ABSTRACT
Comparative issues deriving from an evolutionary framework have been an explicit concern in psychology and ethology since the onset of Darwinian biology in the late nineteenth century. This chapter aims to trace the historical development of comparative and phylogenetic concerns in psychology and ethology. It also aims to apply to behavior recently developed taxonomic methods for classification and evolutionary reconstruction by reanalyzing a classic study. The chapter presents a new methodology for distinguishing and quantifying phylogenetic and adaptive effects. It outlines how some new comparative methods might provide a rigorous means to incorporate the early Darwinians' dream of a comparative psychology of mental characteristics into modern evolutionary biology. Sociobiology, behavioral ecology, and new methods of comparative biology have now led to a systematic focus on whether or not evolved features of animals are due to adaptations to current or recent ecological circumstances or whether they are based on phylogenetic or historical constraints from ancient ancestral stocks.
