Genetics and Evolutionary Psychology

Genetics and Evolutionary Psychology

By

Felecia Pedrogo

PSY 610.40: Theories of Personality

Instructor:

Paul B. Whittemore, Ph.D., ABPP

Evolutionary psychology seeks to reconstruct problems that our ancestors faced in their primitive environments, and the problem-solving mechanisms they created to meet those particular challenges. From these reconstructed problem-solving adaptations, the science then attempts to establish the common roots of our ancestral behavior, and how those common behavioral roots are manifested today through cultural experiences. The objective is to grasp human behavior that is universally aimed at the passing of one's genes into the next generation. The development of the brain is determined by the genes a person inherits, therefore influencing behavior through genetic factors. Furthermore, because the Genes we inherited are the result of evolution, behavioral characteristics may also have evolutionary explanations. Evolutionary psychology makes an effort to explain behavioral patterns such as; aggression, altruism, depression, mating choices, and sex differences by analyzing how they may have promoted survival and reproduction in past generations.

Differences in how men and women adapt to variation in their environment throughout time, according to evolutionary theory is largely due do to their hereditary traits passed on by their ancestors. A change in the genetic composition of a population handed down from one generation to the next, that is, through “Natural Selection”, resulting in characteristics better suited to their environment and their reproductive survival. A crucial factor, Reproduction ensures the continuation of the genes onto the next generation so that selected characteristics does not become perpetuated. Historically men and women face dissimilar adaptive problems in the domain of mating; the principal conflict between the sexes is dissimilarity in parental investment. Men reproductive investment...