Psicologia Evolucionista: uma perspectiva em expansão

Abstract

Evolutionary Psychology (EP) is a broad theoretic field within Psychology that to understand human nature from the standpoint of evolutionary perspective of neo-Darwinism. Although its emergence dates back to the 1980's, EP has developed in Brazil only in this century. The aim of the present study was to review systematically the Brazilian scientific publications related to EP and compare them to the international publications in the same period. Therefore, a systematic review of the literature was carried out on the following databases: Virtual Health Library, CAPES Theses Database, and PsycINFO. Studies containing the keyword "Evolutionary Psychology" or its correspondent version in Portuguese were used. The search was carried out considering studies available on the databases until 2010. Brazilian publications were classified by subject matter and method employed, whereas frequencies by year were computed for international studies. Although results showed a growing number of publications related to EP as a general tendency, there were few empirical studies in the area in Brazil. Non-systematic reviews of the literature and studies on general aspects of the evolutionary approach comprised the major part of Brazilian publications. The need of further empirical studies in the area in Brazil, particularly investigations of issues related to personality and psychopathology, is highlighted.