evolutionary-psychology

Can we successfully outsource love? A new evolutionary psychology paper argues that virtual "girlfriend experiences" are booming because they offer users the emotional and sexual rewards of dating without the evolutionary costs of mutual mate selection and conflict.

Courtney L. Crosby and David M. Buss[1] Introduction One of the first emotions explored by Charles Darwin, disgust, presumably evolved to solve adaptive problems related to our health. Examples of these problems include avoiding ingesting toxic or pathogenic substances, such as rotting meat or moldy mushrooms. However, a key scientific question is whether disgust evolved to solve adaptive challen…

Shortly after the publication of his new book, The Social Leap , I spoke to William von Hippel at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore at the University of Chicago. The Social Leap is a fascinating exploration of the evolutionary origins of our modern psychology. The book is divided into three parts: what evolution has to say about how we became who we are, how the past helps us to understand the present…

Evolutionary approaches to human behavior often try to “carve nature at its joints.” This phrase, somehow evocative of Pinocchio, means that when we try to describe or classify psychological phenomena, we shouldn’t use just any old arbitrary organization scheme. Rather, we should base our thinking on underlying natural, evolutionarily informed, realities. This principle is especially salient to e…

William Tooke is a professor and former Chair of Psychology at The State University of New York at Plattsburgh. After receiving his Ph. D. in experimental psychology from The University of Texas at Arlington, William has taught courses in evolutionary psychology, statistics, the history of psychology, and several other areas. His research has focused on the evolutionary psychology of mating decep…

In reality, to do the topic of the evolutionary psychology of the Little League experience justice would require a full book – and perhaps a multi-volume series. It’s all in there. Just a sampling of the evolutionarily relevant concepts (see … Continue reading →

My friend Navin pointed out this online calculator to me called the “global rich list” – you type in your net annual income, and it tells you, correcting for cost of living, where you stack up to the billions of … Continue reading →

This post was co-authored with Jessica Fell Williams who is an MA student in Psychology at SUNY New Paltz and a member of the Evolutionary Psychology Lab. This is cross-posted at the Psychology Today blogs and at the blogroll for … Continue reading →

One of my favorite websites is Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates movie reviews from all major (and some minor) print and online sources, to create — for each film — a bottom-line “consensus,” as well as a percentage score of positive … Continue reading →

This is Part 3 of the round-up of evolutionary-clinical psychology presentations at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society’s 2012 conference; See Part 1 and Part 2 first, for a full appreciation of the plot and characters! On Sunday morning, the … Continue reading →

The Human Behavior and Evolution Society held its 24th annual meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico from June 14th-17th. A staggering amount of knowledge was presented, and if you want to know more about it, see the conference page, program, or Google … Continue reading →

The Association for Psychological Science (APS) is the largest research oriented Psychology conference in North America. One often sees renowned researchers from earlier academic generations as well as those at the height of research productivity. I was in the conference … Continue reading →

The Midwestern Psychological Association conference is impressive in both the quantity and quality of its content. For many years, the Meeting has been held in downtown Chicago and the close of the conference at lunchtime on Saturday allows attendees to … Continue reading →