Evolutionary psychology meets socio-ecological psychology: the motivational psychologies of disease-avoidance and parental care.

Specific features of ancestral ecologies had implications for the evolution of psychological mechanisms that regulate specific aspects of human cognition and behavior within contemporary ecologies. These mechanisms produce predictably different attitudes, judgments and behavioral dispositions under different circumstances. This article summarizes two illustrative programs of research-one that focuses on the evolved psychology of disease-avoidance and its many implications, and the other that focuses on the evolved psychology of parental care-giving and its many implications. These programs of research exemplify the generative utility of evolutionary psychological conceptual methods within the domain of socio-ecological psychology.