Why is Evolutionary Psychology the most fascinating field in psychology? The new Science of the Mind (Introductory Overview / Blog Presentation)

Introduction to my blog

Welcome to my blog where I will be sharing with you my passion for psychology. My interest in psychology is fueled by the belief that there is no knowledge of greater personal value than the ones that lead us to greater self-understanding, this type of insights propel us to grow as individuals and those personal changes lead us to engage with the world with greater self-alignment and productivity. I got heavily engaged in the study of positive psychology and humanistic psychology in previous years, but predominantly in recent years I developed a keen interest for the field of evolutionary psychology, it provided me with the greatest insights in the understanding of the deeper truths of the human mind (hence the name of this account). I will attempt to share with you the insights I learned over the years on this blog.

My interest in Evolutionary Psychology

To give you a feel for my passion and knowledge for evolutionary psychology, I would like to share with you the books I read in recent years which relates to that field of knowledge, all of them are highly suggested read: The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, The Selfish Gene, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind and The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (Volume 1&2). Most of those books are over 300 pages long, the Handbook in particular if we include the two volumes is over 1300 pages long, I am pointing this out to illustrate that I now have a good grasp of this scientific knowledge, so if you are interested in original content that could provide you with profound insights into human nature on a daily basis I recommend you to follow me. @deeper-truths

Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology

So what is evolutionary psychology? This field of knowledge isn’t easy to summarize in a condensed manner, but this is how I would present it; like his name indicates, evolutionary psychology is the study of the human mind from an evolutionary perspective. From is evolutionary perspective this field of psychology is in some ways actually closer from being a branch of biology than psychology since his scientific approach under which it seeks to understand the human mind apply the same Darwinian principles (theory of evolution) used in biology. As for biology, the field of evolutionary psychology is predicated under the assumption that the evolutionary principles that provide a framework to understand living beings from a biological standpoint can also be applicable to understand the human mind from a psychological standpoint. Put simply the theory of evolution claims that in order to maximize his survival and reproductive output natural selection creates pressure on species to adapt in ways that will increase their level of fitness to their environment (climate, terrain, food sources, predators, other humans, etc). In other words, psychological adaptations evolved to solve recurrent problems in human ancestral environments. Who we are today is, therefore, the results of thousands of years of countless adaptions, adaptations like the ability to walk upright, but also as evolutionary psychology suggests we evolved psychological adaptations such as the range of emotions we can experience. Thus, the emotions we experience, as for the distribution of muscles in our body, is present in our DNA because it increased the fitness of our ancestors to their environment. If you can understand the specific evolutionary advantages psychological traits provided to our ancestors you can better understand the reason for their existence and how they operate. As for example, broadly speaking the experience of fear instinctually triggers within us when we face danger, experiencing the emotion of fear is beneficial to us from a survival standpoint by making us more alert in dire time. The mutation that caused some of our ancestors to experience this emotion gave them an advantage over the one who didn’t possess this mutation in ancestral time, this adaptive advantage increased their survival and conjointly increased their chance of reproduction, subsequently with increased reproductive rate the individuals possessing the mutation shared that mutation throughout the population, therefore when the mutation(emotion of fear) reached a critical mass the mutation became part of the species DNA. This perpetual evolutionary process has shaped our brain, from an evolutionary perspective our brain is in his essence composed of several modules that serve different adaptive functions. Evolutionary psychology is able to identify what is an evolutionary adaptation by looking if a certain psychological trait is shared among different cultures, for example, the experience of the emotion of fear when facing danger in commonly shared among all cultures, we can, therefore, conclude with a reasonably high degree of certitude that this psychological trait is part of our evolutionary heritage and not the results of cultural influences.

I am not entirely convinced that this introductory presentation made you excited to learn more about this field of knowledge, I could understand why studying the function of fear from an evolutionary perspective can be regarded as a bland topic, but trust me there are many areas which are fascinating to explore and will provide valuable insights to one’s life, evolutionary psychology notably pay close attention to the differences in male and female psychology, those insights may actually change in a resourceful way your perspectives and ways of engaging and even possibly seducing the opposite sex, it provides you with the ability to distinguish with more clarity which human psychological traits are the product of cultural influences versus traits that are the product of our innate human nature and also how the nature/nurture duality interact together, it makes you understand how and why friendship develops and in that vain why do humans engage in far more altruistic behaviors than other species, and much more. There is nearly an endless amount of insightful topics to tackle in the field of evolutionary psychology, I will make sure to share with you everything there is to know in a concise, interesting and easy to understand manner. Above all, I am of the belief that this knowledge is of interest to you because the understanding of the deeper truths of our human nature leads us to the most valuable of knowledge which is the one of self-understanding.

Closure

Before delving in evolutionary psychological concepts, since I am aware that many individuals in our society are still on the fence about the plausibility of the evolutionary claims, I will be exposing the common misconceptions individuals are inclined to make about the theory of evolution which may be at the origin of their doubtful beliefs.

Next article: How did evolution could have created the human eye?

Source:

(Book) Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind
Image: http://news.wgcu.org/post/evolutionary-psychology-description-and-call-positivity