Developing evolutionary psychology: Commentary on Narvaez et al
Abstract
Narvaez et al. (2022), in their article “Evolving Evolutionary Psychology,” argue that mainstream evolutionary psychology is based on misguided neo-Darwinian adaptationist thinking and an antiquated computationalist, “mind-as-computer” framework and offer their own developmentally informed theory as an alternative. While applauding Narvaez et al. for promoting the role of development in evolutionary explication and as a potential metatheory for psychology, we point out that contemporary evolutionary-developmental accounts address the shortcomings of mainstream evolutionary psychology they describe, while maintaining an adaptationist perspective that includes a central role of evolved, domain-specific information-processing mechanisms.