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EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY [1 record]

Record 1 1994-04-06

English

Subject field(s)
  • Industrial and Economic Psychology
CONT

Championed by a group of biologists led by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, the emerging discipline of evolutionary psychology sees the human mind as a set of specific instincts that are trained by experience and learning, but are triggered by outside stimuli. This is very different from the old view that instinct and learning were mutually exclusive. These instincts are what constitutes human nature: for instance, the instinct to like sweet food ... whatever form it comes in; the instinct to learn language with a specifically human grammar, whatever its vocabulary; the instinct to trade favors with other trusted individuals, a sense of social credit and debt; an instinct to form interpretations of what is going on in other human minds....

CONT

Economics and evolutionary psychology both focus on the similarities among individuals of all races: the fact that humans of all colors and creeds are motivated by the same preferences, desires and goals - to accumulate the means to consume, find a mate, have children, be famous or popular, and so on. This view holds that the differences between people are the result of different environmental triggers acting on the same genetic nature.

French

Domaine(s)
  • Psychologie industrielle et économique

Spanish

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