Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

1. “Disease Avoidance Hypothesis”

   • Joshua M Ackerman

2. Ability and Willingness of Victim to Retaliate

   • B. Mims

3. Ability to Recognize Individuals

   • Catherine F. Talbot

4. Abortion

   • Deblina Roy, Mebarisha I. Khongriah

5. Absence of Events to Distinguish True Friends

   • Hillary Ler Lee Lim, Amy J. Lim

6. Absence Prior to Puberty

   • Kristine J. Chua, Joseph H. Manson

7. Abstinence

   • Susan Himes

8. Abstract Concept Formation

   • Jennifer Vonk

9. Abusers: Husbands, Boyfriends, and Former Sexual Partners

   • Bruna S. Nascimento

10. Access to Alloparents

    • Emily Emmott

11. Access to Resources

    • Denise D. Cummins

12. Accuracy of Self-View

    • Aleksandra Pilarska

13. Acheulean

    • Nicholas Primavera

14. Act Nomination Method

    • David M. Buss

15. Ad Hominem

    • Alejandro Tamez

16. Ádám Miklósi

    • Zoe Johnson-Ulrich

17. Adaptation

    • Muhammad A. Spocter

18. Adaptation and Natural Selection

    • Nora Balboa

19. Adaptation for Single Births

    • Natalie Laudicina

20. Adaptationist Program, The

    • Max Krasnow, Danielle Truxaw

Evolutionary psychology is a hybrid discipline that draws insights from modern evolutionary theory, biology, cognitive psychology, anthropology, economics, computer science, and paleoarchaeology. The discipline rests on a foundation of core premises: 1. Manifest behavior depends on underlying psychological mechanisms, information processing devices housed in the brain, in conjunction with the external and internal inputs that trigger their activation. 2. Evolution by selection is the only known causal process capable of creating such complex organic mechanisms. 3. Evolved psychological mechanisms are functionally specialized to solve adaptive problems that recurred for humans over deep evolutionary time. 4. Selection designed the information processing of many evolved psychological mechanisms to be adaptively influenced by specific classes of information from the environment. 5. Human psychology consists of a large number of functionally specialized evolved mechanisms, each sensitive to particular forms of contextual input, that get combined, coordinated, and integrated with each other to produce manifest behavior. Evolutionary psychology is one of the fastest growing academic areas within psychology. The field is now served by half a dozen high-quality journals dedicated to the field, including a new Springer journal, Evolutionary Psychological Science, set to launch in 2015 and edited by Todd Shackelford, a co-editor of the current proposal. In addition, there are now over a dozen extremely well-selling undergraduate textbooks dedicated to evolutionary psychology, along with several recent Handbooks dedicated to the field. The field is now ready for an Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. This encyclopedia will be extraordinarily comprehensive and wide-ranging. If the standard Handbook runs 500 printed pages, we envision this project might run 1000 printed pages per volume, but of course this will depend on how many entries we include, and the length of those entries. We anticipate having entries of varying length, depending on the importance of the topic or issue. For example, an entry on the prominent topic of “sex differences” might run the equivalent of 20 printed pages, whereas an entry on female orgasm, a more recent focus of research in evolutionary psychology, might run 10 printed pages. And then we expect to have briefer entries still that address much more focused topics and issues (for example, cultural differences in tattooing and scarification).

• Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, USA

  Todd K. Shackelford

• Rochester, USA

  Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

Todd K. Shackelford received his Ph.D. in evolutionary psychology in 1997 from the University of Texas–Austin, his M.A. in psychology from the University of Michigan in 1995, and his B.A. in psychology from the University of New Mexico in 1993. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Oakland University (http://www.oakland.edu/psychology) in Rochester, Michigan, where he is Co-Director of the Evolutionary Psychology Lab (www.ToddKShackelford.com). He led the founding of new Ph.D. and M.S. programs (http://www.oakland.edu/psychology/grad/), which launched in 2012. Shackelford has published around 300 peer-reviewed articles and chapters and has edited 14 volumes, and his work has been cited nearly 10,000 times. Much of Shackelford’s research addresses sexual conflict between men and women, with a special focus on testing hypotheses derived from sperm competition theory. Since 2006, Shackelford has served as editor of Evolutionary Psychology (www.epjournal.net). Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford received her Ph.D. in evolutionary developmental psychology in 2011 from Florida Atlantic University, her M.A. in psychology from Florida Atlantic University in 2004, and her B.A. in psychology from the Florida Atlantic University in 1993. She is Special Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Oakland University (http://www.oakland.edu/psychology) in Rochester, Michigan, where she is Co-Director of the Evolutionary Psychology Lab (http://www.VivianaWeekesShackelford.com). Weekes-Shackelford has published around several dozen peer-reviewed articles and chapters and has edited two volumes.

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