Applying Evolutionary Theory to Psychiatry
Our emotions are the result of hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary pressure and have been described as “Darwinian algorithms of the mind” by evolutionary scientists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides. Though emotions have likely evolved to serve specific adaptive...The Evolution Of “Creepiness”
Evolutionary social psychologist Francis T. McAndrew has a new paper out in on “creepiness.” The abstract: Surprisingly, until now there has never been an empirical study of “creepiness.” An international sample of 1341 individuals responded to an online...Cooperate To Compete: The Evolution Of “Ultrasociety”
This overview of Peter Turchin’s new book, Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth, is followed by practical applications for your business. (There are also links below to books and articles referenced or mentioned...The Evolution Of Shame: Why Shame Is Adaptive
In The Boston Globe, Megan Scudellari reports on recent research by UCSB evolutionary psychologist Daniel Sznycer and his colleagues on shame: In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers argue that shame evolved as a...How Understanding Evolution Can Help Us Treat Cancer
Evolutionary scientists Athena Aktipis, Randolph Nesse, and their colleagues and grad students are doing fascinating and important research in evolutionary medicine, and — the topic of this post — they have been applying an evolutionary framework to...Gossip Is An Evolved Social Skill, Not A Character Flaw
Evolutionary psychologist Frank T. McAndrew explains at The Conversation: Let’s face it: gossips get a bad rap. Smugly looking down from a moral high ground – and secure in the knowledge that we don’t share their character flaw – we often dismiss those who are...Sexual Harassment Is About Wanting Sex, Not Wanting Power Over Women
A 2012 paper in Evolution and Human Behavior by Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair and Mons Bendixen takes a much-needed evolutionary look at the issue of sexual harassment. They write in their paper: While traditional social science theories have explained harassment as...The Evolutionary Ecology Of Cancer
Theoretical evolutionary biologist Athena Aktipis, a co-founder of the Center for Evolution and Cancer at UCSF, talks to David Sloan Wilson about how cancer is evolution that’s taking place inside an organism, but a perversely adaptive form of it, since it ends...The Mating Crisis Among Educated Women
David Buss at Edge: Every year, more women than men become college-educated. The disparity is already prevalent across North America and Europe, and the trend is beginning to spread across the world more widely. At the University of Texas at Austin where I teach, the...
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