Is general intelligence compatible with evolutionary. On this framework of human cognition, an assembly of specialized information. The functional domain specificity of selfesteem and the. Some psychologists argue that the specificity of face perception is an illusion and that human beings simply become expert recognizers of faces by using unspecialized visual capacities. What is domain specificity and why is it necessary. Evolutionary psychology is betting that psychological adaptations have to be just as domain specific as physiological adaptations. Before we detail these three studies, the next section introduces the specific kinds of risk considered. A reconciliation of general intelligence with evolutionary psychology at first blush, the existence of domain general intelligence seems incompatible with the strong modularity view of the mind. These problems or specific selection pressures are what define a domain. A neat way to remember the major perspectives in psychology is to think about your hand and associate each finger with a psychological approach. Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in the social and natural sciences that. Evolutionary psychology also tells us that personality develops through domain specific psychological mechanisms.
Domain specificity, numerousness, and functionality. If the contents of the human brain are domain specific, how can evolutionary psychology explain. Information processing appears to be an excellent model for the general class of problems solved by psychological mechanisms. Evolutionary clinical psychology provides a nonarbitrary definition of psychological disorderwhen an evolved mechanism fails to function as it was designed to function.
The concept of domain specificity follows from many crossdisciplinary findings indicating that mental mechanisms wellsuited to solving one adaptive problem are often illsuited to solving another barrett and kurzban 2006. Evolutionary psychology oftendoes not sufficeinyl tdocumen tthe innaet conrastni atnd domani specificity required for strong adaptationist argument. Subsequently, many have assumed that labeling a mechanism as domainspecific restricts the proposed mechanism to a particular domain, and if evidence can be garnered to show that the mechanism functions in more than one domain e. Evolutionary psychology tends to be associated with a massively modular cognitive architecture. Evolutionary psychology is one of many biologically informed approaches to the study of human behavior. It also sheds light on common afflictions such as depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and sexual disorders. Domain general cognitive knowledge has frequently been used to explain skill when domainspecific knowledge held in longterm memory may provide a better explanation. We trace the long history of attempts to explain human cognition by placing. Evolutionary psychology is closely linked to sociobiology, but there are key differences between them including the emphasis on domain specific rather than domain general mechanisms, the relevance. First, we advocate combining computational, develop. Economic decision biases and fundamental motivations. Evolutionary reasoning and empirical evidence converge to suggest that knowledge of the natural and social world is supported by domain. Evolutionary psychology specifies the domain as the problems of survival and reproduction. The modular view of the mind is an uncontroversial description of the periphery of the mind, the inputoutput sensorimotor and affective subsystems.
The functional domain specificity of selfesteem and the differential prediction of aggression lee a. In evolutionary psychology, proficiency and specificity interact in the concept of domain specificity. Evolutionary psychology and the problem of neural plasticity. Over the years, it has occurred to me that the primary argument for the domain specificity of ct i. Domainspecific mechanisms evolutionarily informed research has suggested that brains are composed of a number of specialized domainspecific mechanisms. Domain specificity and intuitive ontology the handbook.
An emphasis on domain general knowledge may be misplaced if domainspecific knowledge is the primary factor driving acquired intellectual skills. Evolutionary psychology, meet developmental neurobiology. Evolutionary psychology stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Adaptive mechanisms apply to particular adaptive problem. Evolutionary psychologists have adopted the concept to characterize purportedly evolved human adaptations. For example, birds use different memory systems and different rules for remembering species song, the taste of. Because many adaptive problems exist, humans have accumulated many adaptive mechanisms. Archived from the original pdf on 10 september 2008. Domain specific risk taking because of individual differences in skills and abilities, we expect individuals to. Evolutionary psychology assumes that an evolved psychological mechanism and. Conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology center for. Evolutionary psychology is based on the idea that the mind is a set of special purpose thinking devices or modules whose domain specific structure is an adaptation to ancestral environments. Evolutionary psychology and the problem of neural plasticity chuck ward department of philosophy millersville university abstract evolutionary psychology as commonly presented is committed to the view that our cognitive architecture consists of a set of genetically prespecified, domain specific.
We develop these criteria within the domain of music. Systemic functional adaptedness and domain general cognition. Psychological mechanisms, domain specificity, and domain generality evolutionary psychology assumes that an evolved psychological mechanism and its corresponding neural substrates is an informationprocessing module that was selected during a species evolutionary history because it reliably produced behavior that solved a. Ct ability conceptualized as being specific to a particular areas stems from the simple. For instance, according to many evolutionary psychologists, human cognition consists largely of domainspecific cognitive capacities, and this feature of our. It is here argued that such strategy marks a shift in. This form of evolutionary psychology is a version of classical, nativist cognitive psychology. Modern evolutionary theorists, following on findings from cognitive science, presume that the human. The evolutionary psychology of emotions and behavior. Psychological mechanisms, domain specificity, and domain generality.
