Differences between evolutionary psychology and evolutionary psychology

Through the corridors of the Faculties of Psychology of Spain and Latin America You can see, every weekday, a series of people wandering completely disoriented through corridors and classrooms. They are mostly young students, but there is something in their gaze that has nothing to do with the expression of self-sufficiency and bravery that one would expect to sparkle on the face of any twentysomething.

What is the reason for this kind of inner tension? Very simple: your knowledge of psychology is based on something that is essentially WRONG; hence there are certain ideas and concepts that they cannot understand no matter how hard they try. There is something that escapes them. And it is that these poor devils still do not know that the Evolutionary psychology and the Evolutionary Psychology they are not the same.

Luckily, sooner or later a salvific teacher always arrives who ends up clarifying these concepts in what will be one of the short lessons that will benefit the most. during the race

. However, the difference between evolutionary and evolutionary psychology is better to know the sooner the better (and preferably before failing any exam for ignoring it), since the two deal with totally different things and, in fact, it is not clear that evolutionary psychology is a branch of psychology in Yes.

To understand the relationship between the two well, it is good delve a little into a concept to which both appeal: evolution.

Two basic types of evolution

The concept of "evolution" is abstract enough that it can be used to explain a great variety of processes, but basically defines a development through which different changes take place more or less gradually. In the fields of study of Psychology, however, evolution usually refers to two essentially different processes: the changes that occur in the development of an organism and the changes that occur in the shape and behavior of species, from generation to generation generation.

Phylogeny and ontogeny

When we speak of the first type of evolution, the one that refers to individual organisms that develop from their zygote form to old age, we speak of ontogeny, while when we speak of processes of change between generations and species that are succeeding each other, we speak of their phylogeny.

The basic idea that serves to distinguish evolutionary from evolutionary psychology is the following: Evolutionary Psychology studies the psychology of the human being in relation to its ontogenetic development, while evolutionary psychology studies human behavior in light of the evolution of species, that is, in light of their phylogenetic development.

The object of study of evolutionary psychology are the patterns of behavior and subjectivation that are associated with each phase of the growth of a human being, while Evolutionary Psychology, rather than offering a field of study, proposes an approach based on what is known about the evolutionary history of populations from which their lineage comes to obtain hypotheses about how people behave.

Where does the confusion come from?

This is a problem that has to do with the translation into Spanish of words used in the mainstream academic environment, which uses English. What we know today as Evolutionary Psychology was originally called developmental psychology, which means that in this language there is practically no confusion.

However, when the first researchers started talking about evolutionary psychologyIn Spanish there was already a very similar term to designate the previous branch of psychology. Hence, in Spain and Latin America the word "evolutionist" is used to distinguish it from the evolutionary one without giving up its basic meaning, which is related to a process of change.

Bibliographic references:

• Bunge, M. and Ardila, R. (2002). Philosophy of psychology. Mexico: XXI century.
• Papalia, D. and Wendkos, S. (1992). Psychology. Mexico: McGraw-Hill.
• Triglia, Adrián; Regader, Bertrand; García-Allen, Jonathan (2016). Psychologically speaking. Paidos.