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Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind

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Professor Buss has taken upon himself the formidable challenge of producing the first evolutionary psychology textbook, a milestone that is long overdue. In his endeavor he has succeeded magnificently. In 411 pages he manages a sterling job of covering the most important topics in evolutionary psychology, bringing to bear the most up to date literature in a simple to read yet academically compelling format. He begins with a complete and intelligent introduction to both evolutionary theory and the events leading to the development of an evolutionary psychology. Thereafter, he covers broad branches of human behavior - kin relations, cooperative relationships, warfare, aggression, status-seeking, parenting and, of course, human mating strategies. This last topic is covered in several different chapters and highlights the author¹s own valuable, ground-breaking work done in the area. His book provides a miraculous combination of both utterly fascinating and effortless reading, rare qualities in textbooks. No review can be complete without mention of a few blemishes, however minor and in this case it is particularly tempting to simply omit them entirely. However, Dr. Buss occasionally relies heavily, too heavily perhaps, on secondary or general sources of information (i.e., Dawkins, de Waal, Pinker) when more research oriented sources are available. No doubt this stems, at least in part, from the fact that there is simply not as much primary literature on the subject as one could hope for (at least where humans are concerned). This will undoubtedly be improved by the time the next edition rolls off the press. Too, one would greatly hope that future editions of this text might include a section on foraging/hunting and food adaptations since they are so fundamental to survival and because so many other primate species display overt and well-studied feeding adaptations. However, such minor details are utterly dwarfed by the magnitude, importance and quality of this work. The breadth, depth and timeliness of this textbook cannot be overstated. If you are planning on teaching an undergraduate course on evolutionary psychology or are simply interested in learning more about the subject, this is, without question, the most authoritative and comprehensive vehicle available, eclipsing even the extraordinary Adapted Mind.

By working from the premises of Tooby & Cosmides' Integrated Causal Model, David Buss has done an outstanding job of making accessible not only the complex historical development of evolutionary psychology, but also inclusive fitness theory, specific evolutionary hypotheses and specific predictions derived from these hypotheses. Furthermore, Buss is comprehensive, balanced and precise when asserting theories and empirical substantiation from other major thinkers, viz., Trivers, Pinker, Bloom, Ridley, Symons, Williams, Mayr, Plomin, DeFries, etc.

In "Evolutionary Psychology -- The New Science of Mind," David M. Buss delivers a comprehensive, well-detailed, and illustrative presentation of evolved psychological mechanisms that have become universal across the human species while detailing the biology necessary to understand evolutionary theory and how it applies to human psychology. Organizationally-sound, the textbook reads like a novel, clearly providing theoretical and empirical information requisite for a fundamental understanding of Evolutionary Psychology. Buss' volume is essential reading for students of Evolutionary Psychology and very suitable reading for those of us interested in why we are the way we are. For more advanced readers, "The Adapted Mind," edited by Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby is an ideal choice.

I used this book as a text book for a course I taught on Human Behavior. On the whole, the students really enjoyed the text and they found Buss's writing style to be very engaging and easy to read. I would agree.

Nevertheless, I feel this book--like the whole field of Evolutionary Psychology--requires a far more rigorous scientific framework before it can be considered a field that can substantively explain human behavior from an evolutionary perspective. Don't get me wrong: evolutionary hypotheses can provide a lot of insight into particular human behaviors. However, I would have liked to see much more discussion on what is science, what constitutes a scientifically valid argument, how do we falsify a particular hypothesis, etc. These issues could be covered in a few pages or so, and I think they could help flesh out or perhaps even justify some of the arguments put forth in the text. As it stands now, the book reads more like an apologetic and as I skim the pages, I get the same feeling that I do when I've been pamphleted by evangelicals. Buss's arguments are fraught with generalizations: studies on college kids are extrapolated to the whole human species, studies on plumage color in birds are used to argue for handicaps in humans, and on and on it goes. There are sentences that make pretty extraordinarly claims that go unreferenced and there are sentences that make trivial points that are tailed by six references.

Professor Buss does a good job in conveying the basics of natural selection, but then uses some of the most tenuous definitions of fitness in trying to make an adaptive argument: questionaires, age, symmetry, and even intuition are all stand-ins for fitness. This is a shame because in order to know when selection will operate, we need to know how phenotypic (including behavioral) variation covaries with fitness. Because his fitness proxies are so weak, I have a hard time buying many of the arguments advanced in the book. Other evolutionary forces are rarely discussed; such lapses are unfortunate since it is likely that drift has played some (if not a major) role in getting populations to cross adaptive valleys, as well as affecting the evolutionary dynamics of frequency-dependent selection. But I digress...

I hope future editions (and I'm sure they're on their way) will include a chapter on scientific and evolutionary epistemology. That is, I would like to see a chapter address the question: what steps do evolutionary biologists proceed through when they make an adaptive argument. This would be a timely and useful contribution given that intelligent-design folks are trying to loosen up and poke holes in the definition of science. One chapter starts down this road but never critically discusses how hypotheses are tested (and rejected!), it focuses more on how hypotheses are developed--and believe me, evolutionary psychologists are good at coming up with hypotheses. Professor Buss's book, with its profligate use of unfalsifiable hypotheses, does not help the cause in this respect. Sure, evolutionary psychologists can always hide behind Lakatos as they denigrate Popper for being too severe, or, like Dunbar et al., they can actually learn some math, some scientific epistemology, and help bring evolutionary psychology into a more rigorous, more reputable position. Buss's book does too much of the former and not enough of the latter.

