Michael Renner suspects that evolutionary psychology is just gussied up
comparative psychology. There is more than a grain of truth in that,
but most comp. psych. courses have very different content than evol.
psych, which focuses on human behavior, for the most part. There are a
number of differences between EP and the old CP as practiced by
Bitterman, for example, and criticised so incisively by Hodos and
Campbell. EP seeks evidence of psychological adaptations to situations
hominids faced in the Pleistocene. It is comparative in that it
compares behavior of animals that face similar selection pressures. So
it doesn't compare human behavior to our nearest relatives always, but
to animals which share those pressures, which might be birds in the case
of paternity certainty, for example.
(The rest is a repeat of material I have been trying to send to TIPS
recently, but am not confident it has been received. Please excuse if
it has gotten through and this is redundant to the list.)
David Buss has a recent book, Evolutionary Psychology, published by
Allyn and
Bacon, that covers sex and mating very well. It is thin on other
topics.
The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, edited by Crawford and Krebs is
at a
higher level, and has many solid and useful chapters.
The major journals in the field are Evolution and Human Behavior
(formerly
Ethology and Sociobiology) and Human Nature.
I will repeat a suggestion I made recently on TIPS, but am not sure it
was
distributed.
The Human Behavior and Evolution Society web site is:
http://157.242.64.83/hbes.htm
In another year I hope to be able to recommend a book a colleague and I
have
written that is _almost_ in press with Prentice Hall.
Don
Donald McBurney
.
