Principal Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles (2nd Edition)

Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles (2nd Edition)

Now in a completely revised and expanded second edition, this authoritative handbook reviews the breadth of current knowledge on the psychological processes that underlie social behavior. Leading investigators identify core principles that have emerged from the study of biological systems, social cognition, goals and strivings, interpersonal interactions, and group and cultural dynamics. State-of-the-science theories, methods, and findings are explained, and important directions for future research are highlighted. More than an update, this edition is virtually a new book. Many more chapters are included, and significant advances in social cognitive neuroscience, motivational psychology, and other areas are incorporated throughout. A new section addresses implications for applied domains, such as clinical psychology, health, and consumer behavior.
Año: 2007
Edición: Second Edition
Editorial: The Guilford Press
Idioma: english
Páginas: 1024
ISBN 10: 1572309180
ISBN 13: 9781572309180
File: PDF, 6.91 MB

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edited by


New York

© 2007 The Guilford Press
A Division of Guilford Publications, Inc.
72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012
All rights reserved
or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Last digit is print number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Social psychology : handbook of basic principles / edited by Arie W. Kruglanski, E. Tory Higgins.—
2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN-10: 1-57230-918-0 ISBN-13: 978-1-57230-918-0 (hardcover)
1. Social psychology. I. Kruglanski, Arie W. II. Higgins, E. Tory (Edward Tory), 1946–
HM1033.S637 2007

About the Editors

About the Editors

Arie W. Kruglanski, PhD, is Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at the University of
Maryland–College Park. He is a recipient of the Donald T. Campbell Award for Outstanding Contributions to Social Psychology from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, and the
Senior Career Award from the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Kruglanski is widely recognized for his distinguished research contributions, disseminated in over 200 articles and chapters,
which focus on how people form judgments, beliefs, impressions, and attitudes, and the consequences for their interpersonal relations, group interactions, and intergroup relations. He has served
as editor of the Journal of Social and Personality Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition and of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. He is now a codirector of the START National Center for the
Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.
E. Tory Higgins, PhD, is the Stanley Schachter Professor of Psychology, Professor of Business,
and Director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia University. He has received a MERIT
Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Thomas M. Ostrom Award in Social Cognition, the Donald T. Campbell Award for Outstanding Contributions to Social Psychology from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Lifetime Contribution Award from the International Society for Self and Identity. Dr. Higgins has also received the Distinguished Scientist Award
from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, the William James Fellow Award for Distinguished Achievements in Psychological Science from the American Psychological Society, and the
American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions. He is a Fellow
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of Columbia University’s Presidential
Award for Outstanding Teaching.




Susan M. Andersen, PhD, Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York
Roy F. Baumeister, PhD, Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida
Bianca Beersma, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Jennifer Berdahl, PhD, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Monica Biernat, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas
Irene V. Blair, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado
Jim Blascovich, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, California
Marilynn B. Brewer, PhD, Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
Pablo Briñol, PhD, Department of Social Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Linnda R. Caporael, PhD, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, Troy, New York
Chi-yue Chiu, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign,
Gerald L. Clore, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia
Philip R. Costanzo, PhD, Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
David De Cremer, PhD, Department of Economic and Social Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg,
The Netherlands
Carsten K. W. De Dreu, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Roland Deutsch, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
David Dunning, PhD, Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
Scott Eidelman, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Maine, Orono, Maine

Melissa J. Ferguson, PhD, Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
Klaus Fiedler, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
Ayelet Fishbach, PhD, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Susan T. Fiske, PhD, Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
Jens Förster, PhD, Department of Psychology, International University Bremen, Bremen, Germany
Geoffrey Haddock, PhD, School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales
E. Tory Higgins, PhD, Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, New York
Denis Hilton, PhD, Department of Social Psychology, University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France
Michael A. Hogg, PhD, School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences, Claremont Graduate University,
Claremont, California
Ying-yi Hong, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign,
Gita Venkataramani Johar, PhD, Department of Marketing, Columbia University Business School,
Columbia University, New York, New York
Eric J. Johnson, PhD, Department of Marketing, Columbia University Business School, Columbia
University, New York, New York
Neil P. Jones, MA, Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
John T. Jost, PhD, Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York
Norbert L. Kerr, PhD, Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
Arie W. Kruglanski, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland
John M. Levine, PhD, Department of Psychology and Learning Research and Development Center,
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Nira Liberman, PhD, Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
Gregory R. Maio, PhD, School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales
Amy Noll McLean, MA, Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Kari A. Merrill, PhD, Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Mario Mikulincer, PhD, Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Gordon B. Moskowitz, PhD, Department of Psychology, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Brian A. Nosek, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia
Andrzej Nowak, PhD, Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, and
Department of Psychology, Warsaw University, Warsaw, Poland
Kevin N. Ochsner, PhD, Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, New York
Allen M. Omoto, PhD, School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences, Claremont Graduate University,
Claremont, California
Daphna Oyserman, PhD, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Richard E. Petty, PhD, Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
Michel Tuan Pham, PhD, Department of Marketing, Columbia University Business School, Columbia
University, New York, New York
Thane S. Pittman, PhD, Department of Psychology, Colby College, Waterville, Maine
Jo-Ellen Pozner, PhD, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
Neal J. Roese, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign,
Alexander J. Rothman, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Peter Salovey, PhD, Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut



Brandon J. Schmeichel, PhD, Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
Norbert Schwarz, DrPhil, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Mark D. Seery, PhD, Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York
Gün R. Semin, PhD, Royal Netherlands Academy for Arts and Sciences, Free University, Amsterdam,
Eldar Shafir, PhD, Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
Phillip R. Shaver, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, California
Jeffrey W. Sherman, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, California
David Sleeth-Keppler, PhD, Department of Psychology, Winthrop University, Rock Hill, South Carolina
Mark Snyder, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Wolfgang Steinel, PhD, Department of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Elena Stephan, PhD, School of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom
Fritz Strack, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
Timothy J. Strauman, PhD, Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Philip E. Tetlock, PhD, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, California
Leigh Thompson, PhD, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
Zakary L. Tormala, PhD, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University,
Bloomington, Indiana
Yaacov Trope, PhD, Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York
Tom R. Tyler, PhD, Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York
Robin R. Vallacher, PhD, Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida
Eric Van Dijk, PhD, Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden,
The Netherlands
Gerben A. Van Kleef, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Paul A. M. Van Lange, PhD, Department of Social Psychology, Free University, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Mark Van Vugt, PhD, Department of Psychology, Keynes College, University of Kent at Canterbury, Kent,
United Kingdom
Kathleen D. Vohs, PhD, Department of Marketing, Carlson School of Management, University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Duane T. Wegener, PhD, Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
Robert S. Wyer, Jr., PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign,
Champaign, Illinois
Kate R. Zeigler, BA, Department of Psychology, Colby College, Waterville, Maine



More than 10 years have gone by since the first edition of Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles
made its appearance. It has been an exciting decade for social psychology, with dynamic developments transforming the conceptual and empirical landscape of our field. New topics and principles
have been discovered and vigorously explored. Classic issues have been approached from novel vantage points and via new methodologies.Young generations of social psychologists have emerged
whose work has ushered in fresh, often boldly irreverent, perspectives on traditional issues. And,
amidst all the excitement of progress, along with the strong winds of scientific change that have been
blowing, some fundamental constancies have not only remained but have become increasingly rich in
their implications. The rigor of social psychological research and the self-critical attitude that has become our stock in trade have continued to characterize our work. Another constant presence that we
editors have certainly felt has been the need to take stock of the teeming, positively accelerated research activity in our field, and to clarify to ourselves what principles of social behavior seem to
emerge out of the fast-flowing stream of effects, phenomena, and results that our research endeavors
bring forth. Accordingly, the aim of the second edition of our handbook has been to capture the unfolding shifts in ways and means of social psychological research and to distill to the extent possible
the principles of human social behavior that lurk beneath the surface of our manifold empirical observations.
Whereas the emphasis on principles is what ties the present edition of the handbook to its predecessor, the present contents, as well as the contributors, were unconstrained by their earlier counterparts. Of the 41 topics in the present handbook only 14 were represented in the previous volume. And
of the 81 contributors to the present handbook only 10 contributed to the former project. In part, that
is because the 1996 volume left out some research endeavors that were only beginning at that moment
and that now have actualized their potential, having matured to full-fledged areas of active inquiry. In
such a category belong the topics of “goals,” “social metacognition,” “the role of impulse,” “information ecology,” and “dynamic systems approach” or “social cognitive neuroscience.” Other topics,
though by no means novel historically, had been neglected by social psychologists for a period but
now appear with a fresh impetus and with the benefits of theoretical and methodological developments that have visited our field in the meantime. In the latter category belong such topics as “value,”
“social power,” “basic human needs,” and “psychological distance.”



