Buss David M., Hawley Patricia H. (eds.) The Evolution of Personality and Individual Differences

Oxford University Press, 2011. — 422 p. — ISBN: 978-0-19-537209-0.The book draws theoretical inspiration from life history theory, evolutionary genetics, molecular genetics, developmental psychology, personality psychology, and evolutionary psychology, while utilizing the theories of the “best and the brightest” international scientists working on this cutting edge paradigm shift. The first three sections analyze personality and the adaptive landscape; here, the book offers a novel conceptual framework for examining “personality assessment adaptations.” Because individuals in a social environment have momentous consequences for creating and solving adaptive problems, humans have evolved “difference-detecting mechanisms” designed to make crucial social decisions such as mate selection, friend selection, kin investment, coalition formation, and hierarchy negotiation. The second section examines developmental and life-history theoretical perspectives to explore the origins and development of personality over the lifespan. The third section focuses on the relatively new field of evolutionary genetics and explores which of the major evolutionary forces—such as balancing selection, mutation, co-evolutionary arms races, and drift—are responsible for the origins of personality and individual differences.Personality and the Social Adaptive Landscape
Evolutionary Perspectives on the Five-Factor Model of Personality
Personality and the Adaptive Landscape: The Role of Individual Differences in Creating and Solving Social Adaptive Problems
Developmental and Life History Perspectives on Personality
The Role of Competition and Cooperation in Shaping Personality: An Evolutionary Perspective on Social Dominance, Machiavellianism, and Children’s Social Development
Why Siblings Are Like Darwin’s Finches: Birth Order, Sibling Competition, and Adaptive Divergence within the Family
Explaining Individual Differences in Personality: Why We Need a Modular Theory
The Development of Life History Strategies: Toward a Multi-Stage Theory
Toward an Evolutionary-Developmental Explanation of Alternative Reproductive Strategies: The Central Role of Switch-Controlled Modular Systems
Ecological Approaches to Personality
Evolutionary Genetics of Personality
Bridging the Gap Between Modern Evolutionary Psychology and the Study of Individual Differences
Theory and Methods in Evolutionary Behavioral Genetics
Twin, Adoption, and Family Methods as Approaches to the Evolution of Individual Differences
Evolutionary Processes Explaining the Genetic Variance in Personality: An Exploration of Scenarios
Are Pleiotropic Mutations and Holocene Selective Sweeps the Only Evolutionary-genetic Processes Left for Explaining Heritable Variation in Human Psychological Traits?
Selection and Evolutionary Explanations for the Maintenance of Personality Differences
Testing the Evolutionary Genetics of Personality: Do Balanced Selection and Gene Flow Cause Genetically Adapted Personality Differences in Human Populations?
Practical Applications
The Problem of Defining Psychopathology and Challenges to Evolutionary Psychology Theory