If one reads Buss' text in a certain manner, there is a lot to say about it. It's organized by evolutionary challenge (survival, mating, parenting, group living), exploring how adaptations to each of these challenges might explain human behavior. The general approach is a survey of the literature. Thus on survival, the reader is introduced to hypotheses about the adaptive value of our taste for meat, sweetness, bitterness, spice, alcohol, how these tastes change during pregnancy, and how our attempts to gather food (e.g. hunting) shaped our species (e.g. male-female spatio-temporal differences and group dynamics). Common human phobias (e.g. spiders, heights) are explained in terms of adaptive fitness. While much of this may seem obvious, it is difficult to fault a textbook for explaining the basics of its field. Buss then introduces the evolutionary theory of senescence to answer the question 'why do people die?', and then most speculatively introduces hypotheses about the adaptive value of suicide. Again, if read in a certain way, as an overview of the literature, this book has a value. But don't expect much critical thinking from Buss. He seems predisposed to think that all human behavior is adaptive. While one can certainly imagine how suicide may help one's genetic fitness in certain instances, there is a big leap from this observation to suggesting a heritable mechanism upon which one can decide to advantageously end one's life. Given the high rate of physically healthy teen suicide, an adaptive hypothesis to explain this behavior seems farfetched.

On sex and mating, Buss reviews the psychological literature of mate preference, capably arguing that gender differences are due to evolutionary asymmetry, as opposed to competing hypotheses (e.g. structural societal differences drive women's mate preference). The chapters on kinship are dominated by further explorations of sexual asymmetry as well as the influential theories of Hamilton and Trivers. Moving on to social matters, Buss discuses reciprocal altruism, aggression, warfare, sexual aggression, and status. Again, it is a solid overview, but where it loses value is in its lack of critical assessment of the theories proposed. Evolutionary psychology has been wrongly attacked by many as a collection of unscientific, post hoc, rationalizations. It has also been criticized (e.g. by Gould) as attempting to explain too much of human behavior as adaptive. As such, a text on the matter should do more to contest these notions. Instead, Buss feeds right into them, with uncritical examinations of the evidence in favor of his favored hypotheses (contrasting with his criticism of non-evolutionary theories). In general, this book fails to adequately examine non-evolutionary theories, is uncritical of questionable methodologies (e.g. self reports), and is far too ready to accept dubious interpretations of correlations. But again, if you can keep all this in mind, and read with a critical eye, this book is a nice overview of the field.

David Buss has touched all the bases when it comes to explaining human behavior. Written as a textbook, it reads like a mystery novel. The central mystery being: Why do humans behave the way they do? And, can we do anything to change? The primary tenet of psychology is: bringing into awareness the reasons why we act in certain ways, gives us the power to act differently, i.e. to change. Buss argues, using empirical as well as analogous evidence, that we behave as we do because in our ancestral past, specific behaviors prevailed because they solved specific problems; and that these behaviors now come programed in the brain, activated by situational cues. That's the short version, which if you take exception to, read the long version and then let the debate begin. The truly intriguing aspect of this theory is: if it is correct, then perhaps we can stop doing what we have always done and move towards a more peaceful existence in a more non-violent way. This theory, and this book, should become a part of all high school curriculum and let all students debate, study, and test its hypotheses.

The book is organized in 6 parts and 13 chapters. Part one explains evolution theory and evolutionary psychology and how they are misunderstood and misrepresented, whereas the rest of the book deals with problems like survival, mating, sexual-strategies, kinship and group living.

This book explains behaviours we see everyday, such as gender differences, aggression, jealousy, conflicts, and problems of rank, status and prestige.

Granted, it is not a book full of PC, neither it adopts a feminist view. In fact, it dispels some feminist nonsense (long overdue), such as pointing out how competition happens mainly against same-sex people and how the strategies used by women to put down other women reflect the different mating strategies rooted in gender (such as slandering other women who pursue short-term mating strategies as opposed to long-term ones).

It makes for a very interesting reading!

David Buss, author of The Evolution of Desire and The Dangerous Passion, brings his formidable intellect, research experience, knowledge, and writing talent to bear in this impressive introduction to the field of Evolutionary Psychology. It is obvious from reading the book that it was painstakingly researched. An impressive breadth of research studies in evolutionary psychology and relevant work from other disciplines, including anthropology, biology, and sociology are clearly explained and their implications discussed. Alternative hypotheses and interpretations of research, where alternatives have been explicitly proposed, are even-handedly explored. The chapters of the book are organized by the kinds of problems of survival and reproduction faced by our ancestors. This organization makes the broad range of specific research covered in the book easy to understand and integrate into a coherent understanding of the evolutionary origins of human cognition and behavior. Thought-provoking, absorbing, and exceptionally well written: Dr. Buss's Evolutionary Psychology text is an absolute joy to read. It is a must-have for psychologists, biologists, and any student of human nature.

Love it. We are so bent on characterising ourselves as psychological/spiritual beings. This book brings us promptly down to earth and explains the myriad ways we can first explain our behaviour to the full from a biological perspective. This book is fun, agreeable reading for those who are comfortable with looking at humans as being a part of the animal kingdom, and who are ready to assign them instincts as readily as we do other animals.

This book is very easy to read and I found it extremely enjoyable and informative. Its a keeper for sure!