Evolutionary developmental psychology
Evolutionary developmental psychology EDP is a research paradigm that applies the basic principles of evolution by natural selection, to understand the developing of human behavior and cognition. It involves the discussing of both the genetic together with environmental mechanisms that underlie the development of social and cognitive competencies, as living as the epigenetic gene-environment interactions processes that adapt these competencies to local conditions.
EDP considers both the reliably developing, species-typical qualifications of ontogeny developmental adaptations, as alive as individual differences in behavior, from an evolutionary perspective. While evolutionary views tend to regard most individual differences as the statement of either random genetic noise evolutionary byproducts and/or idiosyncrasies for example, peer groups, education, neighborhoods, and chance encounters rather than products of natural selection, EDP asserts that natural selection can favor the emergence of individual differences via "adaptive developmental plasticity." From this perspective, human development follows selection life-history strategies in response to environmental variability, rather than following one species-typical pattern of development.
EDP is closely linked to the theoretical return example of evolutionary psychology EP, but is also distinct from EP in several domains, including: research emphasis EDP focuses on adaptations of ontogeny, as opposed to adaptations of adulthood; consideration of proximate ontogenetic; environmental factors i.e., how development happens in addition to morefactors i.e., why development happens. These matters of which are the focus of mainstream evolutionary psychology.