Let us look at how David Buss in his Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (2005) describes the framework and chief concerns of evolutionary psychology: it is “an approach to the study of psychology that is informed by modern principles of evolutionary biology… an approach to exploring the mechanisms of the mind… not a branch of psychology, [but] a lens through which any psychological phenomenon can be examined.” Buss holds that the domain is important for the study of ourselves as cultural beings because of the following basic premises:

•  “All behavior is a function of psychological mechanisms + input to those mechanisms

•  All psychological mechanisms, at some basic level, originate from evolutionary processes

•  Natural and sexual selection are the most important evolutionary processes responsible for creating psychological mechanisms

•  Evolved psychological mechanisms can be described as information processing devices.

•  Evolved psychological mechanisms are instantiated in the brain.

•  Evolved psychological mechanisms are functional and are designed to solve statistically recurrent adaptive problems.”

The key terms in this domain therefore are: