The Adapted Mind Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture

by Barkow, Jerome H.; Cosmides, Leda; Tooby, John

• ISBN13: 9780195101072
• ISBN10: 0195101073
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-10-19
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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 madethe 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 naturecan 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 ourhunter-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 anintricate 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.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Theoretical Framework

The Psychological Foundations of Culture

On the Use and Misuse of Darwinism in the Study of Human behavior

Cooperation

Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange

Two Non-human Primate Models for theEvoltion of Human Food-Sharing: Chimpanzees and Callitrichids

The Psychology of Mating and Sex

Mate Preference Mechanisms: Consequences for Partner Choice andIntrasexual Competition

The Evolution of Sexual Attraction: Evaluative Mechanisms in Women

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Chattel

Parental Care and Children

Pregnancy Sickness as Adaptation: A Deterrent to MaternalIngestion of Teratogens

Nurturance or Negligence: Maternal Psychology and BehavioralPreference among Preterm Twins

Human Maternal Vocalizations to Infants as Biologically RelevantSignals: An Evolutionary Perspective

The Social Nature of Play Fighting and PlayChasing: Mechisms and Strategies Underlying Cooperation and Compromise

Perception and Language as Adaptations

Natural Language and Natural Selection

The Perceptual Organization of Colors: An Adaptation to Regularities of theTerrestrial World? R.N. Shepherd

Sex Differences in Spatial Abilities: EvolutionaryTheory and Data

Environmental Aesthetics

Evolved Responses to Landscapes

Environmental Preference in a Knowledge-Seeking, Knowledge UsingOrganism

Intrapsychic Processes

The Evolution of Psychodynamic Mechanisms

Understanding Evolutionarily New Cultural Forms

Beneath New Culture Is Old Psychology: Gossip, Class, and theEnvironment

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