Ultimate causation in evolved human political psychology: Implications for public policy

Evolutionary psychology has made enormous progress in understanding how individual and kin selection shape our sexual and family behaviors. In striking contrast, our understanding of the evolution of our uniquely massive scale of social cooperation (kinship-independent; subjectively, the “public” sphere) has been seriously incomplete. We briefly critique theories of human social evolution to identify specific limitations. We then review and expand a specific theory of the evolution of the uniquely human public domain. This theory is coherent and well-supported empirically. Moreover, this theory has the broad predictive fecundity not displayed by earlier, less complete theories. For example, we can predict/account for both individual human novelties (speech, cognitive virtuosity, etc.) and the salient features of the human historical record through the present. We argue that our discipline can now catalyze the long-sought unification of the social and natural sciences. Further, this new theoretical power allows us to understand and address diverse elements of contemporary human welfare with substantially improved clarity. We argue that evolutionary psychology is now robustly positioned to contribute to formulation of potent local and global public policies that can build and sustain a very substantially improved human future. We explore specific examples of such policy implications.