Darwin's Definitions
The vocabulary of evolutionary psychology
Posted April 25, 2018
As is true in any field, evolutionary psychology has its own jargon (with jargon meaning group of technical terms that have specific meaning in the confines of a particular discipline ). If you want to understand the field of evolutionary psychology, you need to speak the language! Below is a list of key terms and definitions - provided as a guide to help people understand this field.
Evolutionary Mismatch - A situation in which the modern conditions of an organism are mismatched from the conditions that characterized the ancestral environments of that organism in important ways.
Extended Phenotype - Changes in the environment of an organism that result from members of the species altering the environment of the organism through behavioral means.
Fitness - The tendency for some feature of an organism to, literally, “fit” with the features of the environment that characterized the ancestors of that organism. Often defined in terms of the “ability to lead to increased reproductive success.”
Game Theory - The idea that there are optimal ratios of various phenotypes that tend to evolve, such that the long-term adaptiveness of one each of the various phenotypes is likely about equal to the long-term adaptiveness of the alternative phenotypes - based on the idea of some optimal equilibrium that emerges over evolutionary time.
Genotype - The DNA coding that exists in each of the cells of a particular organism.
Hyperadaptationism - The idea that some evolutionary scholars, at times, apply the concept of adaptation more so than is warranted.
Inclusive Fitness - The overall reproductive success that is achieved by an organism, including its ability to increase the likelihood of its own genes getting into the future and the ability of its genes as they exist in the bodies of kin (i.e., related individuals) getting into future generations.
Intra- Sexual Competition - The process by which individuals within one sex of a species compete with each other for access to members of the opposite sex.
Inter-Sexual Selection - The process by which some features of an organism come to shape members of one sex of a species because these features are attractive to potential mates.
Of course, this list is remarkably incomplete—but it’s a start! Want to know more about the field of evolutionary psychology? You might want to check out Evolutionary Psychology 101 . Happy Reading!
Geher, G. (2014). Evolutionary Psychology 101. New York: Springer.
Trivers, R. L. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 46, 35–57.
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Glenn Geher, Ph.D. , is professor of psychology at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is founding director of the campus’ Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) program.
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