Essential Evolutionary Psychology

Essential Evolutionary Psychology introduces students to the core theories, approaches, and findings that are the necessary foundations for developing an understanding of evolutionary psychology.

It offers a sound, brief, and student friendly explication of how evolutionary theory has been and is applied in psychology. The book unpicks the very essence of human evolution, and how this knowledge is used to give evolutionary accounts of four of the central pillars of human behavior - cooperation, attraction, aggression, and family formation. It also covers evolutionary accounts of abnormal behavior, language and culture. The textbook then closes with a discussion of the wider objections to the very notion of evolutionary psychology, and, taking the view that evolutionary approaches are not going to go away it looks at how evolutionary psychology may develop in the future.

Accessible, lively and rich with the latest research ideas as vignettes, Essential Evolutionary Psychology should be main textbook reading for undergraduate students taking courses in Evolutionary Psychology or Evolution & Human Behavior. It should also be recommended reading to introductory students studying the Brain and Behavior.

`It is refreshing, in the wake of the sometimes uncritical enthusiasm for evolutionary psychology, to read a thoughtful and balanced account of the problems as well as the benefits of an evolutionary perspective on human behaviour′ - Professor Anne Campbell, Durham University