Product Description

Composed of cutting-edge reasearch and featuring an engaging writing style, the author offers compelling scientific answers to the profound human questions regarding love and work. Beginning with a historial introduction, the text logically progresses by discussing adaptive problems humans face and ends with a chapter showing how the new field of evolutionary psychology encompasses all branches of psychology. Each chapter is alive with the subjects that most occupy our minds: sex, mating, getting along, getting ahead, friends, enemies, and social hierarchies. Why is child abuse 40 times more prevalent among step-families than biologically intact families? Why, according to one study, did 75% of men but 0% of women consent to have sex with a complete stranger? Buss explores these intriguing quandaries with his vision of psychology in the new millenium as a new science of the mind. Anyone with an interest in the biological facets of human psychology will find this a fascinating read.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #994744 in Books
• Published on: 1998-11-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 456 pages

From the Back Cover

Composed of cutting-edge reasearch and featuring an engaging writing style, the author offers compelling scientific answers to the profound human questions regarding love and work.

Beginning with a historial introduction, the text logically progresses by discussing adaptive problems humans face and ends with a chapter showing how the new field of evolutionary psychology encompasses all branches of psychology. Each chapter is alive with the subjects that most occupy our minds: sex, mating, getting along, getting ahead, friends, enemies, and social hierarchies. Why is child abuse 40 times more prevalent among step-families than biologically intact families? Why, according to one study, did 75% of men but 0% of women consent to have sex with a complete stranger? Buss explores these intriguing quandaries with his vision of psychology in the new millenium as a new science of the mind.

Anyone with an interest in the biological facets of human psychology will find this a fascinating read.

Customer Reviews

Excellent read.
This book is very easy to read and I found it extremely enjoyable and informative. Its a keeper for sure!

Limited!!!
Buss has a rather limited view of evolutionary psychology. This book and his others are just vehicles for promoting his own views and research. If you want a really useful book, read Evolutionary Psychology: The Ultimate Origins of Human Behaviorby Palmer & Palmer. It's a sleeper but a keeper! Highly recommended.

Great evolutionary psychology primer
The book is organized in 6 parts and 13 chapters. Part one explains evolution theory and evolutionary psychology and how they are misunderstood and misrepresented, whereas the rest of the book deals with problems like survival, mating, sexual-strategies, kinship and group living.

This book explains behaviours we see everyday, such as gender differences, aggression, jealousy, conflicts, and problems of rank, status and prestige.

Granted, it is not a book full of PC, neither it adopts a feminist view. In fact, it dispels some feminist nonsense (long overdue), such as pointing out how competition happens mainly against same-sex people and how the strategies used by women to put down other women reflect the different mating strategies rooted in gender (such as slandering other women who pursue short-term mating strategies as opposed to long-term ones).

It makes for a very interesting reading!