Evolutionary Theory and Emotions

Abstract

Darwin himself began the investigation into the relationship between emotions and evolution with The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals in 1872. However, unlike most of Darwin’s other work, this area of inquiry lay dormant for almost 100 years. Even when Wilson tried to restart interest in the possible linkages between evolution and social life with his publication of Sociobiology in 1975, there was virtually no analysis of emotions. Sociologists like Van Den Berghe (1975), who took up the evolutionary cause in the 1970s, also paid scant attention to emotions. Thus, it has been only in the past two decades that some sociologists have begun to focus analysis specifically on emotions and evolution.