Social Psychology And Evolutionary Psychology

Ideas in psychology have been influenced by many fields of study ranging from philosophy to physics. Evolutionary ideas, themselves, have had a substantial role in shaping psychological thought. This paper will provide an overview of the influence of evolutionary thought on the field of psychology along with a discussion of the range of societal implications associated with evolutionary psychology.

Evolution is the inheritance of traits over generations. Originally, my view on evolution was that positive new traits are passed down from generation to generation. The importance of evolution is that it allows an individual to better survive using newly inherited traits. These traits aid in one’s overall fitness. To give an example, a type of bird may evolve to have longer wings if it will better allow them to survive in their environment. Throughout the Capstone course, I have learned about the different types of evolution, and why certain changes arise in different species. The Capstone paper has enabled me to research areas of evolution within the hominid species, which gave me a better understanding of the advantages and limitations of evolution. This position statement will discuss what I have learned about evolution while writing my final paper, and attending class lectures.

From the birth of America to the modern day, people have been vigorously searching for

Evolutionary Psychology is a practice of social and natural sciences that studies human characteristics through the lens of modern evolutionary theory. This is exactly what Dunbar and his colleges attempt to do with “the family” in their book.

To be anatomically modern is in many ways what makes us unique and “evolved” among our earlier ancestors. It's our anatomical makeup that allows us to be advanced. From large brains that help facilitate our complex language systems to our opposable thumbs that allow us to do work with our hands in both manual labor as well as fine motor skills like writing or typing, these anatomical features among others are pivotal in what it means to be a modern human.

In nearly all subjects that humans study, there are theories that at one point were extremely popular and lauded as correct and unable to be proven wrong, all because of the public mindset of the time. Freudianism is still wildly popular despite psychological studies proving it wrong time and time again. History is not exempt from this. State level society at one point was thought to only be achievable by white “civilized people” and they had the responsibility to help shepherd others to civilization and out of their huts. Lewis Henry Morgan and his stages of savagery, barbarism, and civilization challenged this racist theory of social Darwinism. After World War II, the world was thrust into a Cold War in which the East and West competed with their minds, not guns. These technological innovations that arose out of it and the public mindset at the time set the stage for Carneiro and Wittfogel to come up with their own theories of how state level societies rose using theories of community and war. However, none of these theories are one hundred percent foolproof and a mixture is needed. One only has to take a look at Egypt and it’s Nile River to see its not one theory or the other.

The evolutionary perspective of psychology is the conception that the brain and body have developed to their current state after centuries of evolution. The center of focus for evolutionary psychologists, which is closely related to that of the biological perspective, is to study how inheritance plays a part in determining thought and behavior. When Philip encountered his old girlfriend and her new boyfriend at a restaurant, he left the restaurant in a rage because he was jealous of the situation. Philip recalls his mother being abusive and calling him harsh names while he was growing up, which are actions associated with the emotion of rage. Evolutionary psychologists have conducted studies that show that there is a certain gene that affects

Evolutionary psychology seeks to explain human behavior by analyzing problems that our ancestors faced and how they solved them in their different environments. From this similarities of our ancestral behavior are established, and how ancestral problem-solving methods have developed today in different cultures.

Evolutionary psychology is the study of both the adaptive function of behaviors and the environment that produces these behaviors. This implies that evolutionary choices guide our selection of a mate. However, some believe that culture and environment shape our mating behavior. Evolutionary psychologists state that men look for young women who are capable of reproducing to carry on his genetic code, and women look for a man who can provide what's necessary to live. However, anti-evolutionists provide examples of cultures where they do not follow these mating guidelines. Another example for evolutionary mating is that of cavemen having developed aggression and hunting while the women developed nurturing. Yet again, examples were placed in their

The lecture this week started with the progress of society. Darwin noted that in a society, competition is need to weed out the weak, also known as survival of the fittest. In the modern society of humans, there is support that is provided for a wide range of differences among all members, so there is little need to apply survival of the fittest to modern society. One man argued against this, and he believed that we should moved towards a utopian state in society where no person has any problems, even if that were to mean losing people along the way. Galton, interested in heredity, noted that certain humans had this eminent characteristic, and discovered that eminent people are typically related to other eminent people. This pushed him to believe that perhaps intelligence is hereditary. If intelligence could be hereditary, then wealth

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To me, the element of natural selection in the theory of evolution seems to have had the biggest impact on American psychology. The capacity for an organism’s motivations and behaviors is assumed to have progressed due to sexual and natural selection. The mechanisms of emotion, learning, reasoning, perception, language, memory, sensation, and motivation are all products of natural selection. Darwin’s theory proposes that all living organisms reached their current biological form through a process involving inheritable, random modifications. Some of these modifications are adaptive because they can increase an organism's chances of reproducing and surviving. These kinds of modifications are more likely to be passed on to the next generation

Modern evolution is a very important process for humans to survive. Without modern evolution, humans would not be able to drink and digest milk properly as an adult. Modern evolution has made it possible for humans to outrun many deadly diseases. The question the reader should ask themselves is that if theses evolutions were not made would the human race still be

Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud are both widely known respectively for their natural selection and psychoanalytic personality theories. Charles Darwin helped further the field of evolutionary psychology while Sigmund Freud helped discover the unconscious which is still debated to this day about whether it is real. Darwin’s natural selection theory talks about how organisms adapt to survive and the two types of sexual selection which is intersexual and intrasexual selection. Freud’s theory of psychoanalytic personality talks about how the id, ego, and superego affects our behavior and talks about how our unconscious is a very important aspect in our lives. Both theories’ comprehensiveness, theoretical soundness, and empirical value have

of human evolution. These evolutionary studies have provided us with abundant, well-documented evidence on the