ABSTRACT
The concept of natural selection is promiscuous. Although its status as the central dogma in evolutionary biology may be due primarily to its efficacy in accounting for variation, part of its appeal lies in the fact that it seems to work so well in accounting for an endless variety of phenomena. Even when our understanding of the phenomena changes, we seem to have a knack for inventing new explanations that stem from the same set of assumptions about selection pressures. In this chapter we do not comment on the validity of natural selection as an explanatory concept in general. Instead, we are concerned with its application, as filtered through sociobiology, to a specific type of research—ecological approaches to social perception with particular attention to their predictions regarding universality and accuracy.
