The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture

Front Cover
Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby
Oxford University Press, Oct 19, 1995 - Science - 688 pages
Although researchers have long been aware that the species-typical architecture of the human mind is the product of our evolutionary history, it has only been in the last three decades that advances in such fields as evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and paleoanthropology have made the fact of our evolution illuminating. Converging findings from a variety of disciplines are leading to the emergence of a fundamentally new view of the human mind, and with it a new framework for the behavioral and social sciences. First, with the advent of the cognitive revolution, human nature can finally be defined precisely as the set of universal, species-typical information-processing programs that operate beneath the surface of expressed cultural variability. Second, this collection of cognitive programs evolved in the Pleistocene to solve the adaptive problems regularly faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors--problems such as mate selection, language acquisition, cooperation, and sexual infidelity. Consequently, the traditional view of the mind as a general-purpose computer, tabula rasa, or passive recipient of culture is being replaced by the view that the mind resembles an intricate network of functionally specialized computers, each of which imposes contentful structure on human mental organization and culture. The Adapted Mind explores this new approach--evolutionary psychology--and its implications for a new view of culture.
 

Contents

The Psychological Foundations of Culture
19
On the Use and Misuse of Darwinism in the Study
137
COOPERATION
161
Two Nonhuman Primate Models for the Evolution
229
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MATING AND
245
Evaluative
267
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Chattel
289
PARENTAL CARE AND CHILDREN
323
Natural Language and Natural Selection
451
An Adaptation
495
Evolutionary Theory
533
ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS
551
Environmental Preference in a KnowledgeSeeking
581
INTRAPSYCHIC PROCESSES
599
NEW THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO CULTURAL
625
Author Index
639

Maternal Psychology
367
Human Maternal Vocalizations to Infants as Biologically
391
PERCEPTION AND LANGUAGE AS ADAPTATIONS
445

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information