To the extent that our choice of topics reflects the ongoing research activities in the field, it is apparent that the cognitive approach continues to grow as a significant presence in social psychology.
Twelve contributions reflect this perspective—more than any other category. This strong showing is
indicative of the richness and diversity of social psychological topics approached these days from the
cognitive perspective. Still, the personal motivational emphasis continues to grow as well, suggesting
its fruitfulness and utility for understanding social psychological phenomena.
A significant innovation in the present edition is the inclusion of chapters dealing with the applications of social psychology to a variety of applied domains such as “health behavior,” “clinical psychology,” “organizational behavior,” “politics,” “marketing,” “law and the justice system,” and “social action.” Indeed, it is encouraging to witness how useful and influential social psychological principles
have been across wide swaths of practical domains, attesting once again to the wisdom of Kurt Lewin’s
famous dictum that “there is nothing as useful [to applied concerns] as a good theory”—good theoretical social psychological principles, that is.
As in the prior edition of our handbook, all our contributors were asked to orient their discussions
toward principles and issues rather than toward a detailed examination of specific studies. Indeed, it is
our impression that they have done so quite admirably, tempered by the degree to which clear principles or issues were naturally emerging in the specific domains being reviewed. At least in spirit, then,
the quest for social psychological principles was apparent in all our varied contributions. We feel and
hope that such a quest will offer valuable blueprints to interested students and researchers, indicating
where the field is at the moment, and where it needs to go to gain the kinds of insight that would make
a difference to science and society. In this sense, then, we are pleased to offer our readers a handbook
that holds a mirror to social psychology as we have begun our voyage into the 21st century and that reflects the state of our discipline and its exciting research directions.



1. Evolutionary Theory for Social and Cultural Psychology


Linnda R. Caporael

2. Visceral and Somatic Indexes of Social Psychological Constructs:
History, Principles, Propositions, and Case Studies


Jim Blascovich and Mark D. Seery

3. Social Cognitive Neuroscience: Historical Development, Core Principles,
and Future Promise


Kevin N. Ochsner

4. Prediction: The Inside View


David Dunning

5. Expectancy


Neal J. Roese and Jeffrey W. Sherman

6. The Principles of Social Judgment


Arie W. Kruglanski and David Sleeth-Keppler

7. Automatic Thought


Susan M. Andersen, Gordon B. Moskowitz, Irene V. Blair, and Brian A. Nosek

8. Information Ecology and the Explanation of Social Cognition and Behavior


Klaus Fiedler

9. Knowledge Activation


Jens Förster and Nira Liberman



10. Causal Explanation: From Social Perception
to Knowledge-Based Causal Attribution


Denis Hilton

11. The Role of Metacognition in Social Judgment


Richard E. Petty, Pablo Briñol, Zakary L. Tormala, and Duane T. Wegener

12. Principles of Mental Representation


Robert S. Wyer, Jr.

13. Standards


Monica Biernat and Scott Eidelman

14. Decisions Constructed Locally: Some Fundamental Principles of the Psychology
of Decision Making


Eldar Shafir

15. Psychological Distance


Nira Liberman, Yaacov Trope, and Elena Stephan

16. Feelings and Phenomenal Experiences


Norbert Schwarz and Gerald L. Clore

17. The Role of Impulse in Social Behavior


Fritz Strack and Roland Deutsch

18. Social Identity and Self-Regulation


Daphna Oyserman

19. Value


E. Tory Higgins

20. Basic Human Needs


Thane S. Pittman and Kate R. Zeigler

21. The Goal Construct in Social Psychology


Ayelet Fishbach and Melissa J. Ferguson

22. Self-Regulation and the Executive Function: The Self as Controlling Agent


Roy F. Baumeister, Brandon J. Schmeichel, and Kathleen D. Vohs

23. Self-Interest and Beyond: Basic Principles of Social Interaction


Paul A. M. Van Lange, David De Cremer, Eric Van Dijk, and Mark Van Vugt

24. Attitude Change


Gregory R. Maio and Geoffrey Haddock

25. Foundations of Interpersonal Trust


Jeffry A. Simpson

26. The Psychology of Negotiation: Principles and Basic Processes


Carsten K. W. De Dreu, Bianca Beersma, Wolfgang Steinel, and Gerben A. Van Kleef

27. Grounding Communication: Synchrony


Gün R. Semin

28. Attachment Theory and Research: Core Concepts, Basic Principles,
Conceptual Bridges
Phillip R. Shaver and Mario Mikulincer



29. Social Power



Susan T. Fiske and Jennifer Berdahl

30. The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations: Social Categorization,
Ingroup Bias, and Outgroup Prejudice


Marilynn B. Brewer

31. Social Psychology of Leadership


Michael A. Hogg

32. Dynamical Social Psychology: Finding Order in the Flow of Human Experience


Robin R. Vallacher and Andrzej Nowak

33. Inclusion and Exclusion: Implications for Group Processes


John M. Levine and Norbert L. Kerr

34. Cultural Processes: Basic Principles


Chi-yue Chiu and Ying-yi Hong

35. Psychology and the Law: Reconciling Normative and Descriptive Accounts
of Social Justice and System Legitimacy


Tom R. Tyler and John T. Jost

36. The Reciprocal Relation between Principles and Practice:
Social Psychology and Health Behavior


Alexander J. Rothman and Peter Salovey

37. Contributions of Social Psychology to Clinical Psychology:
Three Views of a Research Frontier


Timothy J. Strauman, Philip R. Costanzo, Neil P. Jones, Amy Noll
McLean, and Kari A. Merrill

38. Consumer Behavior and Marketing


Eric J. Johnson, Michel Tuan Pham, and Gita Venkataramani Johar

39. Psychology and Politics: The Challenges of Integrating Levels
of Analysis in Social Science


Philip E. Tetlock

40. Organizational Behavior


Leigh Thompson and Jo-Ellen Pozner

41. Social Action


Mark Snyder and Allen M. Omoto

Author Index


Subject Index




for Social and Cultural Psychology


Evolutionary Theory
for Social and Cultural Psychology

Boyd, & Fehr, 2003) and anthropology (Henrich et al.,
2005), as well as in social psychology (Baumeister &
Leary, 1995; Sedikides & Skowronski, 1997; Simpson,
Schaller, & Kenrick, 2006).
This chapter aims to expand such approaches by drawing on multilevel selection theory, which offers a framework more appropriate than genes for psychological levels of analysis. Coordination, rather than the evolution of
biological altruism (genetic self-sacrifice), is the central
problem of a human psychology informed by biology
and culture (Brewer & Caporael, 2006a; Caporael &
Baron, 1997; Kameda & Tindale, 2006). Coordination refers to the skillful integration of diverse elements into a
harmonious operation. This could mean, literally, a surgical operation, with its diverse artifacts, human skills,
body movements, and the plan for the surgery. However,
a broad range of human activities involves coordination
from knowledge creation to walking down an urban
street, attending a dinner party, or training a dog. Similarly, exploitation, intergroup conflict, and coalition formation presuppose highly developed coordination skills.
While there is a sense in which all coordination benefits
“selfish genes,” a genetic level of explanation skips over
the psychological and social processes that compose human cognition and behavior.
The following sections offer an evolutionary framework drawing on the implications of multilevel evolutionary theory. An expanded evolutionary theory has a crucial advantage in the human sciences: It enables us to
point at recurrence without getting embroiled in nature–
nurture controversies. A vocabulary for the repeated as-

Humans are a fundamentally social species. They are unable to reproduce and survive to reproductive age without a group. They lack natural defenses such as slashing
canines, bodily armor, or fleetness of foot; they have an
extended infancy followed by years of further development before they reach reproductive maturity. Many of
the evolved characteristics that have permitted humans
to adapt to a wide range of physical environments, such
as omnivory and tool making, create dependence on collective knowledge and cooperative information sharing among individuals and between generations. Humans are an obligately interdependent species (Brewer &
Caporael, 2006a; Caporael & Brewer, 1995). Our evolution is a product of the coevolution of genetic endowment, social structure, and culture (Boyd & Richerson,
1985; Caporael, 2001a; Fiske, 2000; Janicki, 1998; Li,
2003; Mesoudi, Whiten, & Laland, 2006).
The dominant metaphor in the human sciences, “selfish gene theory” (Dawkins, 1976) or the “gene’s-eye view”
of evolution, has limited resources to theorize groups
and the consequences of group living for the human
mind. Human sociality is largely conceived in terms of
Machiavellian intelligence, deception, exploitation, and
coalition formation for intergroup conflict (Alexander,
1989; Byrne & Whiten, 1988; Dawkins, 1976; Flinn,
Geary, & Ward, 2005), primarily because the gene’s-eye
view uses familiar economic explanations tied to a genetic currency that cannot be cashed out. This approach
can still broaden our understanding of human cooperation, and a movement to do so is under way in a number
of related disciplines such as economics (Gintis, Bowles,



