evolutionary psychology account of human nature either ignores or fails to account for all of this variation (see also Lewens 2015 and Ramsey 2013). Any account that restricts human nature to just those traits we have in common and which also are not subject to change, cannot account for human variation.

Buller’s (2005) criticism of evolutionary psychologists’ notion of human nature (or the nomological account) is based on the idea that we vary across many dimensions and an account of human nature based on fixed, universal traits cannot account for any of this variation. The idea that to account for human nature, we must account for human variation is presented and defended by evolutionary psychologists (see, e.g., Barrett 2015), anthropologists (see e.g. Cashdan 2013) and philosophers (see, e.g., Griffiths 2011 and Ramsey 2013). Barrett agrees with Buller (and others) that evolutionary psychologists have failed to account for human variation in their account of human nature. Rather than seeing this challenge as a knock down of the whole enterprise of accounting for human nature, Barrett sees this as a challenge for an account of human nature. Barrett says “Whatever human nature is, it’s a biological phenomenon with all that implies” (2015, 321). So, human nature is “a big wobbly cloud that is different from the population clouds of squirrels and palm trees. To understand human minds and behaviors, we need to understand the properties of our own cloud, as messy as it might be” (2015, 232). Rather than human nature being a collection of shared fixed universal psychological traits, for Barrett, human nature is the whole human trait cluster, including all of the variation in all of our traits. This approach to human nature is sharply different than the approach defended by either Wilson, Tooby and Cosmides or Machery but is also subject to a number of criticisms. The main thrust of the criticisms is that such a view cannot be explanatory and is instead merely a big list of all the properties that humans have had and can have (see, e.g., Buller 2005; Downes 2016; Futuyma 1998; and Lewens 2015). Discussion over the tension between evolutionary psychologists’ views and the manifest variation in human traits continues in many areas that evolutionary psychologists focus on. Another example of this broader discussion is included in Section 7. below.

Evolutionary psychology is invoked in a wide range of areas of study, for example, in English Literature, Consumer Studies and Law. (See Buss 2005 for discussion of Literature and Law and Saad 2007 for a detailed presentation of evolutionary psychology and consumer studies.) In these contexts, evolutionary psychology is usually introduced as providing resources for practitioners, which will advance the relevant field. Philosophers have responded critically to some of these applications of evolutionary psychology. One concern is that often evolutionary psychology is conflated with evolution or evolutionary theory in general (see, e.g., Leiter & Weisberg 2009 and Downes 2013). The discussion reviewed in Section 4. above, reveals a good deal of disagreement between evolutionary theorists and evolutionary psychologists over the proper account of evolution. Evolutionary psychologists offer to enhance fields such as Law and Consumer Studies by introducing evolutionary ideas but what is in fact offered is a selection of theoretical resources championed only by proponents of a specific approach to evolutionary psychology. For example, Gad Saad (2007) argues that Consumer Studies will profit greatly from the addition of adaptive thinking, i.e. looking for apparent design, and by introducing hypothetical evolved modules to account for consumer behavior. However, this does not appear to be an effort to bring evolutionary theory, broadly construed, to bear on Consumer Studies (Downes 2013). Promoting disputed theoretical ideas is certainly problematic but bigger worries arise when thoroughly discredited work is promoted in the effort to apply evolutionary psychology. Owen Jones (see, e.g., 2000; 2005), who believes that Law will benefit from the application of evolutionary psychology, champions Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer’s (2000) widely discredited view that rape is an adaptation as exemplary evolutionary work (see de Waal 2000, Coyne & Berry 2000, Coyne 2003, Lloyd 2003, Vickers & Kitcher 2003, and Kimmel 2003). Further, Jones (2000) claims that the critics of Thornhill and Palmer’s work have no credibility as scientists and evolutionary theorists. This claim indicates Jones’ serious disconnect with the wider scientific (and philosophical) literature on evolutionary theory (Leiter & Weisberg 2009).

