Evolutionary Psychology Chapter 3 Summary

PART II

Geographic Distributions of Personality Traits and Attachment

CHAPTER 3: EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE AND PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY

3.1 Introduction This section will address issues of ecological fit and psychological traits in the context of evolutionary science and personality psychology. The upcoming chapters in Part II and Part III present six prior publications that illustrate how personality traits, romantic attachment styles, jealousy, mate poaching, and sex differences in sexual variety are distributed across world regions.

Differential reproduction is at the heart natural selection, the driving force behind the evolutionary process.

What are the causal roots of individual differences? What are the major ways in which individuals differ (Corr, 2015)? What are the outcomes of individual differences for social interaction, mental illness, and life span development (Buss, 2015)? Evolutionary psychology is wrestling with ways to consolidate individual differences and species-typical psychological mechanisms under the umbrella of a single conceptual framework. A number of researchers have argued that the potential for convergence between the personality and evolutionary perspectives in the future seems strong (e.g., Gangestad & Simpson, 1990; Nettle & Penke,

The needs of the individual end up competing against the needs of the larger group. Our psychological structure was designed to benefit the propagation of our genes through direct and indirect means and to promote non-kin reciprocal alliances in close proximity (i.e., the people we interact with frequently). For almost all of human history we have not had to solve massive global population problems. Simply put, the EEA did not design efficient mental machinery for solving problems involving large groups of strangers we will never meet or see.

The EEA for any species is the amalgamation of reproductive problems faced by members of that species over evolutionary time and is an important concept for understanding the functional properties and organization of the brain. Many human preferences and behavioral decision making algorithms are adapted to the EEA and not necessarily the modern environment.

3.3 Personality