If you’re naturally wary of bears and wolves, it may be because your ancestors quickly learned the consequences of not avoiding these animals in the wild. Now, when you’re faced with the choice of helping someone or turning away, your evolutionary inclination toward empathy may encourage you to put yourself in other people ’s shoes and help.Įxamples of behaviors explained by evolutionary psychology Fear of predators In an ancient community, empathy may have allowed for a greater understanding of others, contributing to stronger relationships and more cooperation to ensure everyone ’s well-being.Īs empathy continued to be a beneficial trait practiced by one generation and the next, it eventually made its way to you. You’re able to compare, analyze, recognize patterns, and develop concepts based on the framework you’ve inherited. Tenet 6Įach of your preprogrammed pathways allows your brain to categorize your individual experiences. ![]() In other words, you may have pathways in your brain that have not been created by your behaviors but come from the behaviors and experiences of your ancestors. ![]() The more diverse your pathways, the more challenges you’re able to overcome. The brain has many evolutionary pathways, each one intended to solve a particular problem your ancestors faced. But, since cognitive programming may come from your ancestors, it may still contribute to handling modern-day challenges. Some evolutionary behaviors may hold no benefit in current environments. These evolutionary thought processes have roots in two main goals: survival and reproduction. The pathways your brain has created from gathering and processing information have been influenced over time by ancestral environments. This suggests that understanding your behavior means understanding how you process information, as well as understanding your thought pathways or patterns. Your behaviors are a response to the information your brain has gathered from both its internal and external environment. The pathway becomes stronger the more you repeat the behavior, and it becomes easier or more likely for you to do the behavior. As you engage in the behavior, neurons start to get together and pass the message. When you do something you ’ve never done before, you have no pathway for that specific behavior. ![]() Neural pathways are essential to learning but also to repeating behaviors you ’ve already learned. In other words, a pathway is a group of neurons working together to get something done, like moving your feet to walk or turning the page when you ’re reading. “Pathways” refers to the connections between brain cells, or neurons, that allow messages to travel from one region of the nervous system to another. The brain is a physical system, and its pathways to process information are fine-tuned through natural selection. Your brain’s purpose is to analyze information from the environment like a computer would process information. Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, two of the most influential evolutionary psychologists, outlined six core tenants of evolutionary psychology in a 2005 paper. Over time, most or all foxes developed longer legs.Įvolutionary psychology applies this premise to human thinking and behavior. As the shorter-legged foxes fell prey, only the long-legged foxes lived on to reproduce and pass on their genetic characteristics to their offspring. This creates a process where undesirable traits are more likely to fade over time, while desirable traits carry on strongly.įor example, at some point, foxes with longer legs were able to escape predators more easily. Traits that increase the chance of survival are more likely to be genetically passed on to future generations. This is referred to as natural selection. In sum, Darwin theorized that within a given population, specific traits are more helpful than others when it comes to the survival of the species. ![]() The theory was introduced in his 1859 book “ On the Origin of Species.” It allows for the assumption that many of your core behaviors and ways of processing information are a result of evolution.Įvolutionary psychology is partly based on Charles Darwin ’s theory of evolution. The evolutionary perspective in psychology is a purely theoretical approach. What are the main ideas of evolutionary psychology?
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