Steps toward the evolutionary psychology
of a culture-dependent species
Daniel M.T. Fessler
Center for Behavior, Evolution, & Culture
and
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Los Angeles
Despite a long history of interest in evolution, anthropology has failed to keep pace with
developments in evolutionary social science. At the same time, although the new field of
evolutionary psychology has developed powerful explanations of human psychology, it
has largely overlooked the importance of culture in human behavior. If culture is our
species’ principal means of coping with our physical and social worlds, we can expect
that natural and sexual selection will have produced specialized mental mechanisms
designed to function in a culturally-constituted world. An effective strategy for
investigating human psychology is therefore to begin by asking what tasks a cultureusing mind must perform. A preliminary list includes the acquisition of socially
transmitted information, the internalization of norms, the maintenance of conformity with
shared standards, and the motivation of punishment for rule violators. At a proximate
level, these mechanisms often manifest as emotions, including admiration, shame, pride,
and moral outrage. Importantly, once such mechanisms exist they then influence the
content of shared understandings. Recent results from ongoing studies illustrate the
complex interdigitation of evolved psychological mechanisms and cultural information.