Glossary / Lexicon

Evolutionary psychology refers to the study of the evolution of behavior using principles of natural selection. Evolutionary psychologists (EP) are interested in studying the evolved cognitive structure of the mind. EP argue that much has changed since the mind evolved in the ancestral environment, and behaviours observed today may or may not be adaptive. The focus of study is on psychological or mental mechanisms, also referred to as decision processes, information processes, or Darwinian algorithms. Darwinian algorithms are defined as: "Innate specialized learning mechanisms that evolved in ancestral populations for organizing experience into adaptively meaningful schemes or frames."

The mechanisms and processes described above are proximate mechanisms. Proximate or immediate causes are the immediate factors responsible for a particular response, such as internal physiology, previous experience, conditions in the environment, etc. Although the mechanisms and decision processes they study are proximate, evolutionary psychologists believe these mechanisms were shaped by natural selection. The goal of EP is to define the workings of psychological mechanisms, including the constraints on their operation and the effects and influence of various environmental inputs (from the immediate social or physical environment and/or from experience and learning).

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Other definition:
Evolutionary psychology refers to the study of the evolution of behavior using principles of natural selection. It is the branch of psychology that studies the ways in which an organism’s evolutionary history contributes to the development of behavioural patterns and cognitive strategies related to reproduction and survival during its lifetime

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Other /More definition:
Evolutionary Psychology refers to an approach based on the notion that much human behaviour can be understood in evolutionary terms.