Aside from monitoring the expansion efforts of evolutionary psychology, there are a number of other areas in which further philosophical work on evolutionary psychology will be fruitful. The examples given above of work in moral psychology barely scratch the surface of this rapidly developing field. There are huge numbers of empirical hypotheses that bear on our conception of our moral psychology that demand philosophical scrutiny. (Hauser 2006 includes a survey of a wide range of such hypotheses.) Also, work on moral psychology and the emotions can be drawn together via work on evolutionary psychology and related fields. Griffiths (1997) directed philosophical attention to evolution and the emotions and this kind of work has been brought into closer contact with moral psychology by Nichols (see, e.g., his 2004). In philosophy of mind there is still much that can be done on the topic of modules. Work on integrating biological and psychological concepts of modules is one avenue that is being pursued and could be fruitfully pursued further (see, e.g., Barrett & Kurzban 2006; Carruthers 2006) and work on connecting biology to psychology via genetics is another promising area (see e.g. Marcus 2004). In philosophy of science, I have no doubt that many more criticisms of evolutionary psychology will be presented but a relatively underdeveloped area of philosophical research is on the relations among all of the various, theoretically different, approaches to the biology of human behavior (but see Downes 2005; Griffiths 2008; and Brown et al. 2011). Evolutionary psychologists present their work alongside the work of behavioral ecologists, developmental psychobiologists and others (see, e.g., Buss 2005; Buss 2007) but do not adequately confront the theoretical difficulties that face an integrated enterprise in the biology of human behavior. Finally, while debate rages between biologically influenced and other social scientists, most philosophers have not paid much attention to potential integration of evolutionary psychology into the broader interdisciplinary study of society and culture (but see Mallon and Stich 2000 on evolutionary psychology and constructivism). In contrast, feminist philosophers have paid attention to this integration issue as well as offered feminist critiques of evolutionary psychology (see Fehr 2012, Meynell 2012 and the entry on feminist philosophy of biology ). Gillian Barker (2015), shares some evolutionarily based criticisms of evolutionary psychology with philosophers of biology discussed in Section 4. but also assesses evolutionary psychology in relation to other social sciences. She also adds a novel critical appraisal of evolutionary psychology. She argues that, as currently practiced, evolutionary psychology is not a fruitful guide to social policy regarding human flourishing.

The publication of Shackleford and Weekes-Shackleford’s (2017) huge collection of articles on issues arising in the evolutionary psychological sciences provides a great resource for philosophers looking for material to fuel critical discussion. Many evolutionary psychologists are aware of the difficulty variation presents for some established approaches in their field. This issue confronts those interested in developing accounts of human nature, as noted above (Section 6.), but also arises when confronting many of the varying human behaviors evolutionary psychologists seek to account for. For example, human aggression varies along many dimensions and confronting and accounting for each of these types of variation is a challenge for many evolutionary psychologists (Downes & Tabery 2017). Given that evolutionary psychology is just one, among many, evolutionarily based approaches to explaining human behavior, the most promising critical discussions of evolutionary psychology should continue to come from work that compares hypotheses drawn from evolutionary psychology with hypotheses drawn from other evolutionary approaches and other approaches in the social sciences more broadly construed. Stephan Linquist (2016) takes this approach to evolutionary psychologists’ work on cultures of honor. Linquist introduces hypotheses from cultural evolution that appear to offer more explanatory bite than those from evolutionary psychology. The broader issue of tension between evolutionary psychology and cultural evolution here will doubtless continue to attract the critical attention of philosophers. (See Lewens 2015 for a nice clear introduction to and discussion of alternative approaches to cultural evolution.)

Interest has re-emerged in the relation(s) between evolutionary psychology and the other social sciences (Buss 2020). Some time ago, John Dupré (1994) diagnosed evolutionary psychology as an exercise in scientific imperialism. Dupré later characterized scientific imperialism as “the tendency for a successful scientific idea to be applied far beyond its original home, and generally with decreasing success the more its application is expanded” (2001, 16). Dupré uses “scientific imperialism” in a pejorative sense and marshals this as a criticism of evolutionary psychology. (See Downes 2017 for further discussion of scientific imperialism and evolutionary psychology.) Buss (2020) does not cite Dupré but might well be responding to him when he proposes that evolutionary psychology constitutes a scientific revolution in Kuhn’s sense. Buss argues that evolutionary psychology is superior to other approaches in psychology, because it has supplanted them (or at least should supplant them) just as Einstein’s physics supplanted Newton’s or just as cognitive psychology supplanted behaviorism. (David Reich [2018] casts ancient DNA research in similarly Kuhnian terms and offers it up as superior to all previous approaches in archaeology.) Buss takes evolutionary psychology to be a meta-theoretical approach best fit for guiding all of psychology. This is one of the many ways in which his appeal to Kuhn is strained, as Buss is not looking back on the supplanting of one theoretical framework by another but rather arguing for the superiority of his approach to others available in psychology. A further, and quite specific way that Buss sees evolutionary psychology as superior to other approaches in psychology (and the social sciences in general, is that evolutionary psychology ignores (or should ignore) proximate explanations. For Buss, evolutionary psychology offers ultimate explanations and these are enough. However, many areas of biology, for example, physiology, trade in proximate explanations and are not likely to be cast aside because of this focus. This implies that there is still a place for proximate explanations in psychology. This brief discussion indicates that the relations between evolutionary psychology and the rest of psychology, and the social sciences, more broadly is a topic well worth pursuing by philosophers of science and Buss’ and Dupré’s accounts present interesting alternate starting points in this endeavor.

