Evolved to Learn

Abstract

Emotion adaptations have evolved in response to eons of selection pressures characteristic of social and physical life over the history of our lineage. Cues relevant to these distinct selection pressures should reliably elicit relevant emotions and motivate efficacious behavioral responses. Selection favors the strategic calibration of emotional processes to key contextual factors, such as fitness-relevant individual, situational, and/or cultural differences. This chapter provides an overview of empirical and theoretical work on processes by which emotion adaptations may attune to particularities of self, situation, and culture, integrating neuroscientific, anthropological, and psychological approaches. Finally, developmental processes are discussed as themselves potential adaptations, including a broad outline of how developmental affective scientists might test such hypotheses.