ABSTRACT
The Theory of Evolution demonstrated to the world that species evolve in response to environmental stimuli and that to survive, evolution must prove adaptive and functional to members of a species. Without adaptive evolution an individual or an entire species would not survive in an ever-changing environment. Each organism is not simply reacting to its environment, but also attempting to change the environment in a dynamic fashion, thus incorporating the adaptive functions of the individual organism into the evolutionary equation. Evolutionary theory gave rise to an interest in individual differences and provided a basis to argue that psychology must be a discipline for all people as all individuals strive to adapt to their environment. In addition, by clearly indicating that species evolve, psychologists further argued that other species could be studied and the findings generalized to humans, as animals represented a different stage of development in the evolutionary process.