Finally, philosophers of science will doubtless continue to check the credentials of evolutionary ideas imported into other areas of philosophy. Philosophers of biology in particular, still voice suspicion if philosophers borrow their evolutionary ideas from evolutionary psychology rather than evolutionary biology. Philip Kitcher (2017) voices this concern with regards to Sharon Street’s (2006) appeals to evolution. Kitcher worries that Street does not rely on “what is known about human evolution” (2017, 187) to provide an account of how her traits of interest may have emerged. As noted above, Machery’s nomological notion of human nature (2008; 2017) is criticized on the grounds that he takes his idea of an evolved trait from evolutionary psychology as opposed to evolutionary biology. Barker (2015) also encourages philosophers, as well as social scientists, to draw from the huge range of theoretical resources evolutionary biologists have to offer, rather than just from those provided by evolutionary psychologists.

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Cited Resources

• Buller, D., 2000, “ Evolutionary Psychology ” (a guided tour), in M. Nani and M. Marraffa (eds.), A Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind .

adaptationism | biology: philosophy of | cognitive science | culture: and cognitive science | emotion | feminist philosophy, interventions: philosophy of biology | -->function --> | game theory: evolutionary | innate/acquired distinction | innateness: and language | language of thought hypothesis | mind: modularity of | moral psychology: empirical approaches | prisoner’s dilemma

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Thanks to Austin Booth, David Buller, Marc Ereshefsky, Matt Haber, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols and the Stanford Encyclopedia referees for helpful comments on drafts of this entry.

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Evolutionary psychology. Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations

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• 1 Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, 78712, USA.
• PMID: 20141266
• DOI: 10.1037/a0018413

Evolutionary psychology has emerged over the past 15 years as a major theoretical perspective, generating an increasing volume of empirical studies and assuming a larger presence within psychological science. At the same time, it has generated critiques and remains controversial among some psychologists. Some of the controversy stems from hypotheses that go against traditional psychological theories; some from empirical findings that may have disturbing implications; some from misunderstandings about the logic of evolutionary psychology; and some from reasonable scientific concerns about its underlying framework. This article identifies some of the most common concerns and attempts to elucidate evolutionary psychology's stance pertaining to them. These include issues of testability and falsifiability; the domain specificity versus domain generality of psychological mechanisms; the role of novel environments as they interact with evolved psychological circuits; the role of genes in the conceptual structure of evolutionary psychology; the roles of learning, socialization, and culture in evolutionary psychology; and the practical value of applied evolutionary psychology. The article concludes with a discussion of the limitations of current evolutionary psychology.

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T1 - Evolutionary psychology: controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations

AU - Confer, J.

AU - Easton, J.

AU - Fleischman, Diana

AU - Goetz, C.

AU - Lewis, D.

AU - Perilloux, C.

AU - Buss, D.

N2 - Evolutionary psychology has emerged over the past 15 years as a major theoretical perspective, generating an increasing volume of empirical studies and assuming a larger presence within psychological science. At the same time, it has generated critiques and remains controversial among some psychologists. Some of the controversy stems from hypotheses that go against traditional psychological theories; some from empirical findings that may have disturbing implications; some from misunderstandings about the logic of evolutionary psychology; and some from reasonable scientific concerns about its underlying framework. This article identifies some of the most common concerns and attempts to elucidate evolutionary psychology’s stance pertaining to them. These include issues of testability and falsifiability; the domain specificity versus domain generality of psychological mechanisms; the role of novel environments as they interact with evolved psychological circuits; the role of genes in the conceptual structure of evolutionary psychology; the roles of learning, socialization, and culture in evolutionary psychology; and the practical value of applied evolutionary psychology. The article concludes with a discussion of the limitations of current evolutionary psychology.

