Evolutionary Social Psychology

Abstract

Evolutionary social psychology is the study of how people think about, feel about, and behave toward others, as viewed through the lens of evolutionary biology. This approach to social psychology synthesizes developments in several fields, including zoology, ecology, cognitive neuroscience, and anthropology. The beginning premise is that all recurrent human social behaviors reflect the influence of physical and psychological predispositions that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce. The evolutionary approach is a perspective that can be utilized to generate hypotheses about a wide range of human thoughts and behaviors. Here, we provide a brief synopsis of the theory and research generated by this perspective.