Resource for Evolutionary Psychology

[braden99z8]

I’m interested to learn more about Evolutionary Psychology study which represents modern scientific research delivering a solid conclusion regarding human behavior, explaining how a specific behavior is genetically determined, and what that mutation was reinforced to solve. Could you please suggest me a good online course?

[saul]

I don’t have much knowledge on the subject but appears to be interesting. I have come across a site ecopsych.com “Institute of Global Education” special NGO consultant to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. I think they are the right people to help you.

Best of luck.

[1veedo]

You could always take Psychology 101. Evolution psychology is a part of the course. From there you could probably find some evolutionary psychology specific classes at your local university.

[solidsquid]

I don't know of any online courses but here's a couple of resources:

 

http://www.epjournal.net/

 

http://home1.gte.net/ericjw1/sociobiology.html

 

http://www.hbes.com/

[lucaspa]

Some more resources:

http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/evpsychfaq.html

http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/index.html

http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/evol-psych.html

Be sure to look at the reference list for this one; lots of books listed.

 

I’m interested to learn more about Evolutionary Psychology study which represents modern scientific research delivering a solid conclusion regarding human behavior, explaining how a specific behavior is genetically determined, and what that mutation was reinforced to solve. Could you please suggest me a good online course?

 

I provided some resources, now let me provide a caution. VERY FEW specific behaviors have been studied by evolutionary psychology and, even then, it is usually not the behavior that is explained, but that the decision making process, or how the situation is evaluated, is due to an inherited "module" in the brain.

 

No specific behaviors, to my knowledge, have been shown to be totally genetically determined. Rather, there is a genetic component and a nuture component to each behavior.

[1veedo]

I provided some resources, now let me provide a caution. VERY FEW specific behaviors have been studied by evolutionary psychology and, even then, it is usually not the behavior that is explained, but that the decision making process, or how the situation is evaluated, is due to an inherited "module" in the brain.

 

No specific behaviors, to my knowledge, have been shown to be totally genetically determined. Rather, there is a genetic component and a nuture component to each behavior.

Evolutionary psychology works a little differently than that. It's just the study of how natural selection has influenced human cognition and behavior. This includes nurture, not just nature, so it doesn't just offer one-sided nature explanations. As you learn in sociology, "it's in our nature to nurture."

[lucaspa]

Evolutionary psychology works a little differently than that. It's just the study of how natural selection has influenced human cognition and behavior. This includes nurture, not just nature, so it doesn't just offer one-sided nature explanations. As you learn in sociology, "it's in our nature to nurture."

 

Saying that EP is "just" the study of how natural selectoin has influenced human cognition and behavior leaves out nurture, since nurture is not natural selection! So your post contains an internal contradiction.

 

And my caution still holds: very few specific behaviors have been shown to be due, even in part, to natural selection. And none of them have been shown to be due solely to natural selection.

[1veedo]

Well reciprocation for one. Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype) discusses a couple behaviors with direct relation to evolution, reciprocation (part of innate human morality) being one of them. Human morality it seems is almost entirely derived from evolution.

 

Actually a lot of marketing techniques (like reciprocation) are developed from evolutionary psychology. Eg Robert Cialdini's popular books. Sociology often times, depending on the method used, utilizes evolution/genetics, and sociology almost by definition IS the study of nurture.

[iNow]

You might check out the work of David Buss. He wrote a really cool book which I enjoyed called, "The Dangerous Passion."

 

http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/Group/BussLAB/

 

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=david+buss

 

 

From the first link above:

Evolutionary psychology is a hybrid discipline that draws insights from modern evolutionary theory, biology, cognitive psychology, anthropology, economics, computer science, and paleoarchaeology. The discipline rests on a foundation of core premises:

 

(1) Manifest behavior depends on underlying psychological mechanisms, information processing devices housed in the brain, in conjunction with the external and internal inputs that trigger their activation;

 

(2) Evolution by selection is the only known causal process capable of creating such complex organic mechanisms;

 

(3) Evolved psychological mechanisms are functionally specialized to solve adaptive problems that recurred for humans over deep evolutionary time;

 

(4) Selection designed the information processing of many evolved psychological mechanisms to be adaptively influenced by specific classes of information from the environment;

 

(5) Human psychology consists of a large number of functionally specialized evolved mechanisms, each sensitive to particular forms of contextual input, that get combined, coordinated, and integrated with each other to produce manifest behavior.