ECONOMICS AND EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

Evolutionary psychology² starts from two simple assumptions:The human mind is best understood not as a general purpose computer but as a set of specialized software modules, each designed to deal with a particular subset of problems.Those programs have been designed by Darwinian evolution to produce reproductive success in our environment of evolutionary adaptiveness – the hunter-gatherer environment in which our species spent most of its species history.Researchers in evolutionary psychology, starting with these assumptions, have generated and tested predictions ranging from differences in male and female special abilities to the timing of morning sickness.