Evolutionary Psychology: Toward a New View of Human Nature and Organizational Society

Abstract

The paper argues that evolutionary psychology offers a radical and challenging new perspective on human nature and organizational society. Its roots in a convergence of insights and scientific discoveries from diverse natural and human sciences are described, and how it seeks to avoid common fallacies of earlier biological reasoning about human society. Recurrent themes in human nature and their manifestations are summarized, including sex and personality differences, cognitive and affective biases, social orientations, and preferred modes of social exchange. The paper concludes that we suffer the consequences of poor fit between our inherited natures and many of the constructed environments in organizational society, but that new emerging forms of organization may present us with the opportunities for social relations closer to the ancestral paradigms of our psychology.