Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire–Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do Read Free Page B

family, crime and violence, political and economic inequalities, and religion and conflict). In each we pose several questions readers may have wondered about in their own lives, and provide evolutionary psychological answers to them. We look ahead at the questions that still remain unanswered by evolutionary psychology in the conclusion.
    All of our claims are fully referenced to scientific studies that provide supportive evidence. For endnotes that simply give citation information, we use the standard endnote reference numbers, for example. 1 References that give greater information not contained in the text have reference numbers with brackets, for example. [2]

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What Is Evolutionary Psychology?
    Evolutionary psychology is a new, emerging field. The first landmark studies in evolutionary psychology were published in the late 1980s, 1 and the birth of modern evolutionary psychology was marked in 1992 with the publication of the tome The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture , 2 which is often regarded as the bible of modern evolutionary psychology. 3 What was there before then? Before we tackle the question, “What is evolutionary psychology?” in this chapter, let’s pause a moment to consider what theories and explanations were available to social scientists before its advent.
    A Typical View from the Social Sciences
    Most social scientists explain human behavior in a more or less typical fashion. The particular school of thought is called “the Standard Social Science Model.” 4 Because social scientists and their theories tend to have a lot of influence on the general public, the same view also characterizes how ordinary people account for human behavior in their everyday lives.
    What exactly is the Standard Social Science Model? A set of related principles characterize its main tenets.
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    1. Humans are exempt from biology . Social scientists who subscribe to the Standard Social Science Model know that biology (and its branches, like zoology, ornithology, and entomology) can explain the behavior of all other species in nature. Yet they make an exception for humans as a sole species whose behavior is not explained by biological principles and theories. Human exceptionalism is the hallmark of the Standard Social Science Model. Many social scientists have averse reactions to biological explanations of human behavior. 5 This principle says that humans are exceptions in nature.
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    2. Evolution stops at the neck. 6 Social scientists in the Standard Social Science Model tradition, who do not believe in biological influences on human behavior and cognition, nonetheless acknowledge that human anatomy has been shaped by evolution. They recognize that human body parts, such as the fingers and the toes, are the way they are because of a long evolutionary process of natural and sexual selection. However, they contend that evolution has had no effect on the contents of the human brain and the human mind. This principle says that the brain is an exception in the human body.
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    3. Human nature is tabula rasa (a blank slate) . 7 As a result of principle 2 above, social scientists in the Standard Social Science Model tradition contend that humans are born with a mind like a blank slate. Once again, they recognize that all the other species have innate natures: dogs have an innate dog nature, which makes them behave more or less the same no matter where they live or what their individual life experiences have been, and cats have an innate cat nature, which similarly makes them behave the same but different from dogs. The same goes for all species in nature— except for humans. Humans do not have an innate nature, as they are born with minds that are blank slates. Principle 3, like principle 1, is an example of human exceptionalism.
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    4. Human behavior is a product almost entirely of environment and socialization. Since, according to the Standard Social Science Model,