sembly of diverse elements does not require making
unsupportable claims about specific genetically based adaptations. Following the evolutionary framework is a cursory review of current knowledge about the “ancestral
environment.” In view of that research, drawn primarily
from paleoanthropology, I propose a model of core configurations in face-to-face groups as the selective environment of uniquely human mental systems and the reorganization of earlier evolved “building blocks.” If the model
is valid, we should expect human mental systems to correlate with core configurations. We should also expect
that capabilities specialized for specific configurations
can be extended and recombined for novel behavior and
situations, including life in the modern world.
Many psychologists will find a fit between their research and the core configurations model (Caporael,
1997). An important advantage of the model over
other adaptationist approaches (Andrews, Gangestad, &
Matthews, 2002; Schmitt & Pilcher, 2004) is that it can enable greater precision in psychological theory. One could
argue not only that some particular feature is functional
but also that it is functional with respect to particular
configurations of structure and activity. The model also
has the connective tissue to extend the scope of psychological theory and research. Brewer and Caporael
(Brewer, 1997; Brewer & Caporael, 2006b; Caporael,
2001b) have illustrated such integration and extension
for research and theory on social identity. Finally, the
model rejects the traditional reductionist view of biology
as the basis for psychology, which in turn is the basis
for culture. These three arenas are more reasonably
viewed as coconstructive in human evolution. Human
evolution—and human psychology—is mediated by artifacts and situated in sociohistorical contexts (Cole, 1996,
1997). An interesting result of such coconstruction is
that it is human nature to invent human nature, most visibly
in terms of locally distinctive folk psychologies (Lillard,
1998). The researcher’s job is to understand how humans
invent and coordinate mind and activity. Analytically,
our three arenas–biology, psychology, and culture—must
lean on each other for validation, correction, and inspiration.
In short, this chapter is broadly synthetic. It draws on
diverse disciplines far from psychology for a generalized
framework constructed with the conviction that social
and cultural psychology have a great deal to give back to
the evolutionary efforts to understand humankind in
other disciplines (Brewer, 2004, 2005).
The gene’s-eye view of evolution is based on a technical
definition drawn from population genetics—changes in
the frequency of alleles (genes) in a population. The major goal of the gene’s-eye view of human evolution is
to identify adaptations—gene-based traits that evolved
through a process of natural selection in the evolutionary
past. To use the gene’s-eye view of evolution in any scientifically respectable way, psychologists would have
to shoulder certain “burdens of proof” from biology

(Lloyd, 1999). These include specifying a well-defined
trait, eliminating other explanations for the trait such as
genetic drift, developmental constraints, correlated
traits, and, in the case of humans, cultural explanations.
The most critical evidence, however, is the demonstration that variations in the phenotypical trait are correlated with variations in reproductive or genetic fitness.
Although biologists have a variety of methods for determining such covariation, few are practically or ethically
possible with humans, and the most successful cases have
been made for physiological characteristics such as sickle
cell anemia or lactose intolerance (Durham, 1976). Demonstrating covariation between a human psychological
trait and fitness would also be a logical challenge.
Certainly one major difficulty in the population geneticists’ view of Darwinism is that it has little to say about development, environment, or culture. It lacks the theoretical resources to engage psychology because the gene’seye view works below the level of the organism. Its generality is such that it works equally well for oysters, ants,
birds, and humans because it is about changes in gene
frequencies. Crucially, it tells us little about human (or
oyster, ant, and bird) phenotypes in the absence of what
we already know or think we know about them. Evolution then becomes an explanatory project (Smith, 2006)
that might add another layer of understanding (DeKay &
Buss, 1992), but could fulfill little in the way of Darwin’s
revolutionary promise of a new foundation for psychology or light on human origins. Moreover, the gene’s-eye
view is blind to the distinction between social and asocial
species, a critical distinction for hypothesizing sociality at
the phenotypical level (Brewer, 2004; Caporael, Dawes,
Orbell, & van de Kragt, 1989). This is not to say that the
gene’s-eye view of evolution is false; merely that for Darwinism to be productive in psychology, we need an expanded view of evolution appropriate to our current levels of analysis.
Multilevel Selection Theory

In 1987, evolutionary biologist Leo Buss published a
groundbreaking book, The Evolution of Individuality. Evolutionists going back to Darwin had recognized that
selection could occur at different levels of the biological
hierarchy wherever there was heritable variation and differential replication (Brandon, 1990; Buss, 1987; Campbell, 1974; Gould, 1980; Wilson & Sober, 1994). What
the gene’s-eye view overlooked (or rejected [Dawkins,
1982]) was that levels of biological hierarchy—
chromosomes, cells, and multicellular individuality—also
had to evolve. Buss’s (1987) contribution was to detail the
evolution of multicellularity, that is, how individuals
composed of reproductive gametes and nonreproductive somatic cells that “gave up” reproduction could
This work ushered in a new era in biological theory.
Levels of biological hierarchy roughly represent major
transitions in the evolution of life on earth, especially
in the way that information is stored and transmitted (Maynard Smith & Szathmáry, 1995; Szathmáry &
Maynard Smith, 1995). They are also represented in the

Evolutionary Theory for Social and Cultural Psychology

bodies of multicellular organisms (Buss, 1987) and serve
as rough guides to levels of analysis. The major characteristics of such transitions are that entities that were capable of independent reproduction prior to the transition
are able to reproduce afterward only as part of a larger
unit. Cellular mitochondria, for example, are believed to
have been independent cellular organisms that continue
to have their own DNA lineage. Selection on multiple levels is associated with increased task specialization (energy
production by mitochondria in the cell) and new forms
of information relevant to evolution and development
(e.g., the genetic code, sexual reproduction, epigenetic
inheritance, and human language) (Jablonka & Lamb,
2005; Szathmáry & Maynard Smith, 1995). At each level,
the environment for an entity is the next level, which can
also have downward causal effects (Campbell, 1974). For
example, the environment for genes is the cell, and cellular products influence which part of the gene will be active. Humans, as individuals and as groups, constitute
two levels of biological organization of major interest to
social and cultural psychologists.
All such transitions pose the same “free-rider” question. What prevents lower-level entities from “defecting”
and disrupting higher-level organization? The giving up
of reproduction can be explained in terms of genetic selfinterest. But far more predictive power is gained from
considering conflicts and synchronies over different levels of organization, where there are different types of
payoffs, obstacles, path dependencies, and locked-in systems (Caporael, 2003). Sex, for example, is ubiquitous,
not for the single reason of benefiting the genes but because it is multiply synchronous, selected at the genic,
cellular, individual, and group levels (Buss, 1987, p. 181,
fn). What once seemed to be competing alternative explanations for the evolution of sex, taken together, are
the discovery of synchrony over different levels of organization. In addition to synchrony, we should expect conflict among levels as well. Cancer is one example: A cell
lineage reproduces itself at a cost to the organism. In effect, it has defected, although at a cost to itself in the end.
Multilevel evolutionary theory offered insights for an
evolutionary theory at a psychological level of analysis.
First, it provided a view of evolutionary processes as hierarchically structured; the process of selection is situated,
relational, and embodied in specific contexts (Eldredge &
Grene, 1992; Endler, 1986). The situated environment
for genes is the cellular machinery with which DNA and
its products interact. The situated environment for humans is the face-to-face group, through which they are
able to interact with the habitat. Stressing “situatedness”
in a context focused on selection as the statistical result
of relations between entity and ecology (Caporael &
Baron, 1997; Endler, 1986) in place of the anthropomorphic metaphor of selection favoring a trait, a locution
that obscures the conditions from which selection may
result. To take a psychological example, there is no basis
for assuming, as the trait view implies, that a dominant
individual will be so across interactions. An individual
may act socially dominant in a dyad but not in a group of
five people working on a shared problem. The situated
context of behavior is reliably different, and the func-


tional relation between dominant behavior and the
context may well differ, too (Mischel & Shoda, 1995).
Functional relations refer loosely to the fit or match between entity and context in achieving certain ends (e.g.,
movement and nutrition). The focus on relations also
opened the door to artifacts as part of the relation. In humans (and some other animals; Dawkins, 1982) functional relations can be achieved artificially. Humans can
have disabilities that in other species would be terminal,
but they can also use “artificial traits” (e.g., wheelchairs,
canes, and eyeglasses) to achieve basic functional relationships such as locomotion or vision. The functional relations of an organism and environment are also embodied, that is, available to empirical investigation (Andrews
et al., 2002; Caporael & Baron, 1997; Levins & Lewontin,
Multilevel evolutionary theory also accommodates
groups as a level of organization. Darwin (1871/1981)
and later Williams (1966; whose book is an extended argument against group selection and for the logic of costs
and benefits accruing to the gene) believed that humans
might have traits resulting from group selection and informally worked out the argument. However, Williams’s
(1966) book might have been too successful. By the early
1970s, group selection was not merely dropped; it was
passionately damned (Pollock, 1989). Unfortunately, psychologists have followed suit, although Brewer and
Caporael (2006a) have urged reconsideration. Wilson
and Sober (Sober & Wilson, 1998; Wilson & Sober, 1994)
formally worked out the argument for the evolution of
“altruistic genes” from the perspective of multilevel selection.
Briefly, subgroups (“trait groups”) of a larger group
vary in the proportion of altruists and nonaltruists. Some
groups will have low ratios of altruists to nonaltruists;
other groups will have high ratios. Within all the groups,
the nonaltruists increase relative to the altruists. However, if groups with higher proportions of altruists also
produce more offspring, then the total number of altruists in the global population will increase when groups
disperse and form new groups. In other words, withingroup selection favors the evolution of self-interest
whereas between-group selection favors the evolution of
cooperation (because altruists benefit themselves as well
as others). The important difference between a gene’seye view of altruism and the multilevel evolutionary view
is really in the next step. The selfish gene theorist seeks
an explanation in terms of genetic self-interest. The multilevel theorist looks further for the evolution of individual mechanisms for developing and maintaining group
memberships and group-level mechanisms for enforcing
groupish behavior in the face of individualism. (Some
readers may want to interpret the distinction as a parallel to the distinction between ultimate evolutionary
causes and proximate causes. However, this dichotomy is
insufficient. The ultimate cause will typically be an explanation about how some particular piece of behavior benefits the genes of an individual. The proximate explanation is typically about the stimulus that activates an
adaptation [e.g., dust or some other stimulus causes the
sneeze] rather than about the mechanism that responds



to the stimulus, which presumably has an evolutionary
history [Kitcher, 1985].)
Repeated Assembly

