Understanding evolution is simply essential for a full take on the human behavioral experience (see Evolutionary Psychology 101).
In an effort to help document some critical junctures that have shaped this area of inquiry, here is a brief* chronology of the field.
1859: Charles Darwin publishes On the Origins of the Species—showing the process of natural selection, evolution’s primary process when it comes to the nature of life, to the world.
1872: Darwin publishes The Expression of Emotion of Man and Animals. Without question, his ideas in this book fully represent an evolutionary approach to human psychology. With Darwin’s publications on evolutionary processes applied to psychological states, the field of evolutionary psychology was born.
1975: E. O. Wilson, of Harvard, publishes the book Sociobiology, about how evolution has shaped social behaviors across various species—our own species included. Not everyone loved the idea. But wow, this book pushed the needle in a big way.
1976: Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins published the groundbreaking book The Selfish Gene, which essentially presents Darwin’s ideas for a relatively modern audience. The book focuses on the evolution of behavior in particular.
