Evolutionary psychology and developmental dynamics: comment on Lickliter and Honeycutt (2003)

Evolutionary psychology provides a cogent metatheory for psychological science. It has furnished compelling theories of major domains of human functioning, including mating, parenting, kinship, morality, cooperation, conflict, aggression, and aesthetics. It has produced hundreds of empirical discoveries missed entirely by prior psychologists. Developmental dynamics, properly conceived, can add to the theoretical foundation of evolutionary psychology. But it has not provided alternative theories capable of explaining the many detailed empirical discoveries made by evolutionary' psychologists. Nor has it generated a comparable bounty of new empirical discoveries. By critical scientific standards--theoretical cogency, predictive accuracy, interdisciplinary consistency, and empirical harvest--modern evolutionary psychology fares well compared with alternatives.