Catherine Salmon

how middleborns can harness their unexpected and remarkable abilities

The secret power of middle children

Todd K. Shackelford

The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Family Psychology focuses on the psychology behind people's familial behavior, an understanding of which can illuminate our understanding of modern, ancient, and animal families.

The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Family Psychology

Charles Crawford

During the last 15 years, human sociobiology has metamorphosed into evolutionary psychology. It is concerned with the social problems and stresses hominid and primate ancestors encountered, the psychological mechanisms natural selection shaped to deal with these stresses, and the way those ancient mechanisms work now. Evolutionary psychologists are making great progress in expanding the understanding of human nature, however, this knowledge has had little impact on policymakers and legislators. Supreme Court justices and managers seldom consult evolutionary psychologists to help with their deliberations. When faced with private decisions few individuals ask themselves how a Darwinian perspective might help them. This volume's aim is to start the process of using theory and findings of evolutionary psychology to help make the world a better place to live. This book takes evolutionary psychology explicitly into applied areas in a way no other book has. It includes a reasonable scope of applications from pornography to psychopaths and from morality to sex differences in the workplace. An applications section provides concrete ideas for dealing with social and policy issues, including chapters on women in the workplace, rape, and child support. Providing good coverage of basic issues and theory of the field, this book gives lay people and law/policymakers appropriate background to fully understand the applications chapters. Part II provides information on basic psychological mechanisms for group living--including chapters on emotions, reciprocity and legal reasoning, and self deception--that impact on how well public policy and law function. The material in the first two sections provide an intellectual basis for the chapters in the third part of the book which deals with the application of evolutionary psychology to a variety of substantive areas related to public policy and personal decisions. A political scientist concludes the book with a commentary on evolutionary psychology and public policy. The book is designed to serve as a stand-alone text in evolutionary psychology and public policy that can be used in a variety of disciplines, such as psychology, social work, law and psychology, and public policy.

Evolutionary Psychology, Public Policy and Personal Decisions

Donald Symons

"The stark contrasts between romance novels and pornography - both multi-billion-dollar global industries - underscore how different female and male erotic fantasies are. These differences reflect human evolutionary history and the disparate selection pressures women and men experienced, say the authors of this thought-provoking book. Catherine Salmon and Donald Symons provide a concise review of the fundamental importance of evolutionary history to human psychology, discuss how male and female sexual psychologies differ, and then demonstrate how sex differences in erotica illustrate this." "The authors focus particular attention on a new erotic subgenre - slash fiction - written mostly by and for women. Slash depicts romantic and sexual relationships between heterosexual male characters in television and film, such as Starsky and Hutch (S/H) and Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock (K/S), and is so named for the punctuation mark indicating the pair. Salmon and Symons argue that slash fiction has much in common with the romance genre and that the heroes of both genres are "warrior lovers" who embody the qualities our female ancestors valued in a mate. But while romance novel readers fantasize about being "Mrs. Warrior," slash fans prefer the fantasy of being "co-warrior." The authors consider why this might be so and examine the essential ingredients of female sexual fantasy. Their conclusions are both fascinating and original."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Catherine Salmon

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