One of the difficulties of evolutionary language is that it
lacks a good vocabulary for waffling. An adaptationist vocabulary makes it impossible to avoid sounding like a genetic determinist. By definition, calling a trait an adaptation is a commitment to genes as a primary explanation
of its recurrence and operation. Even for most descriptions of gene–environment interactionism, the possible
alternatives for the trait are in the gene, and the environment merely fills gaps in “open programs,” “shapes” innate proclivities, or “shunts” behavior from one option
to another (Buss, 1999; Crawford & Anderson, 1989;
Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). One reason social and cultural psychologists have been reluctant to turn to evolutionary theory is an uneasiness about making genetic
claims when they are not biologists. At the same time, the
phenomenon of recurrence, between generations and
across cultures, is one of the appeals of an evolutionary
Multilevel selection helps to solve this problem. Expanding neo-Darwinism calls attention to organisms’
interaction with the environment and to phenotypical
development. Phenotypes repeatedly assemble generation after generation from constructive interactions
among multiple recurrent resources, including genes,
cellular machinery, social resources, and the reliable
presence of critical features of the habitat, from caregivers to oxygen in the air (Gottlieb, 2002; Lickliter &
Honeycutt, 2003; Oyama, 1985). As a result, the concept
of heritability is expanded to include a range of resources
that mediate phenotypical outcomes (Cole, 1996;
Griffiths & Gray, 1994). As humans, we inherit genes, but
also attitudes, practices, place, nationality, expectations
for behavior, and so forth. There may be change (e.g., in
traditions) within lifetimes, but this simply indicates low
reliability of recurrence. Heritability itself is thus no indicator of the universality, fixity, or difficulty of changing
organism–environment relations.
A vocabulary of repeated assembly (Caporael, 2003)
points to recurrences that we can observe—recurrences
from generation to generation as well as recurrence
across cultures. Not only do organisms repeatedly assemble, but so also do the products of organisms, including
human ideas, artifacts, and cultural practices (Dawkins,
1982). Repeated assembly enables us to escape the dichotomy of biology and culture, nature and nurture,
genes and environment; it does not require us to make
commitments about genes in the absence of hard evidence; and it is consistent with the Darwinian model of
selection, variation, and retention. More specifically, repeated assemblies are recurrent entity–environment relations composed of hierarchically organized, heterogeneous components having differing temporal scales and
cycles of replication (Caporael, 2003). That description is
quite a mouthful: The following discussion is meant to
provide a brief sense of the nature of repeated assemblies.

Recurrence is fairly obvious, although we are most interested in a particular kind of recurrence, that which is
recursive, where the seeds of the next cycle are part of a
current cycle. Entity–environment relations are, at the
psychological level, organism–environment relations,
where the environment may be features of the physical
habitat or configurations of conspecific groupings. Hierarchical organization (actually, heterarchical because
causal effects may be downward and upward) is built into
the evolving, jury-rigged structure of living organisms.
Heterogeneous components refer to the multiple resources that compose a repeated assembly, although
which resources are the objects of research depends on
the focus and perspective of the research question. Components can be heterogeneous partly because they recur
over different time scales. DNA recurs over macroevolutionary time; at the other extreme, social rituals can
rise and fall within a lifetime (affecting phenotype, but
having no systematic selective effects).
As an example, consider the fertilized egg or zygote. A
zygote is composed of multiple resources. There are two
sources of DNA from the gametes, centrosomes from the
sperm, maternal information in the egg cell, and an appropriate setting in the body. If all these resources are in
the right place at the right time, a zygote automatically results. There is no genetic program; in fact, the genes are
inactive during the first few cell divisions of the fertilized
egg. The difference that matters for the differentiation of
structure and specialization of tissue in the first cell divisions is time and space—recall, all DNA in cells are the
same. Cells in the zygote adhere to each other, the lose
adhesion, and migrate to different regions. The cellular
activity influences genetic activity, which in turn affects
cellular activity.
The zygote is a repeated assembly, and like other
repeated assemblies, it is inherently interactionist. It
emerges from the constructive interaction of genes, temporal and spatial relations, and the changing cellular
machinery. Its continued development and existence
depends on the reliable recurrence of appropriate
contexts—from cellular machinery to social events to regularities in the habitat to persistent resources such as
gravity and atmosphere (Griffiths & Gray, 1994). Genes
are always part of the repeated assembly of an organism,
but so also (in the human case) are group memberships,
customs, artifacts, learned skills, languages, and worldviews (see Figure 1.1). These resources may vary wildly in
their specifics but are nevertheless critical to human survival and reproduction.
Within historical, ecological, and developmental constraints, repeated assemblies are almost infinitely variable. Change in any repeating component of an assembly, whether genetic or epigenetic, can increase or
decrease the probability of future assembly. This is because repeated assemblies are concretely situated in specific flows of interaction. The situatedness of activity
makes the unit of analysis the organism-in-setting, where
the focus is on the relation between entity and context,
or person and setting. To illustrate the variability of concretely situated activity, consider any everyday routinized
activity—say going to a supermarket (Lave, 1988). The su-

Evolutionary Theory for Social and Cultural Psychology

FIGURE 1.1. Recurring multiple resources having different
scales of time contribute to the repeated assembly of unique individuals. Resources (which are usually repeated assemblies
themselves) differ in their scale, meaning how long they have
been repeated (e.g., the DNA code has been repeated far longer than any particular cultural resource), and their cycles of

permarket has a more or less invariant set of practices
and structure of shelves, aisles, and grouping of products. Yet, despite the routine, each trip is unique. The
unit of analysis is the pattern of the assembly (shopping),
until some feature that makes the pattern unique is
picked out. Repeated assemblies are like Eleanor Rosch’s
(1977) prototypical categories. They have components
with varying degrees of membership. Some components,
however, will be more prototypical or central than others.
Although some traits of organisms do inspire marvel
for their complexity of design and are designated as adaptations, evolutionary theory is ultimately a theory
about the history of use and not design (Millikan, 1984).
The same is true for repeated assemblies. Some recur because in the past, some components, in some specific relation to their contexts, contributed to the replication of
the assembly. Specialized functions describe what an assembly is “supposed to do” under historically ideal conditions. (This is not to say that they cannot serve other functions as well.) For example, a function of sperm is to
fertilize an egg cell, even though ova are rare in the world
of sperm and most fail to fulfill their function. Nevertheless, because some ancestor sperm did find and fertilize
ova, sperm are repeatedly assembled. Historically ideal
conditions are not necessarily statistically average or
modal conditions.
Specialized functions may be quite awkward, inefficient, and clumsy, far from optimal design, and even constrain the spread of better designs should they appear.
They reflect the meandering path dependencies that occur in history. A cultural example of the result of such
path dependencies is the QWERTY keyboard. Its design
originated as a way of fitting the striking mechanisms for
the keys into the machine to reduce jamming by slowing
down fast typists (e.g., by separating TH). As the machine
constraints were altered, other keyboard designs with
better ergonomic features for users were developed.
However, these better designs were unable to invade the
keyboard niche. We know (or are able to know) much
more about the recent past than the ancestral past, which
serves as a caution. Claiming that a particular psychological mechanism or process has a specialized function de-


