Evolutionary Psychology: Toward a Unifying Theory and a Hybrid Science

Although evolutionary psychology is typically associated with “selfish gene theory,” numerous other approaches to the study of mind and behavior provide a wealth of concepts for theorizing about psychology, culture, and development. These include general evolutionary approaches and theories focused on sociality, dual inheritance, multilevel selection, and developmental systems. Most evolutionary accounts use the same methods as Darwin—the “fit among facts”—to use natural selection as an explanation for behavior. Scientific standards for constraining and evaluating such accounts, research into the mutual influence of science and society on the understanding of evolution, and computational technologies for modeling species-typical processes are important considerations. Coevolutionary theories and developmental systems theories may eventually give rise to unification in a broad and general sense. Such a unification would be interdisciplinary and problem centered rather than discipline centered.