Evolutionary Psychology - the New Science of the Mind - Essay Example

Evolutionary theory contributes heavily to research questions that seek to address social, developmental, personality, and cognitive psychology. It is viewed as a meta-theory for unified psychology since it brings psychology together with all other life sciences that include politics, biology, history, medicine, and legal scholarship, and in my view unites all the species, revealing our origin as far as natural selection is concerned (Buss 72).

Darwin’s theory of natural selection states that an organism, including human beings, that possesses weak traits will be killed while the stronger one survives for longer and in their numbers. The stronger genes will be passed on, and the generation that follows will be slightly stronger that its predecessors. The new generation will be noticeably stronger, and highly likely to survive, thrive and reproduce (Buss 75).

Sexual selection theory attempts to explain the differences in the forms of females and males of a species. It states that competition for mates among individuals of the same sex determines the evolution of specific traits such as smooth fur or skin, strong muscles, and colorful plumage. Intra-sexual competition usually involves male-to-male competition, whereas intersexual competition involves one sex dominating reproductive access by choosing suitable mates from available mates (Buss 87).

In female choice, the females get to choose preferred mates due to the perceived immense resource investment in an offspring associated with the females compared to males. These theories affect psychology as they all propose various explanations for differences in individual traits (Buss 89).

The products associated with the evolutionary process are adaptations, random effects, and by-products. Whereas adaptations are traits that interact with the social, physical, or internal conditions in ways that aid the reproduction of springs that possess the characteristics of their relatives, by-products are traits that neither have functional design nor solve adaptive problems. Random effects, on the other hand, are characteristics that neither detract from nor contribute to the organism’s functional design (Buss 92).
David Buss describes exists six features of an evolved psychological process (Buss 47). According to him, an evolved psychological process;
• Is designed to absorb only narrow information slices (Buss 47).

• Exists in its current form because it solved a specific survival or reproduction problem recurrently throughout evolutionary history (Buss 47).
• Tells an organism the specific adaptive problem facing it (Buss 48).
• Is transformed through decision rules into output (Buss 48).
• Can manifest behavior, physiological processes, or information to different psychological mechanisms (Buss 49).

• Is directed toward finding solutions to a particular adaptive problem (Buss 49).
Reciprocal altruism refers to the ability of an organism to act in a way that reduces its fitness at least temporarily while increasing the fitness of another organism expecting that the other organism will return the favor later (Buss 102).
Indirect reciprocity is defined as an act where a returned favor comes from an organism other than the one who received its benefaction (Buss105). Costly signaling, on the other hand, refers to acts in which organisms engage in altruism to showcase their elevated status sometimes to organisms they have had no interaction with. Read More