Evolutionary psychology is the study of how behavior, thoughts and feelings have evolved to what they are today. It states that the mind is shaped by pressure to reproduce and survive. The main assumption that evolutionary psychologists need to make is that all the behaviors we have now, helped our ancestors survive and reproduce.

It started with Charles Darwin in 1873.

He believed human expressions had evolved the same way as our physical features, as they help us communicate our emotions and better survive. Cross culture studies then started to reveal a pattern in human behavior everyone followed.

This may be due to a common ancestral background.

Evolutionary psychology, as a subject itself, came about in the 1980s. It takes from many fields such as cognitive psychology, ethology, anthropology, social psychology, and evolutionary biology. The case of evolutionary psychology is natural selection as it shows that the behaviors that helped people in the past survive were passed on from generation to generation.

It tries to explain things such as memory, language and perception.

Research has suggested that brains may be composed of different 'specialized domain-specific mechanisms.'

For example, there are different memory systems that deal with learning languages and remembering faces. Evolutionary psychologists are also focusing on the underlying reason for certain adaptations like sexual selection. What basis does a human select their mate and how has that changed over time?

There are controversies with evolutionary psychology. Some people still believe that the slate is blank or mostly blank, which is something evolutionary psychology would disagree with.

Other problems with it are political.

Some think that if the differences between male and female were to be accepted then different treatment in the workplace would be justified. I don't think that should make a difference as it is important to accept the differences between the genders as long as we realized that both can do anything.

The last problem is the naturalistic fallacy that people fall to. The belief is that everything by nature must be good, so all our behavior must be good because evolution led to it.

This is wrong.

Evolution has also led to viruses and such things.

Evolutionary psychology for me is really fascinating as it makes sense that we would keep the behavior that helped our ancestors survive. For example, getting into a panic when everybody else is calm would increase your chances of survival.