A derivative of sociobiology, this relatively new branch of psychology aims to integrate theory and method in psychology and biology in the study of, for example, cognition, emotions, language, learning, and sexuality. In doing so, it focuses on how proximate mechanisms established in the hunter-gatherer era of human evolution have evolved to deal with conditions in the current environment. If the modus vivendi of this era was only present about 10,000 years ago, then it is too short a time for significant evolutionary changes to have occurred in the brain, and therefore in the way we act upon and react to world around us. Thus, adaptive functions selected for in this environment of evolutionary adaptedness (a term accredited to John Bowlby) are still dominant influences on human behavior, including, for example, aspects of child care and rearing. Continuous carrying of infants, still evident in the few remaining hunter-gathering societies, has been largely replaced by discontinuous contact in modern societies, with placing infant in playpens for long periods of time and a decline in co-sleeping. The effect of this recent transition on child development is still largely unknown, but one that lends itself to be studied within the theoretical frameworks of evolutionary psychology. As can be imagined, such an approach to human behavior has been criticized in some quarters of anthropology (as well as in psychology and neuroscience), and in some respects harks to and earlier controversy between psychologists and anthropologists about whether or not there universals in human behaviors across a large and diverse range of human cultures. Interestingly, Charles Darwin wrote toward the end of On the origin species (1859) the following: “In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history” (p. 488). While clearly a reiteration of his support for phyletic gradualism, it could be taken as the start of a manifesto for the establishment of evolutionary psychology.
See Anthropological veto, Co-sleeping, Cultural evolution and biological evolution, Cultural selection, Environment of evolutionary adaptedness, Phyletic gradualism and punctuated equilibrium, Proximal care, Psychic unity of mankind, Psychology, Ultimate mechanisms (or causes)