Evolutionary psychology?

Does a background in biological anthropology help in the study of evolutionary psychology? What kind of questions does evo psych ask? Is evo psych a way into human behavioral research?

Does a background in biological anthropology help in the study of evolutionary psychology? What kind of questions does evo psych ask? Is evo psych a way into human behavioral research?

Bio anth would give you a better background in evolutionary theory and human evolution, but not as good background in cognitive psychology or social psychology which evo psych tends to deal with too (although you can easily pick up what you need- its not that hard). Its definately enough to go on to do evo psych at post grad level. Depends what you mean by human behavioural research, but yeah doing evolutionary psychology entails studying humans, and draws alot from psychology.

What it evo psych doesn't encompass is much animal research, whether its behavioural ecology (questions about why animal behaviour evolved) or animal cognition (mechanisms behind animal behaviour).

Thanks, Yh I've applied to do a masters in evo psych and my underad degree is in anthro. Do you think these areas compliment each other? Also would this allow me to do a phd in either field?

Its at Brunel and seems really interesting and relevant to what I've already studied. Thats good news that the two fields are so related! I am reading human instinct by WInston that I've had lying around and I didn't even realise before thats its actually evolutionary psychology lol. Just hoping I get in now though. Yh like you said there arn't many evo psych masters around.

oh yes ive read that too. Its good, but Robert Winston isn't really an expert on the subject by any means... Oh i had a look at that course and it looks very good.

I'd really recommend "An Introduction to behavioural ecology" by Davies and Krebs. It doesn't focus on humans, but it has all the evolutionary theory you need for behaviour for studying any species. I think the standard evolutionary psychology textbook is by David Buss, its fairly readable, i don't like it very much (i don't think its very critical!).