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This book aims to open a debate full of theoretical and experimental contributions among the different disciplines in social research, psychology, neuroscience, and sociology and to give an innovative vision to the present research and future perspective on the topic. The fundamental research areas of evolutionary psychology can be divided into two broad categories: the basic cognitive processes, and the way they evolved within the species, and the adaptive social behaviors that derive from the theory of evolution: survival, parenting, family and kinship, interactions with nonparents, and cultural evolution. Evolutionary Psychology Meets Social Neuroscience explains at individual and group level the fundamental behaviors of social life, such as altruism, cooperation, competition, social exclusion, and social support.
This book brings together current perspectives concerning the manner in which human mind, behavior and experience evolved. In addition to the traditional psychological literature, it draws from work in the cognitive and affective neurosciences, ethology, and genetics. The focus will be on a unification and integration of evolutionary understandings within a broader consideration.
This book seeks to combine the study of human social cognition - the way we think, decide, plan and analyze social situations - with an evolutionary framework that considers these activities in light of evolutionary adaptations for solving problems of survival faced by our ancestors over thousands of generations. The chapters report recent research and theories illustrating how evolutionary principles can shed new light on the subtle and often subconscious ways that cognitive mechanisms guide peoples’ thoughts, memories, judgments, attitudes and behaviors in social life. The contributors to this volume, who are leading researchers in their fields, seek answers to such intriguing questions as: how can evolutionary principles help to explain human beliefs, attitudes, judgments, prejudice, and group preferences? Are there benefits to behaving unpredictably? Why are prototypical faces more attractive than atypical ones? How do men and women think about, and select potential mates? What are the adaptive functions of negative affect? What are the evolutionary influences on the way people think about and respond to social exclusion and ostracism? Evolution and the Social Mind offers a highly integrated and representative coverage of this emerging field, and is suitable as a textbook in advanced courses dealing with social cognition and evolutionary psychology.
This wide-ranging collection demonstrates the continuing impact of evolutionary thinking on social psychology research. This perspective is explored in the larger context of social psychology, which is divisible into several major areas including social cognition, the self, attitudes and attitude change, interpersonal processes, mating and relationships, violence and aggression, health and psychological adjustment, and individual differences. Within these domains, chapters offer evolutionary insights into salient topics such as social identity, prosocial behavior, conformity, feminism, cyberpsychology, and war. Together, these authors make a rigorous argument for the further integration of the two diverse and sometimes conflicting disciplines. Among the topics covered: How social psychology can be more cognitive without being less social. How the self-esteem system functions to resolve important interpersonal dilemmas. Shared interests of social psychology and cultural evolution. The evolution of stereotypes. An adaptive socio-ecological perspective on social competition and bullying. Evolutionary game theory and personality. Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology has much to offer students and faculty in both fields as well as evolutionary scientists outside of psychology. This volume can be used as a primary text in graduate courses and as a supplementary text in various upper-level undergraduate courses.
Why do we think about and interact with other people in the particular ways that we do? Might these thoughts and actions be contemporary products of our long-ago evolutionary past? If so, how might this be, and what are the implications? Research generated by an evolutionary approach to social psychology issues profound insights into self-concept, impression formation, prejudice, group dynamics, helping, aggression, social influence, culture, and every other topic that is fundamental to social psychology. Evolution and Social Psychology is the first book to review and discuss this broad range of social psychological phenomena from an evolutionary perspective. It does so with a critical and constructive eye. Readers will emerge with a clear sense of the intellectual challenges, as well as the scientific benefits, of an evolutionarily-informed social psychology. The world-renowned contributors identify new questions, new theories, and new hypotheses—many of which are only now beginning to be tested. Thus, this book not only summarizes the current status of the field, it also sets an agenda for the next generation of research on evolution and social psychology. Evolution and Social Psychology is essential reading for evolutionary psychologists and social psychologists alike.
What a pity it would have been if biologists had refused to accept Darwin's theory of natural selection, which has been essential in helping biologists understand a wide range of phenomena in many animal species. These days, to study any animal species while refusing to consider the evolved adaptive significance of their behavior would be considered pure folly--unless, of course, the species is homo sapiens. Graduate students training to study this particular primate species may never take a single course in evolutionary theory, although they may take two undergraduate and up to four graduate courses in statistics. These methodologically sophisticated students then embark on a career studying human aggression, cooperation, mating behavior, family relationships, or altruism with little or no understanding of the general evolutionary forces and principles that shaped the behaviors they are investigating. This book hopes to redress that wrong. It is one of the first to apply evolutionary theories to mainstream problems in personality and social psychology that are relevant to a wide range of important social phenomena, many of which have been shaped and molded by natural selection during the course of human evolution. These phenomena include selective biases that people have concerning how and why a variety of activities occur. For example: * information exchanged during social encounters is initially perceived and interpreted; * people are romantically attracted to some potential mates but not others; * people often guard, protect, and work hard at maintaining their closest relationships; * people form shifting and highly complicated coalitions with kin and close friends; and * people terminate close, long-standing relationships. Evolutionary Social Psychology begins to disentangle the complex, interwoven patterns of interaction that define our social lives and relationships.
