Challenges for Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology is nothing more than psychology viewed through the lens provided by evolutionary biology, based on the fact that psychological systems are part of the brain and therefore both physical and biological. According to Johnson (2017) adopting an evolutionary approach to understanding human psychology has been extremely fruitful in answering the ‘why’ questions, and in providing insight into personality variation. Indeed success has been seen in the explanation of diverse behaviours including obsessive compulsive disorders, depression and mate choices. Jonason uses this paper as a ‘call to arms’ to challenge the doubters, even the accusations of sexism, and defend its scientific legitimacy by performing increased meta-analysis of papers to understand the larger trends in evolutionary psychology, and dispel the myths and misunderstanding regarding this relatively new, and useful field.

References

Jonason, P. K. (2017). The Grand Challenges for Evolutionary Psychology: Survival Challenges for a Discipline. Frontiers in Psychology,8. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01727