fei75766_ch15_463-494.indd 487  02/24/20 10:48 AM
Chapter 15    Buss: Evolutionary Theory of Personality487
solutions andfound inalmost allanimals from theinvertebrates, fishes, reptiles, 
birds, andmammals (including primates). Themore similar thegenus andspecies, 
themore similar thesystem—and thisholds forpersonality. Thepersonality structure 
ofprimates ismore similar thanthatofmammals ingeneral, which inturnismore 
similar thanbirds orinvertebrates. Thisevidence supports theviewthatpersonality 
traits evolved longbefore modern humans andhavetheirorigins inacommon ances -
tormillions ofyears ago.
Critique of Evolutionary Theory of Personality
Evolutionary psychology ingeneral andevolutionary personality psychology inpar-
ticular havestimulated alotofcontroversy butalsoarelatively large body of empirical 
research .Thefieldhasitsownscientific society (Human Behavior andEvolution -
arySociety, HBES), anditsownscientific journal, Evolution and Human Behavior. 
Thediscipline alsorestsupon other scientific disciplines, suchasevolutionary biol-
ogy,ethology, behavioral genetics, andneuroscience, sothere isasolid empirical 
foundation tothefield. Similarly, aquick search onGoogleScholar generated more 
than34,000 articles forthejointterm“evolutionary psychology.” Thesame Google -
Scholar search on“evolutionary personality psychology” produced 660articles 
between 1990 and2012.
Tothequestion ofwhether evolutionary personality theory isfalsifiable the
answer iscomplex. Evolutionary theory ingeneral isdifficult tofalsify inthestrict 
Most animals, including achickadee, haveunique andstable ways ofbehaving—in other words, theyhave
personality. NPSPhoto byJimPeacoFinal PDF to printer