An essential reference for the new discipline of evolutionary cognitive neuroscience that defines the field's approach of applying evolutionary theory to guide brain-behavior investigations. Since Darwin we have known that evolution has shaped all organisms and that biological organs—including the brain and the highly crafted animal nervous system—are subject to the pressures of natural and sexual selection. It is only relatively recently, however, that the cognitive neurosciences have begun to apply evolutionary theory and methods to the study of brain and behavior. This landmark reference documents and defines the emerging field of evolutionary cognitive neuroscience. Chapters by leading researchers demonstrate the power of the evolutionary perspective to yield new data, theory, and insights on the evolution and functional modularity of the brain. Evolutionary cognitive neuroscience covers all areas of cognitive neuroscience, from nonhuman brain-behavior relationships to human cognition and consciousness, and each section of Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience addresses a different adaptive problem. After an introductory section that outlines the basic tenets of both theory and methodology of an evolutionarily informed cognitive neuroscience, the book treats neuroanatomy from ontogenetic and phylogenetic perspectives and explores reproduction and kin recognition, spatial cognition and language, and self-awareness and social cognition. Notable findings include a theory to explain the extended ontogenetic and brain development periods of big-brained organisms, fMRI research on the neural correlates of romantic attraction, an evolutionary view of sex differences in spatial cognition, a theory of language evolution that draws on recent research on mirror neurons, and evidence for a rudimentary theory of mind in nonhuman primates. A final section discusses the ethical implications of evolutionary cognitive neuroscience and the future of the field. Contributors: C. Davison Ankney, Simon Baron-Cohen, S. Marc Breedlove, William Christiana, Michael Corballis, Robin I. M. Dunbar, Russell Fernald, Helen Fisher, Jonathan Flombaum, Farah Focquaert, Steven J.C. Gaulin, Aaron Goetz, Kevin Guise, Ruben C. Gur, William D. Hopkins, Farzin Irani, Julian Paul Keenan, Michael Kimberly, Stephen Kosslyn, Sarah L. Levin, Lori Marino, David Newlin, Ivan S. Panyavin, Shilpa Patel, Webb Phillips, Steven M. Platek, David Andrew Puts, Katie Rodak, J. Philippe Rushton, Laurie Santos, Todd K. Shackelford, Kyra Singh, Sean T. Stevens, Valerie Stone, Jaime W. Thomson, Gina Volshteyn, Paul Root Wolpe
In recent years, evolutionary theory has been offering a framework that more and more psychologists are finding increasingly relevant to address one critical question: Why? Why do we behave, develop, and interact the way we do? Psychology and Evolution: The Origins of Mind introduces studen
The computational theory of mind, which views the brain as an information processor that operates on cognitive representations, is central to modern cognitive psychology and is the dominant perspective from which brain function is conceptualized and studied. Evolutionary Psychology (EP) is the application of evolutionary theory to understanding human behaviour and cognition. Unlike other core Psychology topic areas (such as Personality, Learning or Developmental Psychology), however, EP is not defined by the subset of psychological phenomena it seeks to describe and understand. It is instead defined by a specific meta-theoretical perspective, from which it seeks to (potentially) explain all psychological phenomena. The central question posed by this volume is whether this over-arching nature provides an opportunity for evolutionary approaches to offer an alternative meta-theoretical perspective to the information processing / representational view of brain function and behavior.
This book examines the concept of empathy in sociological and neuroscientific discourses using innovative perspectives from sociology and social neuroscience. Through a transdisciplinary approach, the author delves into the history of empathy and its social, cultural and semantic changes, and then reviews the conception of empathy in neuroscientific discourse. Distancing itself from the traditional neuroscientific literature of biological universalism, this volume offers an innovative perspective on empathy. It also opens a new avenue for neurosociology, which is presented as the discipline that can emphasize all the cultural and emotional aspects that govern empathy. Key themes addressed in the text are: empathy in all its meanings, from Hume to TenHouten; neurosociology as one possible avenue for embracing the cultural and neuroscientific aspects of empathy; and empirical research. A valuable resource for sociology students and academics in the field of empathy and neurosociology, this book is also of interest to those studying sociological thought, and social neuroscience.