General intelligence as a domain-specific adaptation.

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary psychology
• Cognitive science
• Human evolution

Background:

• The modular view of the human brain in evolutionary psychology struggles to account for general intelligence (g).
• Existing theories do not fully explain the adaptive significance or distribution of general intelligence.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a new evolutionary psychological theory for the evolution of general intelligence.
• To explain why general intelligence is universally important in the modern world.

Main Methods:

• Theoretical advancement of an evolutionary psychological framework.
• Analysis of existing data on problem-solving abilities related to intelligence and evolutionary novelty.
• Examination of empirical anomalies in human sociobiology and intelligence distribution.

Main Results:

• General intelligence (g) is proposed to have evolved as a domain-specific adaptation for ancestral evolutionary novelty.
• The universal importance of g is attributed to the current evolutionarily novel environment, not an inherent general-purpose cognitive ability.
• Data suggest intelligent individuals outperform others primarily on evolutionarily novel problems, not familiar ones.

Conclusions:

• This theory reconciles the modularity of the brain with the existence of general intelligence.
• It offers explanations for previously unresolved issues in human sociobiology and the global distribution of intelligence.
• The adaptive origin of general intelligence is re-framed as a response to specific ancestral environmental pressures.