The College recently approved an new course offering in Psychology entitled "Evolutionary Psychology". Evolutionary Psychology is a relatively new and fast-growing approach to studying behavior. The course will draw upon evolutionary theory to explain human behavior, thereby requiring students to adopt a somewhat interdisciplinary perspective. This perspective will provide students with a valuable opportunity to examine human behavior within the larger context of evolution. The course has already been taught once as a "Special Topics" course (PSYC 240) and has generated subsequent student interest in the form of evolutionary psychology investigations in senior I.S. projects.

The course description appears below.

PSYC 235. Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology is the application of evolutionary theory to the study of human behavior. The field provides an integrated approach to studying human behavior by attempting to explain how neural mechanisms, resulting from a long history of evolution by natural selection, guide our present-day behavior and help us solve the problems that affected our ancestors' ability to survive and reproduce successfully. Some of these "problems" include inter-group aggression, mate selection, rearing children, and negotiating social relationships. We will use Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and sexual selection to frame our analysis of the cognition and behavior that characterizes humans around the world. Some of the topics that we will cover include "human nature," the origins and functions of various behavioral sex differences, the evolutionary basis of nepotism, gene-behavior relations, reproductive behavior, and how culture and social learning interface with Darwinian evolution.

Department of Psychology, The College of Wooster

930 College Mall Wooster, OH 44691 ~ 330-263--2302