The history of evolutionary psychology

Tara DeLecce, Carol Cronin Weisfeld and Glenn Weisfeld

Chapter 1 in Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, 2026, pp 2-15 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Evolutionary psychology was widely recognized as its own field in the 1990s, however the ideas inspired from it date back to the 1800s. Beginning with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection, evolutionary processes were applied to behavior and mental processes throughout especially the first half of the 20th century. The Modern Synthesis accounted for the role of genes in evolution, and fields such as ethology, evolutionary biology, and sociobiology introduced middle-level evolutionary theories to help explain universal human behaviors such as mating, parenting, and altruism. Toward the end of the 20th century, sociobiology inspired a new field, evolutionary psychology, to better integrate the role of cognition and especially domain specificity in explaining human behavior. Evolutionary psychology is currently used to explain phenomena observed in various areas of psychology including social, developmental, and clinical. Such expansive application of the field should further increase its integration with mainstream psychology.

Keywords: EP History; Sociobiology; Ethology; Domain Specificity; Modern Evolutionary Psychology; Political Acceptance Of EP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035332496
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