心 理 学 报 2007，39（3）：381~382 Acta Psychologica Sinica
381
The Future of Psychology: Evolutionary Approach to Scientific Psychology
Lei Chang
Department of Educational Psychlogy, The Chine University of Hong Kong
David C. Geary
University of Missouri at Columbia, USA
“Evolutionary psychology is an approach to psychology, in which knowledge and principles from evolutionary biology are put to u in rearch on the structure of the human mind” (Cosmides & Tooby, 2001, p.1). The approach can be ud to study and to provide broad theoretical framing of nearly all of the issues and topics within the traditionally defined fields of psychology. The 19 papers included in this special issue on evolutionary psychology are written by leading scholars in the field and address topics that can be organized by the familiar divisions of cognitive, developmental, and social psychology.
Evolutionary cognitive psychology . The author of The origin of mind (Geary, 2005), David Geary leads the discussion on evolutionary cognitive psychology. His paper lays out the foundations and principles for understanding the brain and its cognitive and behavioral systems. Differing from the all-purpo general cognitive model, an evolutionary account of human cognition, as the paper asrts, emphasizes individual and specialized cognitive processing modules that have been naturally lected for solving recurring environmental and social problems. Geary provides detailed accounts of some of the familiar modules known in mainstream psychology as folk physics, folk biology, and folk psychology, and outlines how domain-general systems (e.g., working memory) may have evolved. Four other papers prented under this ction are from Gary Bra,Wang Xiao-tian, Michael Corballis, and Steven Pinker. Gary Bra investigated the rather classical cognitive topic of Bayesian reasoning. Consistent with evolutionary theorizing, his empirical findings suggest that recurrence of the format and context in which a problem is prented improves human statistical reasoning. Wang’s empirical paper shows that risk taking behavior and decision making carry evolutionary footprints that can be inferred by investigating such variables as genders of parents and children and relative versus absolute family wealth. Michael Corballis and Steven Pinker are leading
Received 2006-12-16
穿越球楠楠的露出
Correspondence should be addresd to Lei Chang, Department of Educational Psychology, Chine University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong; e-mail: leichang@cuhk.edu.hk.
authorities on language evolution. Emphasizing different issues (e.g., language instinct, to u the name of the author’s classic book (Pinker, 1994) and, for Corballis, language modality evolution or the transition “from hands to mouth” to borrow from his book title (Corballis, 2002), the two papers together provide a state of the art account of language evolution.
Evolutionary developmental psychology . As the author of the first evolutionary developmental psychology text (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002), David Bjorklund co-authored with Jason Grotuss, and Adriana Csinady to discuss life history tradeoffs concerning child and adolescent development. Why do humans have one of the longest childhoods in the natural world, and how does child development make u of cognitive plasticity within the beneficial adaptive constraints described by articles in the first ction? As shown in this lead paper of the ction, some of the answers are beyond simple combinations of evolutionary life history theories and tho of mainstream developmental psychology. One of the answers has been provided by the next article by Jay Belsky, who is known for his minal work on how early childhood experience may prompt the ont of biological clock by
stimulating different reproductive strategies (Belsky, Steinberg, & Draper, 1991). In his current contribution, Belsky re-examines his theory by prenting existing empirical studies testing and extending his original work. The next three empirical studies (Byrd-Craven, Geary, Vigil, & Hoard; Brumbach, Walsh, & Figueredo; Frederick & Gallup, Jr.) provide additional evidence for the evolutionary developmental principles. Byrd-Graven et al. investigated the relation between developmental experience and later relationship preferences. Brumbach et al. examined adolescents’ xual attitudes and behaviors in a large sample of 13,000 participants. Examining dental fluctuating asymmetry among 296 individuals of 10 species, Frederick and Gallup, Jr. concluded that the tradeoff between brain and motor development may have lesned lection pressure for developmental symmetry in humans relative to other primates. To conclude this ction, Li and Chang made the distinction between parent-child
382心 理 学 报 39卷
remblance belief and actual parent-child remblance and found that parental belief about father-child remblance affected paternal investment by moderating the associations between paternal parenting behavior and paternal versus child characteristics.
Evolutionary social psychology examines mating and xual relationships as a major rearch topic. Six articles are devoted to this topic, with the lead article by David Buss delineating and testing his Sexual Strategy Theory (SST, also e Buss, 1994). One of the pioneering theories of evolutionary psychology, SST has since spawned a large number of empirical studies across diver cultural contexts. All the articles in this ction are related to this theory in one way or another. Surbey and Brice examined the effect
of lf perceived mate value (SPMV), which was experimentally manipulated, on mating strategy differences between men and women. Consistent with SST, their results showed that, with enhanced SPMV, men preferred short term mating strategies, whereas the same effect was not found among women. The empirical findings of Starratt, Shackelford, Goetz, and McKibbin demonstrate how infidelity signals could change men’s long term mate retention behavior. Norman Li investigated mating strategies of both men and women. Extending SST, Li’s theory and findings suggest that people behave in ways consistent with microeconomic principles when the costs and benefits
农村低保个人申请书in making mate choices are weighed. The empirical work by Graver-Apga, Gangestad, and Thornhill is about the effect of menstrual cycle on mating preferences, suggesting that women in the most fertile pha of their cycle were more vigilant about xual coercion.七十二疑冢
In addition to the articles, the special issue also includes three conceptual papers bearing on broader issues of evolutionary psychology. They are Why evolutionary psychology? by Irwin Silverman; Reconciling evolutionary psychology and ecological psychology by Geoffrey Miller; and, Some of the whats, whos, and whens related to evolutionary psychology by Chang Lei. The former editor of the North American journal, Evolutionary Psychology, Irwin Silverman prents a succinct introduction to evolutionary psychology in which he explains how psychologists may overcome the conceptual weakness of the standard social science model by addressing the “why” questions of causation. Geofferey Miller takes a different approach by drawing comparisons between evolutionary psychology and ecological psychology. Incidentally, this paper by the author of the Mating mind (2002) also shows that evolutionary psychology is not all about x. The final article introduces concepts and theories related to evolution and evolutionary psychology. Extended treatment of the and other topics are contained in an upcoming book in Chine (Chang, 2007).
To conclude this brief introduction of the special issue on evolutionary psychology, we want to u the following quotation to express our hope that the special issue makes a timely contribution to the rapid development of Chine psychology. “Of all the facts
of life, the most important is evolution. If psychology
is to take its legitimate place among the family of life sciences, it must eventually integrate its basic theories and facts with tho of evolution.” (Ronthal, 1970, p.1).
References
英语小Belsky, J., Steinberg, L., & Draper, P. (1991). Childhood experience, interpersonal development, and reproductive strategy. Child Development, 62, 647-670.
Bjorklund, D. F., & Pellegrini, A. D. (2002). The origins of human nature: Evolutionary developmental psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Buss, D. M. (1994). The evolution of desire: Strategies of human mating. New York: Basic Books.
冰火两重天什么意思Chang, L. (2007). Evolutionary psychology. Guangdong Higher Education Press. (in Chine)
收房验房注意事项Corballis, M. C. (2002). From hand to mouth: The gestural origins of language. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2001). Evolutionary psychology: A primer. Center for Evolutionary Psychology Online Reading: www.psych.ucsb.edu/rearch/cep/primer.html.
Geary, D. C. (2005). The origin of mind: Evolution of brain, cognition, and general intelligence. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
霸气Miller, G. F. (2000). The mating mind: How xual choice shaped the evolution of human nature. New York: Doubleday.
Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct. New York: Harper-Collins. Ronthal, D. (1970). Genetic theory and abnormal behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill.
