Evolutionary psychology: alternative approaches

Evolutionary psychology has been dominated by one particular method for studying the mind and behavior. This is the first book to both question that monopoly and suggest a broad range of particular alternatives. Psychologists, philosophers, biologists, anthropologists, and others offer different methods for combining psychology and evolution. They recommend specific changes to evolutionary psychology using a wide variety of theoretical assumptions. In addition, some essays analyze the underpinnings of the dominant method, relate it to the context of evolutionary and psychological theory and to general philosophy of science, and discuss how to test approaches to evolutionary psychology. The aim of this collection is not to reject evolutionary psychology but to open up new vistas which students and researchers can use to ensure that evolutionary psychology continues to thrive.

Acknowledgements -- Contributors -- Alternative approaches to evolutionary psychology: introduction -- Nature read in truth or flaw: locating alternatives in evolutionary psychology -- The evaluation of competing approaches within human evolutionary psychology -- Evolution, morality, and human potential -- Repeated assembly: prospects for saying what we mean -- Human triangles: genes, sex and economics in human evolution -- The optimal number of fathers: evolution, demography, and history in the shaping of female mate preferences -- Dancing in the dark: evolutionary psychology and the argument from design -- Adaptationism and psychological explanation -- Toward a developmental evolutionary psychology: genes, development, and the evolution of cognitive architecture -- Modules, brain parts, and evolutionary psychology -- Evolutionary psychology and the information-processing model of cognition -- Evolutionary psychology and artificial life.