AB - Evolutionary psychology has emerged over the past 15 years as a major theoretical perspective, generating an increasing volume of empirical studies and assuming a larger presence within psychological science. At the same time, it has generated critiques and remains controversial among some psychologists. Some of the controversy stems from hypotheses that go against traditional psychological theories; some from empirical findings that may have disturbing implications; some from misunderstandings about the logic of evolutionary psychology; and some from reasonable scientific concerns about its underlying framework. This article identifies some of the most common concerns and attempts to elucidate evolutionary psychology’s stance pertaining to them. These include issues of testability and falsifiability; the domain specificity versus domain generality of psychological mechanisms; the role of novel environments as they interact with evolved psychological circuits; the role of genes in the conceptual structure of evolutionary psychology; the roles of learning, socialization, and culture in evolutionary psychology; and the practical value of applied evolutionary psychology. The article concludes with a discussion of the limitations of current evolutionary psychology.

U2 - 10.1037/a0018413

DO - 10.1037/a0018413

M3 - Article

SN - 0003-066X

JO - American Psychologist

JF - American Psychologist

• Frontiers in Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Research Topics

Insights in: Evolutionary Psychology 2022

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Articles on Evolutionary psychology

Displaying 1 - 20 of 41 articles.

Winter brings more than just ugly sweaters – here’s how the season can affect your mind and behavior

Michael Varnum , Arizona State University and Ian Hohm , University of British Columbia

Nearly 20% of the cultural differences between societies boil down to ecological factors – new research

Alexandra Wormley , Arizona State University and Michael Varnum , Arizona State University

Evolution is making us treat AI like a human, and we need to kick the habit

Neil Saunders , University of Greenwich

Macaque monkeys shrink their social networks as they age – research suggests evolutionary roots of a pattern seen in elderly people, too

Erin Siracusa , University of Exeter and Noah Snyder-Mackler , Arizona State University

Why are so many people delighted by disgusting things?

Bradley J. Irish , Arizona State University

Intuitions about justice are a consistent part of human nature across cultures and millennia

Daniel Sznycer , Oklahoma State University and Carlton Patrick , University of Central Florida

‘Life hates surprises’: can an ambitious theory unify biology, neuroscience and psychology?

Ross Pain , Australian National University ; Michael David Kirchhoff , University of Wollongong , and Stephen Francis Mann , Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

What really drives anti-abortion beliefs? Research suggests it’s a matter of sexual strategies

Jaimie Arona Krems , Oklahoma State University and Martie Haselton , University of California, Los Angeles

Why does love feel magical? It’s an evolutionary advantage

Benjamin Kaveladze , University of California, Irvine ; Jonathan Schooler , University of California, Santa Barbara , and Oliver Sng , University of California, Irvine

What makes people willing to risk their lives to save others?

Frank T. McAndrew , Knox College

Netflix’s Sexy Beasts tells us you can take physical attraction out of love. The reality is much more complicated

Raquel Peel , University of Southern Queensland

‘Cheating’s OK for me, but not for thee’ – inside the messy psychology of sexual double standards

David M. Buss , The University of Texas at Austin

Why we dispute ‘Dunbar’s number’ – the claim humans can only maintain 150 friendships

Johan Lind , Stockholm University and Patrik Lindenfors , Stockholm University

The urge to punish is not only about revenge – unfairness can unleash it, too

Paul Deutchman , Boston College and Katherine McAuliffe , Boston College

Humans aren’t inherently selfish – we’re actually hardwired to work together

Steve Taylor , Leeds Beckett University

Is humanity doomed because we can’t plan for the long term? Three experts discuss

Robin Dunbar , University of Oxford ; Chris Zebrowski , Loughborough University , and Per Olsson , Stockholm University

Social distancing increased over the course of human history – but so did empathy and new ways to connect

Fritz Breithaupt , Indiana University

Why we love big, blood-curdling screams

Stop scolding men for being ‘toxic’

Galen Watts , Queen's University, Ontario

Why women – including feminists – are still attracted to ‘benevolently sexist’ men

Pelin Gül , Iowa State University and Tom R. Kupfer , Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

