Are adaptations necessarily genetic

1998) are to be commended for clarifying concepts from evolutionary science and detailing the utility of these concepts for psychology.Rather than contribute to the emotion--laden arguments that have accompanied much of the development of evolutionary psychology, Buss et al.'s contribution helps psychologists apply ideas from evolutionary biology to the study of mind and behavior.However, Buss et al. (1998) erred when they wrote that "there must be genes for an adaptation because such genes are required for the passage of the adaptation from parents to offspring" (p.535).It is incorrect to say that genes are the only way behavioral or psychological features can be passed from parents to children.Decades of research have demonstrated that children are likely to have the same religion, political affiliation, and socioeconomic status as their parents.Surely Buss et al. don't believe that there are genes for these characteristics.Nonetheless, these features have passed from parents to offspring.Buss and his colleagues might argue that the examples given above are not adaptations because they don't solve an adaptive problem or don't have the design features that characterize adaptations.However, there is nothing inherent in these features that precludes them from being adaptations, unless one simply defines an adaptation as being passed down by genes.There is no a priori reason why these features are any less likely to be adaptations than, for example, the tendency to be a short--term or long--term strategist in mating ( Buss & Schmitt, 1993) or to solve problems of social deception ( Cosmides, 1989).Buss et al. (1998) defined an adaptation as an "inherited and reliably developing characteristic that came into existence as a feature of a species through natural selection because it helped to directly or indirectly facilitate reproduction during the period of its evolution" (p.535).However, the degree to which a feature facilitates reproduction-its inclusive fitness-"is not a property of an individual organism but rather a property of its actions or effects" ( Buss et al., 1998, p. 534).The effects of a phenotype determine whether those effects will be selected.How those phenotypic effects arise is irrelevant to the selection process.Phenotypic psychological mechanisms surely arise through a complicated process.The role of genes is likely to be rather far away and indirect.Certainly, our current understanding of the relationship between mind and body limits our ability to understand how genes-which code for physical structure-contribute to psychological development.Although the physical body can be measured in terms of the parameters of the physical world (e.g., mass, volume, velocity), these parameters do not apply to the mental world ( Williams, 1985).Until parameters that apply in

Adaptation (eye) · Biology · Cognitive psychology · Evolutionary biology · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Neuroscience · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment

• Sex differences in human mate preferences

  Open Access•David M Bu, David M Buss•Behavioral and Brain Sciences•1989

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