Chapter 15 Buss: Evolutionary Theory of Personality 435Principles of Evolutionary Psychology
Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer were the first thinkers to argue for an
evolutionary perspective of psychological thought and behavior. In 1859 Darwin
wrote: “In the future, I see open fields for far more important researches. Psy-
chology will be securely based on the foundation already well laid by Herbert
Spencer, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power by gradation”^1
(Darwin, 1859, p. 355). In other words, in the future, the view that mental
processes have evolved gradually will be more widely accepted. A few decades
later the American philosopher and psychologist William James did pick up on
this view and argued that psychology should focus on the function of the mind
rather than its parts.
It took more than 100 years, however, for Darwin’s future to arrive. Until
the 1970s, evolution and psychology were largely separate ideas. During the
1970s, finally, things began to change. One of the first signs of change was
put forth by E.O. Wilson when he argued for a merger of the biological and
social sciences and dubbed his movement “sociobiology” (Wilson, 1975). The
term “evolutionary psychology” was coined in 1973 by biologist Michael Ghis-
elin (1973), and later popularized by the anthropologist John Tooby and psy-
chologist Leda Cosmides in the early 1990s (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). The
term evolutionary psychology can be defined as the scientific study of human
thought and behavior from an evolutionary perspective and focuses on four big
questions (Buss, 1999):
- Why is the human mind designed the way it is, and how did it come to
take its current form? - How is the human mind designed; that is, what are its parts and current
structure? - What function do the parts of the mind have, and what is it designed to do?
- How do the evolved mind and current environment interact to shape
human behavior?
In the remainder of the chapter, we see how these questions have been applied to
the study of human personality in David Buss’s evolutionary theory of personality.
Evolutionary Theory of Personality
From the beginning to the end of the 20th century, personality theories went from
grand theories that attempted to explain all people at all times to smaller, more
targeted theories that focused on single aspects of personality, such as the structure
of personality or the nature of self. Starting with Freud in the early 1900s, theories
of personality had attempted to understand people’s conscious and unconscious
(^1) In 1855, four years before Darwin’s Origins, Herbert Spencer published Principles of Psychology, in
which he argued for a biological and even evolutionary view of human thought and behavior.