Abstract

The aim of this paper is to argue that evolutionary psychology is not able to deal with a crucial commitment of its own research program, i.e., to explain the natural phenomenon of sexual attraction. On one hand, evolutionary psychology underestimates cognitive processes that regulate sexual attraction. In a sense, it is not «psychological» enough. On the other hand, it has too poor an idea of what natural selection is, and therefore it is not «evolutionary» enough. We need a different kind of evolutionary psychology, which is «psychological» as well «evolutionary». In the light of the new trend of «extended evolutionary theory», in this paper I try to sketch the outline of an advanced stage of evolutionary psychology.