The evolutionary perspective looks at how natural selection shaped behaviors and traits that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce.
In natural selection, individuals vary, and inherited variations that help survival or reproduction are more likely to be passed on and become more common over generations.
For example, a genetically influenced tendency to quickly detect and avoid danger, like a snake, could become more common because cautious ancestors were more likely to survive and reproduce.
The eugenics movement misused flawed ideas about inherited traits to justify discrimination, forced sterilization in the United States, and later Nazi crimes; modern psychology rejects these discriminatory applications.
Key terms
evolutionary perspective
An approach that explains behavior by how natural selection shaped traits that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce.
natural selection
The process by which inherited traits that help individuals survive or reproduce become more common in a population over many generations.
eugenics
A movement that applied flawed ideas about inherited traits to justify discrimination and control who should reproduce.
Watch out
Natural selection happens on its own over many generations; eugenics was people deciding who should and shouldn't have children.