Handbook of Personology and Psychopathology
Chapter One
EVOLUTION AS A FOUNDATION FOR
PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES
CLYDE HENDRICK
Charles Darwin's (1859) Origin of Species was published a few years before the emergence
of psychology as a scientific discipline. One would expect that the theory of evolution
would have had a major impact on shaping psychology. Clearly, there was some
impact, but the history of evolutionary thinking in psychology is very complex, even
convoluted, and a definitive history has not been written. Until recently, the major impact
of evolution on psychology was through the genetic/heredity route, although there
were also some influences on behavioral theories in psychology developed during the
past century.
One reason for the complexity of the story of evolution in psychology is the complexity
of the story of evolution in biology. Evolution by natural selection had no proximal
explanatory mechanism for about 50 years, until the concept of the gene was well established.
The mix of genes and natural select ... read full excerpt from Handbook of Personology and Psychopathology ebook
