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What is human behavioral ecology?

The principal goal of human behavioural ecology is to account for the variation in human behaviour by by asking whether models of optimality and fitness-maximization provide good explanations for the differences found between individuals. An overriding assumption is that human beings exhibit an extraordinary flexibility of behaviour, allowing them to behave in an adaptive manner in all kinds of environments (Laland and Brown 2002:112).

Human behavioral ecology applies evolutionary ecology models and concepts to the study of human behavioral diversity (Winterhalder and Smith 2000:51).

Human behavioral ecology may be defined as the study of the evolutionary ecology of human behavior. Its central problem is to discover the ways in which the behavior of modern humans reflects our species' history of natural selection (Cronk 1991:25).

Evolutionary ecology is the application of natural selection theory to the study of adaptation and biological design in an ecological setting. When the features under examination involve behavior,... then the subset of evolutionary ecology is often termed behavioral ecology (Winterhalder and Smith 1992:5).

Human behavioral ecology applies the theoretical perspective of animal behavioral ecology to human populations, examining the degree to which behavior is adaptively adjusted to environmental (including social) conditions, emphasizing conditional strategies of the form ‘in situation X, maximize fitness payoffs by doing α; in situation Y, do β’ (Smith et al. 2001:128).

References

Cronk, Lee

1991 Human Behavioral Ecology. Annual Review of Anthropology 20:25-53.

Smith, Eric Alden, M. Borgerhoff Mulder and Kim Hill

2001 Controversies in the Evolutionary Social Sciences: A Guide for the Perplexed. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 16:128-135.

Winterhalder, Bruce and Eric Alden Smith

2000 Analyzing Adaptive Strategies: Human Behavioral Ecology at Twenty-Five. Evolutionary Anthropology 9:51-72.

1992 Evolutionary Ecology and the Social Sciences. In Evolutionary Ecology and Human Behavior, edited by Eric Alden Smith and Bruce Winterhalder, pp. 3-24. Aldine de Gruyter, New York.

HBE Today

most of HBEs first generation is still active in research
their students and students' students now hold academic positions, primarily in departments of anthropology

HBE Links

Human Behavior & Evolution Society

Human Nature Home Page

The Human Behavioral Ecology Bibliography