ABSTRACT
What a pity it would have been if biologists had refused to accept Darwin’s theory of natural selection. This theory has been essential in helping biologists understand a wide range of phenomena, including the resplendent display of the peacock, the melodious song of the meadowlark, the bloody competitions of elephant seals, and the cooperative architectural skills of termites, who build airconditioned mounds standing 15 feet above the ground! These days, to study any animal species while refusing to consider the evolved adaptive significance of their behavior would be considered pure folly. That is, of course, unless the species in question is homo sapiens. Graduate students training to study this particular primate species may never take a single course in evolutionary theory, although they often take two undergraduate and four graduate courses in statistics. These methodologically sophisticated students then embark on a career studying human aggression, cooperation, mating behavior, family relationships, or altruism with little or no understanding of the general evolutionary forces and principles that shaped the behaviors they are investigating. When a handful of brave social psychologists tried to introduce evolutionary thinking into the field several years ago (see e.g., Cunningham, 1981; Rajecki, 1977), the reaction of most social psychologists either was to ignore or attack the suggestion that our field might profit from applying perhaps the most powerful and integrative set of ideas in the life sciences.
