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7 - Are Evolutionary Psychology and the Neuroscience of Motivation Compatible?

from Part III - Evolution and Neuroscience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2020

By
Frederick M. Toates
Edited by
Lance Workman ,
Will Reader  and
Jerome H. Barkow
Lance Workman
Affiliation:
University of South Wales
Will Reader
Affiliation:
Sheffield Hallam University
Jerome H. Barkow
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
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Summary

In evolutionary psychology (EP), motivation is the poor relation, not even earning an index entry in some of the principal textbooks (Buss, 2016; Campbell, 2013; Ray, 2013). By contrast, emotion sometimes justifies a full chapter (Ray, 2013). Of course, some phenomena linked to motivation, such as attachment and, in particular, sexual behavior, are very well described in the EP literature.

Motivational processes are the class that is responsible for selecting a course of action, organizing goal-directed behavior, and energizing behavior to meet the goal (Toates, 1986). Goals are selected on the basis of a combination of internal states and salient features of the environment and are pursued until the associated motivation is lowered to zero or a higher-order priority emerges. Motivational processes are responsible for resolving competition and conflict between several potential goals that might simultaneously exist.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior , pp. 77 - 90
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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