Customer Reviews

Introducing Evolutionary Psychology

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have read widely and actually teach evolutionary psychology at the graduate school level and i find this fun and factual tour of the darwinian perspective to be on the money and amazingly accessible. In addition to the more formal texts i employ, i use this book as a fast and friendly summary. To have crafted a work such as this that is clear and simple and not merely a simplification is a significant achievement.

Not all books in this "Introducing" series are equally good but this one is a success. Most of the principles of evolutionary psychology are correctly represented within the limits of the available space, and the mildly entertaining illustrations make for easy reference. Every page introduces a new concept and can be read on its own. Whether this book is to be recommended as a first read in evolutionary psychology, is an open question. I dip into it from time to time to remind myself how fascinating and compelling a subject evolutionary psychology is. "Browsing evolutionary psychology" would be an apt title for this book.

Written as a sort of comic book, this is a fun little introduction to a fascinating topic. Quite concise and easy to read in bits on the subway or wherever. I imagine it might be good material for turning newcomers on to the subject or for high school/undergrad classes. Seeing all of the scientist players in caricature is a good time, too.

This is an easy and fast book to read if you want to get a basic overview of what evolutionary psychology is. Like the title says, it is an introduction and if you get the word introduction right, it means that you are going to see only the general aspect of what evolutionary psychology is. I recommend this book to people who are not sure about buying books of greater value on this subject. At less than 10 dollars, you'll have a good idea of what's in store for you in your further readings on the subject.

Enjoy!
Matt.

If you've not read any of the "Introducing Such-and-such" series (or the similar "For Beginners" series from a different publisher) then I'll have to describe the overall series to you as well as this particular book.

Both of these series have the simple goal of serving as a brief introduction to the topic for an intelligent layman. The series makes use of copious illustrations throughout, so that they almost look like a comic book.

I sheepishly have to admit I picked this book up because I knew the Wachowski brothers, creators of The Matrix, had all their principal actors read it.

That said, this book fulfills the goal of giving a simple overview of the basic concepts of evolutionary psychology. I do a fair bit of self-directed reading about various psychology topics, so I found the subject interesting. The authors describe the origins of evolutionary psychology and how it's distinguished from the larger field of general psychology. Various topics covered include the evolution of human social behavior (and why reputation is so important to us), dietary habits (why fatty, sugar-laden foods are so hard to ignore) and mating patterns.

I have only two major criticisms concerning this book. The first is more of a minor annoyance than a significant flaw: Important figures are usually pictured as well as named. Later in the book these people are shown describing through speech bubbles important points of their theories. The problem is that their names are only given the first time. I found it very annoying to have to go back every time a certain picture was presented to remember the name and associate the theory with the correct person.

The second and more important problem is this: Although the authors present several objections to the theories of evolutionary psychology, their responses to these objections feel a bit too pat. They simply don't seem to be taking these arguments seriously. Of course, this is a short book intended only as an introduction to the field, so the authors had a limited scope, but I still found their approach to their critics a bit too dismissive.

Overall, if you're a curious, omnivorous reader like myself, you'll probably find this a good read. As other reviewers have noted, the book includes suggestions for further reading at the end, so if you really enjoyed the subject you already have directions for further research.

This book provides a brief introduction to the field of Evolutionary Psychology, defined as a combination of cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology. I finished it just as quickly as "The Zen of Farting" by Carl Japikse, but needless to say, this book was far more enlightening. The pages are almost in comic book format with pictures taking up the lion's share of space. The pictures weren't necessary to get the points across, but alas, to sell a brief and rudimentary book such as this, volume is necessary.

The author, a Ph.D. student in cognitive psychology at the time the book was written offers a great introduction to the field of evolutionary psychology and provides a laundry list of further readings on the subject.

If you have little to no exposure to this field, this is an excellent book to get you started. I highly recommend it.

There's no way I can review this book based on content because I'm not very familiar with the fields, but I did appreciate how well the authors presented the theories on such a controversial theory. They did manage to shed some light on method of explaining human behavior that I never thought of and took for granted (my folly considering I'm an aspiring Sociologist).What's best is at the end of the book there are suggestions for further reading.

After having read other titles in this series - "Introducing Newton" and "Introducing Chomsky" - my expectations for this book were positively shattered.
The author conveys Evolutionary Biology and Cognitive Psychology quite tangibly and seamlessly integrates these two schools of thought in the development of Evolutionary Psychology, including facets of Chomsky's "Universal Grammar" and the Language acquisition device (LAD), as well as Dawkin's defense of the selfish gene.
Furthermore, the author's perspective on "social accounting" and contrasting gender themes on issues like reproduction, and survival were quite stimulating, and sufficiently probing to warrant a revisit of my own past, and the lives of those around me.

Highly recommended. A superb, easy-to-understand introduction to Evolutionary Psychology. A lot of drawings clearly explain the concepts.

By the way, I'm not at all surprised that a great book like this was published in Europe (the UK in this case). The squeamish Americans would have a lot of issues with the "graphic" illustrations and non-politically-correct content.

Wonderful & entertaining!

No-one will learn to be an evolutionary biologist from this book, however that is not its purpose. Like all the books in this "Introducing..." series from Icon books, it is written short paragraphs of digestable text and a images and diagrams on every page to illustrate. For an academic this would be a very annoying and frustrating read with silly pictures and surface level explanations, however for the uninitiated this is perfect starting place to get the general idea about the field.

Note: the version reviewed was published in 1999 and much has happened in this controversial field since then.