Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature (Bradford Books),Used

Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature (Bradford Books),Used

In Stock
SKU: SONG0262524600
Brand: MIT Press
$15.22
Quantity
Add to wishlist
Add to compare

Processing time: 1-3 days

US Orders Ships in: 3-5 days

International Orders Ships in: 8-12 days

Return Policy: 15-days return on defective items

Payment Option
Payment Methods

Help

If you have any questions, you are always welcome to contact us. We'll get back to you as soon as possible, withing 24 hours on weekdays.

Customer service

All questions about your order, return and delivery must be sent to our customer service team by e-mail at yourstore@yourdomain.com

Sale & Press

If you are interested in selling our products, need more information about our brand or wish to make a collaboration, please contact us at press@yourdomain.com

Was human nature designed by natural selection in the Pleistocene epoch? The dominant view in evolutionary psychology holds that it wasthat our psychological adaptations were designed tens of thousands of years ago to solve problems faced by our huntergatherer ancestors. In this provocative and lively book, David Buller examines in detail the major claims of evolutionary psychologythe paradigm popularized by Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate and by David Buss in The Evolution of Desireand rejects them all. This does not mean that we cannot apply evolutionary theory to human psychology, says Buller, but that the conventional wisdom in evolutionary psychology is misguided.Evolutionary psychology employs a kind of reverse engineering to explain the evolved design of the mind, figuring out the adaptive problems our ancestors faced and then inferring the psychological adaptations that evolved to solve them. In the carefully argued central chapters of Adapting Minds, Buller scrutinizes several of evolutionary psychology's most highly publicized 'discoveries,' including 'discriminative parental solicitude' (the idea that stepparents abuse their stepchildren at a higher rate than genetic parents abuse their biological children). Drawing on a wide range of empirical research, including his own largescale study of child abuse, he shows that none is actually supported by the evidence.Buller argues that our minds are not adapted to the Pleistocene, but, like the immune system, are continually adapting, over both evolutionary time and individual lifetimes. We must move beyond the reigning orthodoxy of evolutionary psychology to reach an accurate understanding of how human psychology is influenced by evolution. When we do, Buller claims, we will abandon not only the quest for human nature but the very idea of human nature itself.

⚠️ WARNING (California Proposition 65):

This product may contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.

For more information, please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.

Recently Viewed