Evolutionary psychologist, David Buss , lays out six properties of evolved psychological mechanisms (EPM's):
# An EPM exists in the form that it does because it solved a specific problem of survival or Reproduction recurrently over evolutionary history.
# An EPM is designed to take in only a narrow slice of information
# The input of an EPM tells an organism the particular Adaptive problem it is facing
# The input of an EPM is transformed through Decision Rules into output
# The output of an EPM can be Physiological activity, information to other psychological mechanisms, or manifest behaviors
# The output of an EPM is directed toward the solution to a specific adaptive problem
Further important properties include the following:
- EPM's provide nonarbitrary criteria, (i.e. adaptive function) for "carving the mind at its joints," (i.e. evolved structure).
- EPM's tend to aid in solving specific adaptive problems, (e.g. food selection, mate selection, intrasexual competition, etc.)
- EPM's are believed to be numerous, which contributes to human behavioral flexibility. An analogy would be like a carpenter who, instead of having one tool that does everything, has many tools, each with a specific function for a specific task, (e.g. a hammer for pounding nails, a saw for cutting wood, etc.)
- Some EPM's are ''domain-specific'', (i.e. evolved to solve specific, recurrent adaptive problems), while others are ''domain-general'', (i.e. evolved to aid the individual in dealing with novelty in the environment).
The least controversial EPMs are those commonly known as Instinct s, including interpreting Stereoscopic vision, Suckling a mother's breast, etc.
- Chiappe, D., & MacDonald, K. B. (2005). The Evolution of Domain-General Mechanisms in Intelligence and Learning. ''Journal of General Psychology, 132(1),'' 5–40. Full text
- Henrich, J. & Boyd, R. (2002). Culture and Cognition: Why Cultural Evolution Does Not Require Replication of Representations. ''Culture and Cognition, 2:'' 87–112. Full text
- Krill, A. L., Platek, S. M., Goetz, A. T., & Shackelford, T. K. (2007). Where evolutionary psychology meets cognitive neuroscience: A précis to evolutionary cognitive neuroscience. ''Evolutionary Psychology, 5,'' 232-256. Full text
- Tooby, J., Cosmides, L. & Barrett, H. C. (2005). Resolving the debate on innate ideas: Learnability constraints and the evolved interpenetration of motivational and conceptual functions. In Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. & Stich, S. (Eds.), '' The Innate Mind: Structure and Content. '' NY: Oxford University Press. Full text
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