pends on our best guesses about history. All things considered, we may be more like the QWERTY keyboard
than the more optimally designed Dvorak layout.
Some repeated assemblies have no function; they are
like the superstitious behavior of Skinner’s circling pigeons. Some can result from illusory contingencies or
once useful behavior. Other repeated assemblies, including biological adaptations, may have had a function at
one time but become dissociated from it. Langer (1989)
tells the story of a woman who would always cut a slice off
the end of a roast before placing it in the oven. To make a
long story short, the woman said she did this because her
mother did it; mother said she did it because her mother
did it; and grandmother did it because the pan she used
for roasting was too small to accommodate the whole
piece of meat. Of course, such dissociations can occur in
evolutionary time (then they are vestiges) or, as Boyd and
Richerson (1985) argue, in cultural–historical time, resulting in practices that have no function or are even
Repeated assemblies can be characterized in terms of
scales of time (i.e., persistence, cycles, and the frequency
of repetition). Some components, such as the DNA code,
have been parts of repeated assemblies since the beginning of life. Other components, such as a cultural environment, have a temporal scale measured in historical
terms. Still others recur on the scale of a lifetime. “In the
past” does not necessarily refer to a dichotomy between
the Pleistocene and the urban present. It may refer to
time measured in terms of ontogeny (in “habits of a lifetime”), to cultural–historical time (as in “2,000 years of
Western civilization”), or to geological–evolutionary
time (the temporal scale of DNA). Paradoxically, time expands the notion of heritability; we inherit genes but also
attitudes, practices, place, nationality, expectations for
behavior, and so forth. Assemblies may persist in evolutionary time, among Americans, in the Smith family, or
in J. Smith. A more extensive discussion of reproduction,
development, and culture on different scales is in
Wimsatt and Griesemer (in press).
What is not a repeated assembly? The answer often
depends on level of analysis and perspective. Every
individual—even one of a monozygotic twin set—is
unique. No twin has precisely the same experiences as
the other. However, organisms in general are repeatedly
assembled. Often the product of a repeated assembly
with specialized functions is unique. For example, the
processes involved in the healing of wounds are repeated
assemblies in organisms. However, the specific scars that
result are the unique results of an individual’s history.
By definition, errors would not be repeated assemblies. Despite considerable redundancy in biological systems, errors do occur in development and produce organisms unable to survive or reproduce. Hence, their
lineages cease to repeatedly assemble. At first glance, it
seems that there should be few errors that repeatedly assemble in artifactual systems because these can be corrected when discovered. However, the poor design of artifacts can cause undesirable outcomes to repeatedly
assemble because of ignorance or even outright deceit,
as in the cases of the Ford Pinto’s faulty gas tank and the



Dalkon shield. As in biology, complex, poor design can
persist, although the mechanisms will be clearly and identifiably different from those sustaining artifacts.
An adaptive response to a novel event may be unique;
but even though it is useful, it may fail to repeatedly assemble. In his examination of “cognition in the wild,”
Hutchins (1996) observed the failure of a ship’s navigational systems. Through a process of trial and error, two
men eventually solved the problem of plotting location;
however, the innovation was not saved in the cultural system. The situation for using the solution again is rare because the failure of redundant navigational systems is
Rethinking Evolution, Sociality, and Psychology

An expanded evolutionary theory immediately generates
a set of interesting predictions and guidelines. Because
of group selection and downward causation, we should
expect the evolution of a variety of specialized processes
for coordination among group members. (Unlike cooperation, coordination does not necessarily imply
prosocial behavior—nor does it exclude it.) Some coordinating processes will have to do with motor coordination
(Boinski & Garber, 2000), interactional synchrony
(Bernieri, Davis, Robert, & Knee, 1994), and other phenomena related to rhythmicity, coordination, and body
movement. Research in automaticity may also point to
another system or set of related systems of general social
coordination. For example, in a well-known study by
Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996), priming students with
words such as Florida evoked a stereotype of the elderly
that reduced the speed of students walking down a hallway compared to students who did not receive the prime.
The phenomenon of stereotype threat, when high performance is lowered when a group stereotype is made salient, illustrates tacit control of behavior (Fiske, 1993;
Steele & Aronson, 2003). Such research suggests the
types of mechanisms that function as a coordinated/coordinating stream of behavior.
Multilevel selection also suggests that there should be
conflicting individual and social motives that result from
selection on those levels. Humans are ambivalently social
because both individual and group levels are under selection. The psychology of optimal distinctiveness and
group-oriented motivations (Brewer, 1991; Brewer &
Roccas, 2001) makes a great deal of sense as a regulator
of individual and groupish behavior.
The emphasis on selection arising from relations between organism and environment maps to a growing emphasis in cognitive science on embodiment and adaptive
responding to the environment (Agre, 1997; Clark, 1997;
Hendriks-Jansen, 1996), the evolution and operation of
socially situated cognition (Caporael, 1995; Smith &
Semin, 2004), and a revival and reassessment of Gibson’s
(1979) concept of affordances (Norman, 1990; Zebrowitz
& Montepare, 2006; Zhang & Patel, 2006). Dijksterhuis
and Bargh (2001) posit a “perception–behavior expressway” that might also be part of this revival (given further
consideration about the role of representation in cognition and action). Affordances originated in evolutionary

considerations (unlike the computational metaphor) and
bring with them concepts such as attunement and action
boundaries that could deal with humans and their interactions with objects (Fajen & Devaney, 2006; Fajen &
Turvey, 2003; Núñez & Freeman, 1999).
The previous sections established a general warrant for
sociality and sketched an evolutionary approach that is
suitable for psychological levels of analysis. In evolutionary biology, that might be enough. The details about
genotypical variation and selection history of a single species tend to be sparse. The usual assumption is that the
current traits of an organism evolved in the past and are
maintained in the present by stabilizing selection, which
shifts the problem from history to ecology. The field biologist can then demonstrate natural selection through a
variety of methods, including covariation between trait
and reproductive fitness (Rose & Lauder, 1996).
Things are tougher in the human case. We are well
aware from sciences such as geology, climatology, paleoanthropology, and archaeology that the lives of modern
humans are different from what they were before the rise
of urban ultrasociality (Campbell, 1983). One clear consensus is that humans lived as foragers, and another is
that the physical constraints of the body’s evolved interaction with the habitat (e.g., the mechanics of vision or
caloric requirements) would remain the same between
the ineffable past and the present. Not all such characteristics necessarily would be human adaptations. Some
would be adaptations of an ancestral organism (e.g.,
color vision); others would be the result of developmental constraints that arise from highly conserved regulatory genes. Other characteristics of humans that are
adaptive and do show measurable variation, such as reading, are recognized as having appeared so recently as to
not enter into an evolutionary explanation (although
some of the components of reading probably would).
These issues aside (and they are nontrivial), the big question is, what was life like in the evolutionary past, or more
to the point, what was psychology like?
Life in the Pleistocene

Donald Symons (1992) wrote that life in modern industrial societies looks like unplanned evolutionary experiments. In fact, the whole of human evolution looks like
unplanned experiments (Caporael, 2004; Potts, 1998;
Tattersall, 1995). Ancestral populations contracted, expanded, appeared, dispersed and became extinct against
the turbulent background of global climate change. Today some paleoanthropologists recognize as many as 23
species.1 Deep-sea drilling for sediment cores shows dramatic climate changes beginning about 50 million years
ago, when a major cooling phase began leaving the temperatures of today about 12–15° C cooler. This was not a
smooth transition. There were major climate reversals,
the polar ice caps formed, and the Mediterranean Basin
dried up and refilled. Regional climates were affected by

Evolutionary Theory for Social and Cultural Psychology

the Earth’s orbital peculiarities, the advance and retreat
of glacial ice, and geological activity such as volcanoes,
faults, uplifts, and rain shadow. During this period an
enormous variety of Miocene apes became extinct. One
surviving lineage included the common ancestor of
chimpanzees and bipedal apes, including the australopithecines. These were small-brained animals whose locomotor specializations (splayed toes, curved fingers) indicated adaptation to both walking and climbing.
Turbulent climatic change continued through the period
of human evolution, which occurred primarily in glacial
conditions, interspersed with shorter, warmer interglacials (the most recent beginning about 10,000 years
The phylogenetic pattern (a phylogeny is a diagram depicting ancestor–descendant relationships in geological
time) for human evolution is quite unlike the widely depicted image of uphill evolutionary progress that begins
with a knuckle-dragging ancestor. Instead, the pattern
shows branching and overlaps. About 2 million years
ago, as many as five bipedal species may have coexisted,
one (perhaps even one yet to be found) is ancestral to humans. One nonancestral species had an amazingly rapid
30% expansion of the brain in less than 700,000 years, an
event that would occur again in the Homo lineage, between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, when brain size approximates the modern size, but with considerable variation.
A later rash of lineages, sometimes collectively called
archaic Homo sapiens, ebbed and flowed through Africa
and Eurasia, and eventually Europe. Arguably, all modern humans are descended from a limited population,
perhaps as small as 10,000 breeding individuals of Homo
sapiens that survived a major population crash about
130,000 years ago (Lahr & Foley, 1998). Although there
are important exceptions in Africa, Homo sapiens were
behaviorally (based on artifactual data) indistinguishable
from Neanderthal populations until about 50,000 years
ago (Klein, 1999). Then there is an inexplicable outburst
of modern behavior in art, personal ornamentation, cultural variation in tool use, and the working of materials,
such as shells, previously unseen in the archaeological record. Modern humans eventually replaced the Neanderthals in Europe about 30,000 years ago, spread
through Asia, probably constructed watercraft for several migrations to Australia and crossed the Bering
Strait. Inconceivably, we modern, industrialized humans
overlapped for 75% of our evolutionary history with another intelligent species.
In the view of evolution that sees it as an uphill march
of progress, new stages in human evolution were expected to have greater intelligence and, of course, would
have the latest new tools. That view dropped away when
new techniques for dating materials became available.
Humans were bipedal for approximately 2 million years
before the earliest known stone tools. New tools do not
appear at the same time as new hominins, which makes
sense—tools have to appear within species that already exist (Tattersall, 2000). One way of characterizing ancient
tools is by characteristic modes of production (Foley,
1987). Early artifacts are remarkably stable though time.


