Evolutionary psychology explores the structure and source of the human mind using the materials and methods of evolutionary biology.

 

Evolutionary psychology aims to trace basic problems, such as human nature and the relationship between psychology and behavior, to the evolution of human ancestors and their adaptation to the environment, in order to locate the cause of the human mind’s development. This discipline is currently becoming a hot topic in psychological study.

Human nature
Evolutionary psychology explores the structure and source of the human mind using the materials and methods of evolutionary biology. Chen Yiwen, an associate research fellow from the Institute of Psychology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that evolutionary psychology views the human mind as an “information-processing device” that has been constantly evolving over millions of years to cope with specific environmental challenges. The sub-discipline aims to offer a new way of explaining human actions by analyzing how the cognitive processing mechanism evolved through natural selection to guide social behavior.

Evolutionary psychology draws upon natural selection and adaptation as important concepts of psychological origin and function. At the same time, it explores issues that are of profound significance to mankind, offering a toolkit to addressing issues of psychology and human nature. Zhu Xincheng, a professor from the Institute for Studies in Education at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, asserted that the greatest significance of evolutionary psychology is focusing on human nature and then on sociality.
 

Evolutionary psychology puts forward some new theories and assumptions in many traditional fields of psychological studies. Xu Bo, a psychology professor from the Institute of Educational Science at Henan University, said evolutionary psychology has raised some new ideas and assumptions regarding such aspects as importance of family and conflict between parents and children. In the last decade, it has accumulated a lot of knowledge in dealing with issues including mate attraction, intrasexual competition, spouse maintenance and divorce.

Research methods
The study of evolutionary psychology is mainly inferential. Acquiring materials and evidence needed in research by speculating about ancient human behaviors is the established methodology of evolutionary psychology. This discipline assumes adjustment problems ancestors might have faced and can only speculate possible events by using various standards.

“Evolutionary psychology has serious drawbacks and may have  negative impacts on the development of psychology,” said Ye Haosheng, director of the School of Education at Guangzhou University. He added that data of evolutionary psychology comes from assumptions about behaviors or legends of primitive human ancestors, so it cannot be verified. This sub-discipline emphasizes genetic restrictions on social behaviors and views mental mechanisms of modern humans as the outcome of human ancestors adapting to the environment, which has a strong sense of genetic determinism. In addition, the initiative of culture in evolution has been neglected by evolutionary psychologists. The sub-discipline is therefore called an “immature science.”
 

Some scholars are optimistic about the prospects of evolutionary psychology. They said that it should accept scientific facts provided by disciplines, such as neurobiology, molecular genetics and evolutionary biology, and gradually resolve the aforementioned problems with improved experimental measures.

Cultural factors
Evolutionary psychology explores mental structures formed in the human evolutionary history, proves their existence and discusses how they play a role in modern society.

Evolutionary psychology stresses “the past is the key to understanding the present.” In the process of human evolution, the past has left deep imprints not only on human bodies and survival strategies but also on the human mentality and interaction strategies. It is the basis of exploring mental mechanisms.
According to evolutionary psychology, human mental adaptation or behavioral mechanisms formed in ancient times are the root cause of people’s psychological behavior. Although some challenges and problems faced by ancient humans, such as seeking spouses, helping others and raising offspring, still exist in modern society, novel and diversified modern culture is obviously not related to adjustment problems that ancestors faced.
 

 “Currently, the study of evolutionary psychology has only held human adjustment problems and the surface of evolved mental mechanisms. Evolutionary psychology mainly focuses on problems that are directly associated with survival and reproduction. It is more challenging to understand mental mechanisms of adjustment problems far away from reproduction,” said Xu, adding that the development of evolutionary psychological must stress the function of culture and absorb the research results of cognitive neuroscience.
 

In Xu’s opinion, at present ,evolutionary psychology can only explain the low-level mental functions of human beings while explicit mental mechanisms are important in explaining high-level ones that are closely connected with human life, such as thinking, aesthetic experience and emotions expressed by means of music, arts, literature, movie and television. He said that understanding evolution through full integration of cultural factors will be one of the research emphases in the future. 
 

Xu said that while evolutionary psychology has achieved enormous success in explaining behaviors through mental mechanisms,  it is crucial to objectively study cognitive processes that are closely related to human brain, such as perception, attention, thinking, language, memory and consciousness. He added that increasingly mature brain imaging techniques can also provide direct, objective and accurate evidences for these studies, greatly pushing forward the research related to sources of intelligence, emotional experience and the evolutionary process of mental mechanisms.

 

 

Ming Haiying is a reporter at the Chinese Social Sciences Today.