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Psychology consists of many subfields, such as cognitive psychology, psychology of emotion, social psychology, developmental psychology, clinical psychology, and so on. These subfields are typically characterized by their research subjects. For example, cognitive psychology studies cognitive activities such as attention, memory, and problem solving. Developmental psychology studies age-related changes in the mind. However, the subfield dealt with in this book, evolutionary psychology, does not have a specific research subject. In other words, evolutionary psychology is interested in how the mind works; but does this not apply to psychology in general?
 
If evolutionary psychology has no specific research subject, what does “evolutionary” in evolutionary psychology represent? Evolutionary psychology is characterized by its understanding of how the mind works. Evolutionary psychology is a discipline that aims for unified understanding of the human mind from an evolutionary (or adaptationist) perspective. The flip side of this definition of evolutionary psychology is that there is no unified theoretical ground in psychology or its many subfields. For example, in social psychology, researchers often assume that people are motivated to enhance their self-esteem. However, it is silent about why we have such a motive (are we equipped with it because of evolutionary processes or some other reason?). Nevertheless, this assumption that self-enhancement motivation does exist allows social psychologists to explain many aspects of social behavior.
 
Evolutionary psychologists believe that our minds has been shaped through evolution by natural selection. This implies that the way our minds work allows us to solve many adaptive problems that our ancestors repeatedly encountered. For example, if we see a snake, we feel fear, which induces a fight-or-flight response to prepare our bodies to quickly respond to the threat. It is obvious that having such a quick response mode (compared to pondering “What is this?” or “How should I respond to it?”) is adaptive.
 
Evolutionary psychology aims to provide a unified understanding of how the mind works, from an adaptationist perspective. Accordingly, its research subjects have spread to the subfields of psychology. Therefore, we asked experts from various psychology subfields to delineate how the adaptationist perspective contributes to their fields. As one of the editors of this volume, I hope that you will understand the relevance of the adaptationist perspective to psychology.
 

(Written by OHTSUBO Yohsuke, Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2024)