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Evolutionary psychology is the scientific field dedicated to identifying and studying psychological adaptations as products of ancestral evolutionary processes, as established in [1], [2], and [3]. The discipline posits that human behavior is largely the output of these adaptations [4], which are further characterized by their facultative nature [5] and specific testing methodologies [6].
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Evolutionary psychology - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 6 facts
procedureEvolutionary psychologists use three primary strategies to develop and test hypotheses about whether a psychological trait is an evolved adaptation: (1) Cross-cultural Consistency, which presumes that human universals like smiling and crying are adaptations; (2) Function to Form, which uses known problems like paternity uncertainty to predict solutions like male sexual jealousy; and (3) Form to Function, which uses reverse-engineering to identify the function of traits like morning sickness.
claimEvolutionary psychologists operate within a nature-nurture interactionist framework that acknowledges that many psychological adaptations are facultative, meaning they are sensitive to environmental variations during individual development.
claimEvolutionary psychology focuses on the study of distal or ultimate causality, specifically the evolution of psychological adaptations, rather than proximate analyses of behavior.
claimEvolutionary psychologists argue that much of human behavior is the output of psychological adaptations that evolved to solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments.
claimEvolutionary psychology and cognitive neuropsychology are mutually compatible fields, where evolutionary psychology identifies psychological adaptations and their ultimate evolutionary functions, while cognitive neuropsychology identifies the proximate manifestations of those adaptations.
claimEvolutionary psychology seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regard to the ancestral problems they evolved to solve.