He who understands baboon would do more toward metaphysics than Locke. Charles Darwin, M Notebook, 1838 You might be asking yourself, why a special issue on evolutionary approaches to studying popular culture? After all, isn't evolutionary psychology focused on reproductive success and the ancestral environment? The aspects of pop culture featured in this issue, such as TV shows and horror films, were not a feature of our ancestral world. They don't seem to directly relate to reproductive success. They don't have obvious ties to the environment (whether it be geographical or temporal) in which we evolved. So, what could an evolutionary perspective possibly add to our understanding of them as aspects of our modern world? The punch line is that we created these media products using our evolved brains, and that we interact with them using these brains. There might not actually be werewolves running around New York City, but we evolved the capacity to imagine them, to consider problems that need solutions, and to play out situations that evoke a sense of astonishment. Indeed, there are many aspects of our modern environment and our behavior that are best understood under the light of an evolutionary perspective. For example, much attention has been focused in recent years on the increase in obesity, especially in the United States, and how one possible cause includes the overconsumption of fast food. The reality is, that for millions of years, humans who stored fat during times of abundance had an advantage over others when food was scarce, and hence they were favored by natural selection. A taste for fatty and sweet foods would also have been favored by natural selection, as they were relatively rare (e.g., honey, ripe fruit) or required hard work to obtain (e.g., hunting for meat) and yet were important sources of calories Evolutionary approaches have already been used in the fields of literary theory and art. The field of Darwinian literary studies, which is quickly gaining considerable momentum, has provided evidence that humankind's evolved history influences the topics of texts Like pop culture, literary theory (and the study of art) has been dominated by a variety of perspectives, such as social constructivism, postmodernism, and deconstructionism (including Marxist, feminist, and psychoanalytic frameworks), which have focused more on a blank-slate view of human behavior. Even those working within these fields have commented on the stagnation that has resulted from this narrow perspective of human behavior (e.g., Carroll, 1995). Psychologists should not be surprised; after all, Freud and Lacan, e.g., are basically footnotes in our understanding of human behavior in modern psychology programs. We've achieved a better understanding of the human mind since the 1930s (which was the last decade of Freud's life). At last, the study of literature and art is starting to benefit from the work of those who are applying that new understanding. For examples from the literary and art fields, there are a number of anthologies including to its appeal to universal aspects of human nature, and how much is due to other factors (such as attached prestige, celebrity of promoters, etc.)? By using evolution to inform our scholarly endeavors, we arrive at a far more satisfying and comprehensive understanding (see Saad, this issue for a general review of these issues, as well as for a detailed discussion on the success and the resistance to the evolutionary framework)