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• Evolutionary biology
• Relationships
• Social psychology

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Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology, Knox College

Scientia Professor of Psychology, UNSW Sydney

Associate Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University

Professor of Psychology, UNSW Sydney

Lecturer in Anthropology, Durham University

PhD candidate in Psychology, Monash University

PhD candidate in Psychology, The University of Queensland

PhD Research Student, University of Bath

PhD Researcher in Evolutionary & Behavioural Ecology, University of Exeter

Assistant Professor of Psychology, Johns Hopkins University

Visiting Scholar, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University

Doctoral student in Human Development and Family Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin

Lecturer of Psychology, University of Washington

Professor of Psychology, Skidmore College

PhD Student, University of Bath

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Unlocking the genetic mysteries behind plant adaptation: New insights into the evolution of a water-saving trait in the pineapple family (bromeliaceae)

Adaptation of the photosynthetic mechanism in air plants (tillandsia) occurs through gene duplication.

Researchers at the University of Vienna, along with collaborators from France, Germany, Switzerland and the USA, have achieved a major breakthrough in understanding how genetic drivers influence the evolution of a specific photosynthesis mechanism in Tillandsia (air plants). This sheds light on the complex actions that cause plant adaptation and ecological diversity. The results of their study are now published in Plant Cell.

Some plant species have evolved a water-saving trait called Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM). CAM plants like most Tillandsia species -- the most species-rich genus in the pineapple family (Bromeliaceae) -- optimise their water use efficiency: While other plants normally open their stomata (tiny pores in their leaves) during the day to absorb carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, CAM plants do this at night and stash CO 2 away for later use, helping them survive with less water. This trait evolved independently several times across the plant kingdom. However, the evolution of the complex genetic basis of CAM has remained elusive, making it a focus of research in evolutionary biology.

Gene Regulation is Key

In this study, the research team focused on a Tillandsia species pair exhibiting divergent forms of photosynthetis- CAM vs. C3 -- meaning that the C3-species lacks the specialized adaptation to arid conditions. By using advanced techniques to study the plants' genetics and biochemistry -- e.g. analyses of gene arrangements, molecular and gene family evolution, temporal differential gene expression and metabolites -- they discovered that changes in gene regulation are mainly responsible for genomic mechanisms driving CAM evolution in Tillandsia.

Clara Groot Crego, Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research at University of Vienna and lead author of the study, explains: "Our findings reveal that while large-scale changes have influenced Tillandsia's genomes like other plants, the adjustment of how photosynthesis works mainly happens through how genes are regulated -- not by changing the sequences that code for proteins." Key insights from the study, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the University of Vienna, include the identification of CAM-related gene families undergoing accelerated expansion in CAM species. This highlights the critical role of gene family evolution in generating novel variation that drives CAM evolution.

Into New Niches by Repeated Evolution

"CAM repeatedly evolved in different Tillandsia species and has accelerated their ability to colonize new ecological niches, serving as a key driver of the rampant speciation observed within this group," says Ovidiu Paun, Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research at University of Vienna and principal investigator of the study. "Our research highlights the potential importance of genetic innovation, beyond mere base pair changes, in driving ecological diversification," Paun adds.

Thibault Leroy, principal investigator from INRAE Toulouse, France, emphasizes that this study has implications beyond basic science. "Understanding how CAM evolved can help develop strategies to make crops more resilient to water shortages and cope with climate change."

The research will be extended across more species of this and other plant groups in the framework of a newly collaborative project jointly funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the French National Agency for Research (ANR).

• Evolutionary Biology
• Endangered Plants
• Exotic Species
• Environmental Issues
• Drought Research
• Biodiversity
• Timeline of evolution
• Photosynthesis
• Chlorophyll
• Chloroplast
• Hydroponics
• Plant sexuality

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Vienna . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Clara Groot Crego, Jaqueline Hess, Gil Yardeni, Marylaure de La Harpe, Clara Priemer, Francesca Beclin, Sarah Saadain, Luiz A Cauz-Santos, Eva M Temsch, Hanna Weiss-Schneeweiss, Michael H J Barfuss, Walter Till, Wolfram Weckwerth, Karolina Heyduk, Christian Lexer, Ovidiu Paun, Thibault Leroy. CAM evolution is associated with gene family expansion in an explosive bromeliad radiation . The Plant Cell , 2024; DOI: 10.1093/plcell/koae130

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