Vance Christiaanse’s Reviews > Evolutionary Psychology: A Beginner's Guide > Status Update

So Émile Durkheim said (in 1912!) that the role of religion was to give us social cohesion--shared beliefs and understandings. I've only ever heard that from religious people until now. I'm not sure people who really love God should be using that defense.

It's culture if it's arbitrary.

Chapter 7: parenting (and infanticide...?)
Chapter 8: social network size works out to about 150 in lots of different cultures

Chapter 5: evolutionary theory provides an explanatory framework for the (human) mate selection behavior we observe.

So... chapter 3: mother-ese, chapter 4: shared attention (and is it just a result of an expectancy effect--a.k.a. self-fulfilling prophesy). I'm really not that interested in any of this. Just reading because recommended by a friend.

Learning stuff... the New Synthesis, altruism questions, evolutionary fitness. All very theoretical right now--haven't gotten to how these ideas can help me understand daily life yet.

A friend suggested that the relatively new field of Evolutionary Psychology might help me understand why people do what they do. We'll see!

So far... the authors make the point that evolution can shape human behavior not only through genes but through learning--the social transmission of behaviors.