Evolutionary psychology - Literature review Example

The four issues in psychology that the authors have tried to explore through the perspective of evolutionary psychology and evolutionary developmental biology are whether the mind is domain-specific or domain-general, influence of nature and nurture on human mind, whether development takes place in stages or gradually, and how the individual differences arise. Authors feel that as mainstream evolutionary psychology do not accept the ideas and tenets from evolutionary biology, its tenets have been proven wrong by empirical studies.

Certain tenets like, 1) complex biological and psychological mechanisms exist due to evolution by natural selection, 2) psychological theories imply psychological mechanisms and 3) that human mind has different domain specific abilities as they have helped in the past to solve domain-specific problems, have been challenged through the revelations of empirical studies in the field of evolutionary developmental biology. Evolutionary developmental biology holds that genetic mutations give rise to evolutionary changes and these changes are ‘fixed’ due to natural selection. . According to evolutionary developmental biologists, evolutionary change is initiated by individual development and behaviour.

Change in behaviour is due to developmental changes adapted to suit certain environmental conditions, and it brings physiological change. Gottlieb (2002) demonstrated through his study of maggot fly that genetic change is not necessary to change the behaviour. He showed that change in phenotypic behaviour leads to genetic change. Authors also point out that neo-Darwinism cannot explain the origin of novelties in animal bodies as they can explain the growth of organs for purpose of survival, but cannot explain why they originated in the first place.

This issue needs to be addressed by evolutionary developmental biology. In this way, the authors have introduced the tents of both, evolutionary psychology and evolutionary developmental biology and have stated that they are complimentary to each other. They have applied these tenets to four major issues of psychology to analyze which field provides better perspective on it. Four Major Issues in Psychology The mainstream evolutionary psychology views mind to be domain-specific. They state that domain-general abilities cannot help in solving problems as problems are ‘specific’ in nature.

However, this tenet is debated intensely as empirical studies have shown that many abilities in mind are domain-general. The authors have discussed the studies regarding functions like speed of processing, working memory, inhibition and general intelligence, habituation, statistical learning, associated learning and metacognition, to explain how the mind has domain-general abilities also. The authors then explain, through the studies by Nagy and Williams (2000) and Kauffman (1993), that