ABSTRACT
E volutionary psychology—in its ambitious version well formulated by Cosmides and Tooby (e.g., Cosmides & Tooby, 1987; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992)—will succeed to the extent that it causes cognitive psychologists to rethink central aspects of human cognition in an evolutionary perspective; to the extent, that is, that psychology in general becomes evolutionary. The human species is exceptional by its massive investment in cognition, and in forms of cognitive activity—language, metarepresentation, abstract thinking—that are as unique to humans as echolocation is unique to bats. The promise of evolutionary psychology is thus to help explain not just traits of human psychology that are homologous to those of many other species, but also traits of human psychology that are genuinely exceptional and that in turn help explain the exceptional character of human culture and ecology.
