The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture

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 made the 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 nature can 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 our hunter-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 an intricate 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.

"There are two kinds of landmark publications in science: those that open a new era, like Darwin's Origin of Species, or those that mark an important waypoint in a scientific revolution that has already begun. The Adapted Mind is an example of the latter, comprising as it does a collection of eighteen papers by twenty-five authors which sum up and illustrate much of the best of our knowledge in the field of evolutionary psychology." --Christopher Baddock, London School of Economics, ESS Newsletter

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 made the 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 nature can 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 our hunter-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 an intricate 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.

Introduction, J. Tooby and L. Cosmides

PART I: Theoretical Framework

1. The Psychological Foundations of Culture, J. Tooby and L. Cosmides

2. On the Use and Misuse of Darwinism in the Study of Human Behavior, D. Symons

PART II: Cooperation

3. Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange, L. Cosmides and J. Tooby

4. Two Non-human Primate Models for the Evolution of Human Food-Sharing: Chimpanzees and Callitrichids, W. C. McGrew and A.T.C. Feistner

PART III: The Psychology of Mating and Sex

5. Mate Preference Mechanisms: Consequences for Partner Choice and Intrasexual Competition, D. Buss

6. The Evolution of Sexual Attraction: Evaluative Mechanisms in Women, B. Ellis

7. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Chattel, M. Wilson and M. Daly

PART IV: Parental Care and Children

8. Pregnancy Sickness as Adaptation: A Deterrent to Maternal Ingestion of Teratogens, M. Profet

9. Nurturance or Negligence: Maternal Psychology and Behavioral Preference among Preterm Twins, J. Mann

10. Human Maternal Vocalizations to Infants as Biologically Relevant Signals: An Evolutionary Perspective, A. Fernald

11. The Social Nature of Play Fighting and Play Chasing: Mechanisms and Strategies Underlying Cooperation and Compromise, M.J. Boulton and P.K. Smith

PART V: Perception and Language as Adaptations

12. Natural Language and Natural Selection, S. Pinker and P. Bloom

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

14. Sex Differences in Spatial Abilities: Evolutionary Theory and Data, I. Silverman and M. Eals

PART VI: Environmental Aesthetics

15. Evolved Responses to Landscapes, G.H. Orians and J.H. Heerwagen

16. Environmental Preference in a Knowledge-Seeking, Knowledge Using Organism, S. Kaplan

PART VII: Intrapsychic Processes

17. The Evolution of Psychodynamic Mechanisms, R. M. Nesse and A.T. Lloyd

PART VIII: Understanding Evolutionarily New Cultural Forms

18. Beneath New Culture Is Old Psychology: Gossip, Class, and the Environment, J.H. Barkow