Human Evolutionary Psychology

Rating:
Summary: HUMAN evolutionary psychology
Review: I am surprised at the relatively low sales numbers and lack of reviews for this excellent text. Although David Buss's text book is by far the better seller it leaves much to be desired. It is simply too "dumbed down" for the senior and graduate level students that it was intended for. Although Dr. Buss is a strong advocate of the evolutionary approach to human psychology, his treatment of evolutionary theory is rather weak and laymen like giving away his background in psychology rather than biology.
The currrent text by Barrett et al. however gives an excellent account of evolutionary theory as a starting point for the books' coverage of human evolutionary psychology, perhaps because this book emanates from Robin Dunbar's (2nd author) lab. Dr. Dunbar is a immenent British primatologist whose background includes a thorough grounding in the biological sciences including evolutionary theory.
Also, more than any of the other texts in this field the emphasis of this one is on HUMAN evolutionary psychology. Other texts use a more comparative approach and rely too heavily on extrapolations from the general primate literature rather than on data specific to humans.
Lastly, this text has the largest and most relevant bibliography of any of the other texts. Documentation is thus extensive This alone is worth the price of the book