Does beauty build adapted minds? Toward an evolutionary theory of aesthetics, fiction and the arts

Puzzlingly, humans in all cultures engage in a broad variety of aesthetical ly oriented activities that appear to have no obvious evolutionary utility, including immersion in those falsehoods called fiction. We argue that, des pite appearances, aesthetically oriented activities are evolutionarily func tional, and are the product of evolved adaptations designed to cause such e xperiences. These are adaptations whose function is to (1) assist in constr ucting the adaptations that constitute our species-typical neurocognitive d esign, and (2) bring those adaptations into a state of effective readiness, individually tailored to deal with the specific adaptive demands that they will confront during that person's life.