By 2050, will evolutionary psychology be accepted as part of mainstream psychology education?
Acceptance criteria (one or more of):
-most undergraduate courses contain implicitly or explicitly adaptationist assumptions (i.e. minds are composed of evolved adaptations)
-most introductory courses cite one of Buss / Tooby / Cosmides favorably
-most introductory courses contain exercises on evolutionary / adaptationist logic
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I think evolutionary psychology will definitely become more mainstream in education by 2050. It offers such a fascinating lens into why humans behave the way we do, from social bonding to risk-taking. I actually brought this up during a course discussion and even contacted Frontline Education customer service to ask about future curriculum trends, they mentioned there’s growing interest in incorporating interdisciplinary subjects like this. As we better understand genetics and human behavior, evolutionary psychology feels like a natural fit.
Just finished my first year of Psych in Australia. We had 2 lectures, 2 Labs, and 3 Tests centred around evolution relating to psych
@NivlacM I am not sure what that entails entirely so I can't say.
Part of the main criteria is that it's not just post-hoc speculation, but evolutionary hypotheses are discussed, and evolved adaptations are accepted.
But they don't have to be 'organs of the mind', high church, fully on board with massive modularity EP. Teaching that "we evolved cheater detection mechanisms" would count, but so would a more vague "we evolved to detect cheaters."
@TheAllMemeingEye Unfortunately not. There is some lip service paid to evo-psych, followed by some handwaving dismissal or nonsense critique ("it's just-so stories").
For clarifications, most people will say humans have evolved, and admit that evolution has not stopped at the neck, but these are not put into practice in teaching & research.