The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture
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Although researchers have long been aware that the species-typical architecture of the human mind is the product of our evolutionary history, it has only been in the last three decades that advances in such fields as evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and paleoanthropology have made the fact of our evolution illuminating. Converging findings from a variety of disciplines are leading to the emergence of a fundamentally new view of the human mind, and with it a new framework for the behavioral and social sciences. First, with the advent of the cognitive revolution, human nature can finally be defined precisely as the set of universal, species-typical information-processing programs that operate beneath the surface of expressed cultural variability. Second, this collection of cognitive programs evolved in the Pleistocene to solve the adaptive problems regularly faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors—problems such as mate selection, language acquisition, cooperation, and sexual infidelity. Consequently, the traditional view of the mind as a general-purpose computer, tabula rasa, or passive recipient of culture is being replaced by the view that the mind resembles an intricate network of functionally specialized computers, each of which imposes contentful structure on human mental organization and culture. The Adapted Mind explores this new approach—evolutionary psychology—and its implications for a new view of culture.
ContributorsIntroduction: Evolutionary Psychology and Conceptual Integration3IThe Evolutionary and Psychological Foundations of the Social Sciences1The Psychological Foundations of Culture192On the Use and Misuse of Darwinism in the Study of Human Behavior137IICooperation3Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange1634Two Nonhuman Primate Models for the Evolution of Human Food Sharing: Chimpanzees and Callitrichids229IIIThe Psychology of Mating and Sex5Mate Preference Mechanisms: Consequences for Partner Choice and Intrasexual Competition2496The Evolution of Sexual Attraction: Evaluative Mechanisms in Women2677The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Chattel289IVParental Care and Children8Pregnancy Sickness as Adaptation: A Deterrent to Maternal Ingestion of Teratogens3279Nurturance or Negligence: Maternal Psychology and Behavioral Preference Among Preterm Twins36710Human Maternal Vocalizations to Infants as Biologically Relevant Signals: An Evolutionary Perspective39111The Social Nature of Play Fighting and Play Chasing: Mechanisms and Strategies Underlying Cooperation and Compromise429VPerception and Language as Adaptations12Natural Language and Natural Selection45113The Perceptual Organization of Colors: An Adaptation to Regularities of the Terrestrial World?49514Sex Differences in Spatial Abilities: Evolutionary Theory and Data533VIEnvironmental Aesthetics15Evolved Responses to Landscapes55516Environmental Preference in a Knowledge-Seeking, Knowledge-Using Organism581VIIIntrapsychic Processes17The Evolution of Psychodynamic Mechanisms601VIIINew Theoretical Approaches to Cultural Phenomena18Beneath New Culture Is Old Psychology: Gossip and Social Stratification627Author Index639Subject Index657
