Evolutionary Approaches to Group Dynamics: An Introduction

An evolutionary perspective offers many new insights in the study of group dynamics. First, groups are an inevitable aspect of human evolution, suggesting that humans have evolved a range of psychological mechanisms to deal with specific challenges of group living. Second, an evolutionary perspective combines and integrates knowledge from different social science disciplines such as psychology, biology, anthropology, and economics to find evidence for group-related psychological adaptations. Third, an evolutionary analysis produces many unique hypotheses about group psychology, showing the promise and generativity of this approach.