The same mode of tool production is used by different
species with little variation and over long distances. The
first tool user, Homo habilis, was essentially an australopithecine with a slightly larger brain, used Mode 1
(Oldowan) choppers and handaxes. Although the form is
refined through time, Mode 1 tools were produced for
over 1 million years and are found from the southern tip
of Africa to the eastern reaches of China to the western
edges of the British Isles.
In Africa, these are eventually replaced with bifaces
(flakes removed from both sides of a stone core). Their
use persisted, again with some refinement, for another
million years. In the Far East, however, Mode 1 tools are
replaced directly by Mode 5 tools, which may be evidence
that Homo sapiens replaced existing Homo erectus populations. In Africa and Europe, the changeover in modes of
production begins to speed up with Mode 3 (Mousterian). These tools are usually associated with largebrained (1,200 cc) hominins,2 especially the Neanderthals. There was a shorter period of production,
about 100,000 years, and a greater variety of form.
Modes 4 and 5 are associated with modern humans, have
a high turnover of different types of tools, none lasting
more than 5,000–10,000 years. Some of this later variability may be attributed to stylistic differences between
groups. Stone transport, diet, hearths, structures and
eventually pigments, ornaments and composite tools
(tools made with two materials, for example, obsidian
flakes set into a wooden haft to make a knife) also appear
in the fossil record. How to relate artifacts in the archeological record to psychological function is unclear,
largely because, with few exceptions (Cole, 1997;
Hutchins, 1996), artifacts have not played a major role in
psychological theories until recently and represent a vast
area for future research.
To sum up, research on the last 3 million years of human evolution indicates shifting habitats, with different
regions responding differently to large-scale climatic
changes. Fragments of populations would become isolated. They might reunite after long periods of time (if
they had not become reproductively isolated); speciate
from the parent population through gradual selection to
a new or changing environment; stay unchanged by following their preferred habitats; or simply become extinct
(Lahr & Foley, 1998). Globally, humans lacked the stable
habitats supporting ever more complex cognitive adaptations. For psychology, the fossil evidence suggests that we
should expect the evolution of small-grained adaptations, more like Lego blocks (Bechtel, 2003; Scher, 2004)
than large-grain, informationally encapsulated adaptations that would require exceedingly long periods of environmental stability for their genetic evolution.
The conventional wisdom since Darwin was that the
lack of natural defenses such as claws and canines meant
that bipedalism implied tools used for defense, and tools
implied intelligence. (It was partly this deeply held assumption that made the Piltdown Hoax so successful for
so long.) Fossil finds of the 1970s overturned the conventional wisdom. “Lucy” (Australopithecus afarensis) lacked
natural and artificial defenses and was bipedal. Whatever
the details, australopithecines must have lived in groups;



in a remarkable find, at least nine adults and four juveniles who may have died at the same time, perhaps in a
flash flood, were unearthed. Group living also formed
the context for the changes between Homo habilis, and
Homo erectus. There was an important shift to hunting,
and higher-quality nutrition may have allowed the redeployment of energy from a large gut to a growing brain
(Aiello & Wells, 2002). There is some evidence of group
buffering (individuals with injuries that would have required support to survive). A reduction in sexual dimorphism appears to be the result of females growing bigger
(Klein, 1999); no data seem to exist as to whether the
change was accompanied by a reduction of male conflicts. Considerable evidence exists for the manufacture,
transport, and use of stone tools and even raw materials.
Presumably stone tool technology was repeatedly assembled and refined in group contexts; however, the sheer
stability, especially of mode of manufacture in earlier
hominin species, is difficult to explain or grasp with our
current psychological understanding. There are also few
fossil data that tell us about social organization, parenting, sexual preferences, mating behavior, division of labor, and so on until quite recently in the archaeological
Some of these questions might be resolved by turning
to the ethnographic literature on hunters and gatherers.
There are certainly some universals, for example, food
sharing (Gurven, 2004) and other behaviors closely tied
to ecology. When these can be connected to material remains, such as a pattern of waste materials from chipping
stone tools (Binford, 1972), ethnoarchaeology offers additional insight about practices in the past. However,
even this approach is not as fruitful as hoped because the
archeological record of hunter–gatherers is itself so variable (Kusimba, 2005). Moreover, the closer foragers
come to issues of keen interest (e.g., sex and gender) to
the early missionaries and anthropologists who first studied their lives, the more bias can be expected from the
data (Leacock, 1981). Later studies of traditional hunter–
gatherer groups are frequently of peoples “tethered” to
water, missions, welfare rations, government posts, agricultural plots of their own or their neighbors, and
sources of cigarettes and alcohol (Kelley, 1995). Finally,
recent research (Henrich et al., 2005) shows that indigenous peoples are surprisingly variable in their
economic choices (measured in structured games)
and frequently fail to choose strategies and outcomes in
the self-interested ways predicted by traditional game
A Minimalist Scenario

The “bones and stones” of the human past provide important negative evidence, in that paleoanthropological
research fails to support the assumptions that most people make about the evolutionary past and, if anything,
should make us wonder where wonderfully detailed
claims about the past do come from. Research by Landau
(1984) and Moser (1998), both anthropologists, suggests
that narrative and imagery have played a long and unrecognized role in scientific and popular conceptions of the

past, and the work by Green and her colleagues on transportation in narrative and imagery may provide the
relevant psychological processes (Green & Brock, 2000;
Green, Strange, & Brock, 2002). For the present, the best
scientific strategy appears to lie in constructing minimalist scenarios that are transparent with respect to their idealized and fictional origins and in apposition to popular
narratives and images. (This strategy is similar to one
common in social psychology, where scientific research
is tacitly in apposition to folk psychology, and may often
raise our “discomfort index” [Fiske, 2003].) Given the
considerable individualism that infuses selfish gene theory, and the undervalued significance of group living as a
selective factor in coordination, focusing on face-to-face
groups in human evolution is a good start (Byrne &
Whiten, 1988; Geary, 2005).
Evolutionists often write as if organisms calculated genetic costs and benefits and made individual choices
about whether or not to group. Nonetheless, most animals are group living (Pulliam & Caraco, 1984), even if
for no other reason than the failure of kin groups to disburse for some part of their life history. However, there
is considerable variability across species in the intensity
of interdependence of group living (Avital & Jablonka,
2000; Boinski & Garber, 2000). Quite often, sociality may
consist of little more than a group of opportunistic and
individualistic cooperators (Norris & Schilt, 1988; Williams, 1966). Schools of fish or herds of fleet deer are aggregate groups. There may be safety in numbers, and the
risks of predation might be spread out among a group of
animals. In some species, individuals that form aggregates are adaptively specialized for knowing when to
group and when to be solitary. Other kinds of groups
cannot break up. The individuals that form such groups
must be part of a group in order to reproduce and survive
to reproductive age. These intensely social groups organize individual efforts, communicate within the group,
have tasks and roles for group members, and definable
boundaries (Brewer, 1997). In extreme cases, such as
wolf packs, naked mole rats, and meerkats (a social mongoose), only a single pair of individuals in the group reproduces, somewhat like the “germ line” of the body.
Other group members (usually relatives) may help care
for the offspring by feeding, guarding, and tutoring them
in hunting skills. Human sociality is nowhere so extreme
as to have a single breeding pair within a group. Nevertheless, human sociality is at the extreme end in that humans are unable to reproduce and survive to reproductive age without a group context. Grouping is an
appropriate starting point for constructing a minimalist
Given their morphology and ecology, the ancestors of
evolving hominins must have survived as groups rather
than as individuals. Finding food, defense from predation, moving across a landscape—these matters of coping
with the physical habitat—would have been largely group
processes that began among the earliest arboreal primates, possibly as a result of changing patterns of dispersal in response to climatic and ecological changes.
Over time, if exploiting a habitat is more successful as a
collective group process than as an aggregate group or

