Is Evolutionary Psychology Compatible With Cross-Cultural Psychology?

“Evolutionary psychology focuses on human universals whereas cultural psychology focuses on cultural differences. Thus, those two fields are incompatible with one another.”

Critically discuss this statement.

“The tabula of human nature was never rasa, and it is now being read” (Hamilton, 1997, as cited in Buss, 2001).

This essay critically discusses the evolutionary psychology versus cultural psychology dichotomy, challenging the notion that they are incompatible. The capacity for cumulative culture is a uniquely human evolutionary trait, and brain-culture co-evolution creates a ratchet effect, enabling us to colonise diverse environments. Evolution and learning are not conflicting explanations for behaviour, and evolutionary psychology accounts for cross-cultural variance and individual differences, through evoked-culture, life-history theory, strategic specialisation, and adaptive self-assessment. Finally, this paper argues that if evolutionary psychology is to succeed in mapping a fundamental and universal human nature, it needs to move beyond the limitations of WEIRD psychological studies.

“In the distant future, I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation” (Darwin, 1859). In the final sections of Origin of Species, Darwin predicted that one day the principles of evolution would…