Evolutionary developmental psychology: A new tool for better understanding human ontogeny

Evolutionary developmental psychology (EDP) is described and contrasted with previous (e.g., sociobiology) and other contemporary (e.g., mainstream evolutionary psychology) approaches to applying evolutionary theory to human behavior. We argue that understanding the 'whys' of development will help us acquire a better understanding of the 'hows' and 'whats' of development, and that in addressing the 'whys' an EDP perspective has the potential to provide a fuller understanding of human ontogeny. To this end, we propose five ways of applying EDP to contemporary issues of psychological development. These include (1) classifying developmental features according to their evolutionary or functional status, (2) proposing hypotheses and microtheories to explore the function of developmental traits, (3) collecting data from different sources to test developmental evolutionary hypotheses, (4) describing the phylogenetic and sociocultural history of human developmental features and (5) designing 'evolutionary experiments'. We argue that an EDP approach should not be seen as replacing other, more proximal, explanations of development, but rather that an evolutionary perspective should be incorporated in all accounts of human ontogeny. Copyright (C) 2003 S. Karger AG, Basel.