Do evolutionary psychologists think that everything is an adaptation?
Evolutionary adaptation is a special and onerous concept that should not be used unnecessarily, and an effect should not be called a function unless it is clearly produced by design and not by chance. When recognized, adaptation should be attributed to no higher a level of organization than is demanded by the evidence. George C. Williams, opening words of Adaptation and Natural Selection 1966 No. From an adaptationist perspective, there are four types of phenomena: adaptations, byproducts of adaptations, malfunctions of adaptations, and noise (this typology can be refined, although I won’t do so here). Each of the first three types of phenomena are the subject of serious research efforts in evolutionary psychology. For example, Martin Daly and Margo Wilson primarily offer byproduct hypotheses for homicide in their landmark book Homicide (A. de Gruyter, 1988), a work that has been cited over 450 times according to ISI. Daly and Wilson are highly respected researchers in evolutionary psy
