EVOLUTIONARY-THEORY MEETS COGNITIVE-PSYCHOLOGY - A MORE SELECTIVE PERSPECTIVE

L. Cosmides and J. Tooby, leaders in the field of evolutionary psychol ogy, have claimed that an evolutionary perspective toward psychology r equires both that psychologists conceive of psychological processes as domain specific and that psychologists view all adaptive behavior as the product of cognition. In fact, we argue, an evolutionary perspecti ve commits psychology to neither of these positions. The real value of evolutionary theory for psychology, we contend, lies in the heuristic role it plays in determining the function of psychological mechanisms and in the depth it contributes to explanations of why psychological processes have the properties they do.