Evolutionary Theory for Social and Cultural Psychology

individual process, then not only would more coordinated groups persist but so also would individuals better
adapted to group living. Because local ecologies limit
group size, the number of “niches” in a group are also
limited, resulting in a feedforward ratchet and group fission when groups become too large to exist on the local
If individual humans cannot survive outside of groups,
then the structural requirements for sustaining groups
create systematic constraints on individual biological and
psychological adaptations. Such downward causation
(Campbell, 1974, 1990b) across system levels operates
whenever structural requirements at higher levels of organization determine or shape some aspects of structure
and function at lower levels. Thus, individual human cognitive systems do not have to be—nor can they be—
fundamentally self-interested under all conditions. Humans are frequently motivated by outcomes of purely
personal value; however, a variety of preconscious, conscious, group-level, and institutional mechanisms curb
self-interest, albeit not always successfully. In the latter instance, when self-interests cannot be curbed, a group itself may disintegrate and be replaced by better coordinated groups.
The result of downward causal processes would be a
shift to face-to-face groups as the selective context for
uniquely human mental systems. Selection within groups
would lead to the evolution of perceptual, affective, and
cognitive processes that support the development and
maintenance of membership in groups (Caporael et al.,
1989). Without a group, the probability of reproduction
and survival to reproductive age is lowered for humans.
To say that humans are a social species is much more
than saying that they aggregate or form alliances for the
mutual exchange of benefits; they are a group-living,
obligately interdependent species.
The psychological implications of just this minimalist
scenario are profound. Rather than individuals simply
perceiving “reality” and then compromising or conforming their different versions, processes of social verification make reality valid, reliable, and objective (Hardin &
Higgins, 1996). However, group-level and individual processes might still conflict. Campbell’s (1990a) reinterpretation of Asch’s conformity studies illustrates how they
might. He argued that these studies should be viewed
in terms of the dependence we have on others for
knowledge. Accordingly, the Asch studies should be seen
as a structural conflict between the respect we have for
each other’s reports (group-level trust) and our duty to
report our observations honestly (individual-level honesty).
So far I have sketched an oversimplified and general
model of downward causation and its consequences for
grouping. There are various dimensions of groups that
can serve as theoretical foci to take a minimalist scenario
further and in different directions. For example,
Rodseth, Wrangham, Harrigan, and Smuts (1991) developed a theory of social structure based on phylogenetic
data about mating patterns. Bugental (2000) and Fiske
(1991) theorized domains of relationships, and Flinn and
colleagues (2005) and Kurzban and Leary (2001), coali-


tion formation. The following scenario differs from these
in that it draws on considerations of body, group size,
and task.
The Evolution of Human Coordination:
Core Group Configurations

The idea of so-called magic numbers for functional subdivisions of groups appears mostly in anthropology (Lee
& DeVore, 1968) but is also mentioned independently in
other literatures (Sale, 1980). Dunbar (1993) identifies
three groupings drawing partly on ethnographic records
of contemporary hunter–gatherers. Conversation
groups of about four individuals evolved as a substitute
for grooming as a means to service social relationships;
“overnight camp groups” or bands with a mean size of
38; and “tribes” with a mean size of 1,150. An intermediate grouping of 150, the predicted group size based on
the covariation between primate group size and neocortical size, is proposed as the cognitive limitation on
the number of relationships an individual can personally
maintain. With the exception of tribes (which are not
face-to-face groups), Dunbar’s groupings approximate
the usual divisions in anthropology.
Two recent reviews of foraging peoples concluded that
there was only support for one consistently recurrent
group size, but these differed, with one approximating a
small work group (Binford, 2001) and the other a small
band (Kelley, 1995). Although there is some variation in
subgroup size and in what subgroupings are called (e.g.,
a four- to six-person group may be a hunting group or a
gossip group), various models and ethnoarchaeological
data (Hassan, 1981) roughly converge on face-to-face
groupings shown in Table 1.1, which adds the dyad as a
subgrouping. What is significant about anthropology’s
magic numbers is that they can map on to considerations
of body and task. Only one person at a time can hold an
infant, and feeding one ensures a specific and constant
view of the human face. About four or five people are the
most that can closely view a small object in the palm of
the hand or examine an animal track on the ground.
Table 1.1, it should be remembered, is an idealized
model, a fiction, doing theoretical service. However, it is
not a complete departure from human possibility. In
their ethnoarchaeological research on the sociospatial
organization and decision-making processes of subarctic
Chipewyan Indians, Jarvenpa and Brumbach (1988)
identified three recurrent spatiotemporal phases of organization: a concentrated summer band of about 300 individuals, winter staging and domestic settlements of 4–10
related families, and, from the latter groups, dispersed
bands of hunters, usually two to three men, but also nuclear families or older husband–wife pairs. In their view,
the decision-making dynamics of subgroupings is implicit structural organization. One implicit “rule” is a sine
qua non for a conjugal pair or nuclear family to ally itself
with any cluster of 20–50 people where they had kin in
order to survive the long frozen winter.
The congruence between subgroup size, body, and
task suggests the hypothesis of four core group configurations as the topography of the selective environment


TABLE 1.1. Core Configurations


Modal tasks

Proper function



Sex, infant interaction with older children
and adults




Foraging, hunting, gathering, direct
interface with habitat

Distributed cognition

Deme (band)


Movement from place to place, general
processing and maintenance, work group

Shared construction of reality (includes
indigenous psychologies), social identity



Seasonal gathering, exchange of
individuals, resources, and information

Stabilizing and standardizing language

Note. From Caporael (1995). Copyright 1995 by Linnda R. Caporael. Reprinted by permission.
Core configurations are a function of both size and task. Except for dyads, these numbers should be considered as modal estimates.

for humans. These are the dyad, task group, deme (or
band), and macrodeme (or macroband), organized as a
nested hierarchy, or demic structure (Hull, 1988). A core
configuration is the joint function of group size and activity. Configurations provide a context for the evolution of
adaptive social cognitive mechanisms. Each group configuration affords functional possibilities and coordination problems that do not exist at any other level. Table
1.1 lists the configurations, along with an approximate
group size, examples of modal tasks for the configuration, and an example of a proper function that could
have evolved given the configuration.
If uniquely human sociocognitive processes evolved
(or earlier building blocks were reorganized) for dynamic coordination in core configurations, then traces of
the mind’s natural environment and the processes that
evolved in that context should persist despite substantial
differences in large-scale social organization (Caporael &
Baron, 1997). Core configurations and associated processes are hypothesized to recur ontogenetically as a developmental system, in day-to-day life, and presumably in
human evolutionary history. There are, of course, other
types of human groupings, but they are not necessarily
“core.” Also, we would expect that a variety of different
mechanisms—not just single mechanisms—would evolve
because any configuration is suitable for a variety of recurrent tasks.
The smallest configuration, the dyad, is the most ancient of configurations, minimally necessary for all forms
of internal fertilization (although mechanisms across species will vary). Among humans (and perhaps primates
more generally), dyads are probably evolutionarily significant not so much because new capacities appear but because this configuration functions in (and is influenced
by) the initial social organization and entrainment of
biological clocks, rhythmicity, and temporal patterning (Jones, 1976; Jones & Boltz, 1989; McGrath &
Kelly, 1986). Sometimes this synchrony of movement—or
microcoordination—maintains “twoness,” even when it is
a problem. Imagine two strangers walking toward each
other in a direct line. They dance and jerk trying to avoid
bumping into each other until one or both manages to

break the coordination. Learning motor tasks from
games such as golf or tennis to scientific tasks such as
blowing a pipette or using a complex piece of equipment
are frequently hands-on jobs.
The earliest cultural overlap between generations occurs in early development with joint attention, shared
reality, and storytelling (Higgins, 2005; Nelson, 1993;
Tomasello, 1999). Dyadic interaction is generatively entrenched in development, meaning that the dyad’s
proper functions are necessary conditions for processes
that develop later (Wimsatt, 1999). Higgins (2005) argues
that self-consciousness begins in dyadic interaction, and
Nelson’s (2003) work on children’s talk to themselves before going to sleep shows them weaving emerging selfconcepts against a background of cultural experiences.
Some research suggests that adult “dyadic selves” exist as
cognitive representations in which concepts of the self
and other overlap (Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991),
as transactive memory systems (Wegner, 1986; Wegner,
Raymond, & Erber, 1991), and in the coordination of
bodily motion or interactional synchrony (Newbern,
Dansereau, & Pitre, 1994). Interpersonal networks, such
as friendship groups, also engage relational identification processes, as extensions of the basic dyadic unit
(Brewer & Caporael, 2006b).
More than other configurations, the work/family or
task group appears to be a major point of sense making
of the material environment. It affords possibilities for
distributed cognition; this means that cognitive tasks
such as perception, classification, inference, and contextually cued responses are distributed over group members, particularly when the group is confronted with ambiguous or anomalous environmental information (Cole,
Hood, & McDermott, 1980). In the idealized hunter–
gatherer group, a task group might be a foraging party interpreting signs of animal movements over a landscape.
A modern example would be control tower personnel at
airports interpreting signs of possible danger from ambiguous signs on a radar screen. Group size alone does
not determine a configuration. Consider a collection of
five strangers in an elevator. Under typical conditions,
they are an aggregation; each person is an individual ab-

