Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology

This wide-ranging collection demonstrates the continuing impact of evolutionary thinking on social psychology research. This perspective is explored in the larger context of social psychology, which is divisible into several major areas including social cognition, the self, attitudes and attitude change, interpersonal processes, mating and relationships, violence and aggression, health and psychological adjustment, and individual differences. Within these domains, chapters offer evolutionary insights into salient topics such as social identity, prosocial behavior, conformity, feminism, cyberpsychology, and war. Together, these authors make a rigorous argument for the further integration of the two diverse and sometimes conflicting disciplines. 

Among the topics covered: 

• How social psychology can be more cognitive without being less social.
• How the self-esteem system functions to resolve important interpersonal dilemmas.
• Shared interests of social psychology and cultural evolution.
• The evolution of stereotypes.
• An adaptive socio-ecological perspective on social competition and bullying.
• Evolutionary game theory and personality.

Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology has much to offer students and faculty in both fields as well as evolutionary scientists outside of psychology. This volume can be used as a primary text in graduate courses and as a supplementary text in various upper-level undergraduate courses.

• aggression
• behavioral immune system
• cognitive neuroscience
• comparative social cognition
• cyber-psychology
• emergent self
• evolutionary game theory
• evolutionary personality psychology
• evolutionary perspectives
• evolutionary psychology
• feminism
• genetics
• homosexuality
• human mating
• interpersonal processes
• interpersonal relationships
• language and communication
• mating and relationships
• personality development
• prosocial behavior

• Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, USA

  Virgil Zeigler-Hill, Lisa L. M. Welling, Todd K. Shackelford

Virgil Zeigler-Hill received his Ph.D. in social-personality psychology in 2004 from the University of Oklahoma. He is a member of the faculty in the Department of Psychology at Oakland University. He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and books. His primary research interests are in four interrelated areas: self-esteem, narcissism, cognitive representations of the self, and interpersonal relationships.

Lisa L. M. Welling received her Ph.D. in experimental psychology in 2008 from the University of Aberdeen. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. Lisa Welling has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles and has presented at numerous international conferences. Her work focuses largely on the biological and social factors that influence mate choice, preferences, and behavior.

Todd K. Shackelford received his Ph.D. in evolutionary psychology in 1997 from the University of Texas–Austin. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, where he is Co-Director of the Evolutionary Psychology Lab. He led the founding of new Ph.D. and M.S. programs, which launched in 2012. Shackelford has published over 250 peer-reviewed articles and chapters and has edited 10 volumes, and his work has been cited over 7,000 times. Much of Shackelford’s research addresses sexual conflict between men and women, with a special focus on testing hypotheses derived from sperm competition theory. Since 2006, Shackelford has served as editor of Evolutionary Psychology.

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