Journal of Ecology and Environment

The Ecological Society of Korea (한국생태학회)
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Optimality Modeling in Human Evolutionary Behavioral Science

  • Published : 2008.08.31
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Abstract

Recently, the evolutionary study of human psychology and behavior has undergone rapid growth, diversifying into a few distinct sub-disciplines. One fundamental issue over which researchers in Human Behavioral Ecology and Evolutionary Psychology (EP) have different views is the role of formal optimality modeling for making hypotheses and deriving predictions about human adaptations. The study of EP typically rests on informal inferences and rarely uses optimality modeling, a strategy which human behavioral ecologists have severely criticized. Here I argue that EP researchers have every reason to make extensive use of optimality modeling as its research method. I show that optimality modeling can play an integral role in identifying the functional organization of human psychological adaptations.

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References

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