Evolutionary Theory for Social and Cultural Psychology

sorbed in his or her own thoughts. If the elevator gets
stuck between floors, the same five people form a task
group configuration. They jointly explore the opportunities for putting the elevator in motion, recall previous incidences of and solutions for coping with stuck elevators,
and point to buttons (shared attention) that might suggest different possibilities of danger and safety. For cognition to be functionally distributed in small groups requires not only a (somewhat) shared focus of attention
and representation or schema but also a division of cognitive labor. Wegner (1995) points out that there can be
progressive differentiation of memory “specialties” in a
group over time. Liang, Moreland, and Argote (1995)
found groups trained together to assemble radios outperformed individually trained subjects tested in newly
formed groups. Group training enhanced not only recall
about assembly procedures but also specialization for remembering distinct aspects of the procedure and trust in
one another’s knowledge about the task.
The task group is also a primary site for the repeated
assembly of culture between generations, such as learning subsistence modes in hunter–gatherer cultures or polite dinner manners in modern cultures. Vygotsky (1978)
coined the phrase “zone of proximal development” to describe how children participate with adults in activities
slightly beyond the young learner’s competence. This
zone is a dynamic cognitive region of heightened responsiveness to the tools, skills, and practices in a culture,
which children must learn to participate fully as adults
(Rogoff, 1990, 2003).
The terms “deme” and “macrodeme” in Table 1.1 are
used to indicate a greater generality than the anthropological terms “band” and “macroband” (although these
are used here when the anthropological context is intended). Biologists use deme to refer to a breeding population; however, it derives from the Greek term, demos,
which refers to a political unit defined by geography
rather than kin ties. Hull (1988) used the term “demic
structure” to refer to the organization of scientific communities, which is similar to the structure in Table 1.1.
Demes are the locus of practical skills and common
knowledge, some of which may be mythical, some of
which may be acutely attuned to local conditions, from
detailed knowledge of other people to the local ecology.
It is also a locus for articulated social identity, “wegroupness” communicated in terms of stories and songs
and the basic economic unit, the first configuration that
can be self-sustaining for survival and childrearing (but
not sexual reproduction). It is also the staging ground for
domestic life, including task group coordination, local
norm enforcement, and cooperative alliances, which are
the basis for fissioning when the community exceeds resources or is fractured by conflict (Olsen, 1987).
In our hunter–gatherer fiction (and sometimes in reallife) related bands meet seasonally, forming macrobands
that exchange marriage partners and disgruntled deme
members, gifts, and information and perform rituals,
competitive games, and stories. Macrobands are generally (and often loosely) related by common history, origin
accounts, customs, and, most enduringly, language. They
also complete the cycle of biological and social reproduc-


tion. A Monte Carlo simulation of paleodemographics by
Wobst (1974, cited in Hassan, 1981) indicates that about
175–475 people, or seven to nineteen 25-person bands,
are needed to maintain genetic viability by providing
mates for members reaching sexual maturity in a population. Macrobands are also historically transitional. They
were probably seasonal in the prehistoric past because of
limitations of resources, but as agriculture took root, settled macrodemes simply became settlements. Macrobands are rare in the modern world, but macrodemes
with analogous group structures are discernible. For example, scientific conferences are often seasonal meetings
where information and young people are exchanged,
and where the standardization and stabilization of distinctive terminology and the reaffirmation of group identity occurs.
The most important modern function of macrodemes
is probably the construction of symbolic group identity
(Brewer & Gardner, 1996), shared reality (Hardin & Higgins, 1996), social representations (Deaux & Philogène,
2001), stereotypes (Fiske, 1993; Steele & Aronson, 2003),
artifacts (Norman, 1990), and the gathering of them all
into worldviews, paradigms, or social imaginaries. Taylor
(2002) writes of the social imaginary as the way that ordinary people imagine their social surroundings, a collectively shared landscape that makes common practices
normative and possible and provides a widely shared
sense of legitimacy. Imaginaries are the epistemic products of groups (Kruglanski, Pierro, Mannetti, & De
Grada, 2006). For some peoples, the stars in the sky are
holes in the floor of heaven; for others, stars are gaseous
balls of flame. In both cases, the sensory experience of
stars is presumably the same, but the explanatory paradigm differs.
There are a few general points to be made about
the core configurations model. First, core configurations repeatedly assemble, in evolutionary time, in ontogeny, and in daily life. As infants develop, their widening scope of interaction increases demands for
reciprocity, skills, memory, social judgment, and so on.
Second, core configurations differ in how deeply entrenched they are (Wimsatt, 2001). Dyads are deeply
entrenched; a change in their evolved functions should
predict poor developmental outcomes. In contrast,
macrodemes are shallowly entrenched and are relatively easy to modify. Second, humans have made dramatic changes in their lifestyles over the past 10 millennia, and especially in the last 300 years. Clearly the
functions that evolve and develop in core configurations are capable of being extended, combined, and
used in new domains. For example, a heart surgery
team combines microcoordination and distributed cognition. Third, technology can also provide bridges between the functions of configurations. A group of 500
people given an order to march on a football field are
likely to clump and straggle, but if a rousing marching
song is broadcast, they can hardly avoid keeping time.
In fact, artifacts are extremely important, not only for
coordinating cognition and behavior (Hutchins, 1996)
but also for their role in creating value-saturated environments (Berkowitz, 1997; Hodges & Baron, 1992).



Fourth, core configurations and their psychological
correlates can operate independently of the demic structure in which they are hypothesized to evolve. This independence is especially characteristic of urban life where
there may be multiple, cross-cutting groups, many assuming the functions of different demic structures. Demic
structure is characteristic of certain bureaucratic institutions (e.g., military and clergy) and systems with selforganizing tendencies, like science and the firm, although more often corporate and bureaucratic
institutions are likely to suppress self-organizing tendencies of lower-level groups (Campbell, 1982).
In summary, the model of core configurations is built
on a set of constraints. It includes an evolutionary framework suitable to psychological levels of analysis; a vocabulary, repeated assembly, for grasping recurrence without
making genetic commitments or creating the illusion
that a phenomenon of interest has been explained, and
an awareness of the limitations of its fictions. Although
behavioral data about the past are limited, they do warrant an assumption that humans evolved to be obligately
interdependent. Within that framework, there are a variety of ways in which individualism and interdependence
may be played out, and the core configurations model is
one of these. It organizes a range of experimental findings and lends itself to deriving additional hypotheses in
diverse areas of psychology, including development, social cognition, and cultural psychology. It also organizes
existing research in social psychology and generates hypotheses that can be tested, including tests of its assumptions through carefully designed experimental and naturalistic fieldwork.

Like the soul, the immortal genes are the essence of the
individual, whereas the body, vessel of the soul or vehicle
of the genes, is transitory and ephemeral (Caporael,
1994; Dawkins, 1976; Oyama, 1985). God “favors” and
“acts” on preferred individuals and natural selection
does the same; man was cast out of the Garden of Eden, a
state of primitive innocence, and has “lost his natural environment.” The meaning implications of this view of
Darwinism are hardly lost on the brightest of students
(Brem, Ranney, & Schindel, 2003).
In this chapter, I have adopted a view of evolution, psychology, and culture as leaning on each other for inspiration, validation, correction, and interpretation. None of
these areas can be reduced to the other because human
biology, psychology, and culture coevolved. Each research domain is essential for its contributions to understanding the evolution of human mental systems. Darwinism, conceived at an appropriate level of analysis,
provides a theoretical framework that constrains and
guides hypothesis development. Social psychology has an
experimental methodology that is particularly effective
for identifying deviations from conventional wisdom and
raising our “discomfort index” (Fiske, 2003) with
counterintuitive findings. Cultural psychology, in addition to its range of observational and interpretive methods, trains us to focus on and understand the construction of meaning (Bruner, 1986, 1990), which helps to
distinguish evolution as it is used in scientific and social
domains. Understanding both domains is both a goal
and a significant contribution of social psychology for
understanding humanity past, present, and future.

In the 1970s, sociobiology burst onto the scene and into
the living room with great fanfare, threatening to “cannibalize” the social sciences, psychology, and ethics (Wilson, 1975). Its proponents claimed that neo-Darwinism
would explain self-interest, altruism, aggression, cooperation, knowledge, conflict, reciprocity, and sympathy
among other human attributes (Hamilton, 1975; Trivers,
1971; Wilson, 1978). A rarely mentioned feature of this
research is that most theorists failed to cite the empirical
literature in psychology. What then, was being explained? Not the illuminating, albeit counterintuitive,
data respected by psychologists (Ross & Nisbett, 1993).
Sociobiologists offered the “gene’s-eye view” of a widely
shared and understood folk psychology. Everyday human experience served as circle of inspiration and evidence for easily decoded scientific categories, beginning
with money (resource acquisition), sex (mating), and status (dominance hierarchy) and moving onto the “terrible
twos” (weaning conflict), divorce (mate desertion), rape
(forced copulation), adolescent rebellion (parent–
offspring conflict), and declining reproductive value
(menopause). Darwinism itself was tamed (Greenwood,
1984) by a biological rendition draped on a story skeleton (Schank & Abelson, 1995) from Christian theology:

My thanks to Ian Tattersall, Marilynn B. Brewer, Lauren McCall, and Per Henrik Bertil Hedberg for their advice and assistance. Any errors are entirely my own. The support of the
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, and its Scientific Director, Werner Callebaut, is gratefully acknowledged.
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