ABSTRACT
Evolutionary psychologists attempt to make sense of current human thought, emotion, and behavior by careful consideration of human evolutionary history. Over this period of time, humans faced many adaptive problems that needed to be solved to survive and reproduce. Generation after generation, over millions of years, natural selection gradually shaped the human brain, favoring circuitry that was good at solving these adaptive problems of our ancestors. The study of psychological adaptations (or evolved psychological mechanisms) is central to evolutionary psychology.