Interpersonal attraction 5 spouses sexual overtures i. Evolutionary psychology wikipedia evolutionary psychology. In an influential paper, barrett and kurzban 2006 proposed a definition of modules purely in terms of functional specialization. Ancestral cues elict specific emotions fear and ancestral sources of danger as we have already hinted, perhaps nowhere does there exist better evidence for the domain specificity of emotion than in the domain of fear. Evolutionary psychologist an overview sciencedirect topics.
Intuitive ontologies and domainspecificity pascal boyer. Currently available evidence suggests that the innate constraints in music are not specific to that domain, making it unclear which domains provided the relevant selection pressures. Evolutionarily informed research has suggested that brains are composed of a number of specialized domain specific mechanisms. Towards the development of an evolutionarily valid domain. The better performance in the selection task with deontic rules, compared to the descriptive version, has been interpreted by evolutionary psychologists as the evidence that human reasoning has been shaped to deal with either global or specific deontic norms. Domain specificity is an important property of physiological adaptations, and is presumed to be an important property of psychological adaptations as well. The position is a close relative of modularity of mind. Preconference on culture, brain, and development, meetings of the society for research on child development, denver, co, april 2009. Introduction the easiness to reason with deontic norms i. For example, birds use different memory systems and different rules for remembering species song, the taste of poisonous food, and locations of food caches. In contrast, domain specific evolutionary perspectives emphasize that people possess specific needs that were linked to reproductive success in humans ancestral past, and these specific needs can be met only through specific. In press, journal of personality and social psychology.
This term was chosen not to imply that this approach has an inappropriately narrow point of view, but merely to suggest that the approach adopts a narrower range ofassumptions than broad evolutionary psychology or, just evolutionary psychology. In the past, understanding of such functional specialization has been obscured by confusing debates on innateness and modularity. Evolutionary psychology often does not sufficiently document the innate constr aint and domain specificity required for strong adaptationist argument. Evolution by natural selection is the only known causal process by which complex speciestypical functional mechanisms can be created, at some fundamental level of description. Domainspecific programs organize our expe riences, create our inferences, inject certain recurrent concepts and motiva tions into our mental life, give us our. Evolutionary psychologists propose that the mind is made up of genetically influenced and domainspecific mental algorithms or computational modules, designed to. Origins of domain specificity 103 understanding of the actions of others in terms of beliefs, desires, and other mental entities, just as they organize patterns in their twodimensional retinal array under the assumption that the world is threedimensional and that objects are permanent, bounded, and solid. Evolutionary psychology is the second wave of the cognitive revolu tion. Testing the domain specificity hypothesis through wason selection task conference paper pdf available september 2015 with 357 reads how we measure. Evolutionary psychologists contend that the human brain consists of domain specific evolved psychological mechanisms, which evolved to solve specific adaptive problems problems of survival and reproduction in specific domains.
One is the concept of functional modularity or domain specificity. The theory of mind module in evolutionary psychology. Domain specificity is a theoretical position in cognitive science especially modern cognitive development that argues that many aspects of cognition are supported by specialized, presumably evolutionarily specified, learning devices. Along with cognitive psychologists, evolutionary psychologists propose that much, if not all, of our behavior can be explained by appeal to internal psychological mechanisms. Evolutionary psychology evolutionary psychology domain specific mechanisms. Evolutionary psychology, and specifically, the evolutionary psychology of humans, has enjoyed a resurgence in recent decades. Domainspecific knowledge and why teaching generic skills. Like physiological adaptations, psychological adaptations evolved to solve only problems in particular domains and are therefore not necessarily suited for solving problems in other domains evolutionary psychology s tenet of domain specificity cosmides and tooby. As tooby and cosmides 1992 and others have argued, it is likely that the mind is equipped with function specific mechanisms adapted for special. This means that certain aspects of human personality evolved to solve particular. Evolutionary psychology of emotions4 the idea is that if the psychological reward mechanism is constrained to emphasize rewards in the present moment, the simplest counter to a specious reward from cheating is to have a current feeling that tugs in precisely the opposite direction. The evolutionary contingency hypothesis an evolutionary perspective assumes that leadership and followership emerged to solve coordination challenges among social animals van vugt et al.