Encouraging the Inclusion of Evolutionary Psychology into Information Systems’ Theoretical Repertoire as an Emerging Trend

Social and cognitive psychology frames have dominated IS researchers’ attention in developing and applying theory to explain human behavior in the context of IS. However with a few exceptions, the information systems literature has largely ignored the possible explanatory power of evolutionary psychology. This is a major omission, particularly as Darwin argued that perception and cognition, areas of IS interest, are the product of evolution of the human brain adapting to motivate behavior that supports productive decision-making. It seems appropriate for IS research to recognize that humans are an evolved, social, cognitive species. In this paper, we encourage IS scholars to appreciate the potential contribution of evolutionary psychology as an emerging trend to enrich the theoretical repertoire for information systems.