EVOLUTION AND EDUCATION RESOURCES

PsychTable.org: The Taxonomy of Human EvolvedPsychological Adaptations

Niruban Balachandran & Daniel J. Glass

Published online: 8 July 2012# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Abstract We announce the launch of PsychTable.org, acollaborative web-based project devoted to classifyingand evaluating evolved psychological adaptations(EPAs), geared toward researchers, educators, students,and the general public. The website works by aggregat-ing citations which support or challenge the existence ofeach purported EPA, using a mathematical algorithm toassign an evidentiary strength score to each, and gener-ating a table which represents the current but ever-changing state of the empirical evidence. Citations areadded and assigned evaluative ratings by both generalusers and an international community of expert contrib-utors; as such, the content of the site will represent theconsensus of the scientific community and new researchopportunities. PsychTable has features for achieving empir-ical meta-goals such as quality control, hypothesis testing,cross-disciplinary collaboration, and didactic utility. Addi-tionally, PsychTable will help adjudicate arguments withinthe field by providing a one-stop resource to display whichproposed EPAs have strong empirical support and whichothers are relatively lacking in evidence.

Keywords Classification .Taxonomy .Web-basedscientificcollaboration . Evolutionary psychology . Evolutionarybehavioral sciences

Introduction

The timing is right to establish a classification system forhuman evolved psychological adaptations (EPAs). Severalfactors have coalesced to create a unique opportunity to de-velop a taxonomy that will facilitate the expansion of a cultureof both synthesis and empirical rigor in the evolutionarybehavioral sciences, including disciplines such as evolution-ary cognitive neuroscience, behavioral ecology, “evo-devo,”primatology, evolutionary anthropology, human ethology, ge-netics, and others.

These aforementioned factors include: a large internationalbody of research describing hundreds of amassed EPAs; aglobal research community of evolutionary behavioral scien-tists that recognizes the importance of both synthesis andclassification; the ascent of evolutionary psychology as acontroversial but internationally recognized scientific disci-pline; an explosion in web-based scientific collaboration andsocial networking; a well-developed Internet infrastructureand an abundance of affordable computing power; an increas-ing pool of capital available for research funding in the evo-lutionary behavioral sciences; the existence of role models ofevolutionary behavioral scientists who are worthy of emula-tion; the rapid proliferation of other web-based taxonomies asexemplars of best practices in classification and databasemanagement; a global network of universities and researchgroups that support the discipline; and the emergence of anew, younger, and proactive core of both researchers andstudents who are passionately pursuing opportunities to ad-vance the evolutionary behavioral sciences.

An important milestone in the maturity of a discipline’sscientific program is the taxonomic synthesis and classifi-cation of the observed entities (taxa) that have been discov-ered so far, as in Gray’s Anatomy for medicine andphysiology, Mendeleev’s Periodic Table of Elements for

N. Balachandran (*) :D. J. Glass181 State Rte 32 South,New Paltz, NY 12561, USAe-mail: niruban25@gmail.com

D. J. Glasse-mail: djglass@alumni.upenn.edu

Evo Edu Outreach (2012) 5:312–320DOI 10.1007/s12052-012-0428-8

chemistry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of MentalDisorders for psychiatry, and so on. Classification systemsenable the organization and labeling of entities under obser-vation within a discipline, so that scientists can communi-cate with each other, plan research studies more effectively,and utilize a common terminology to describe the empiricalphenomena under study.

Evolutionary psychology, in its broadest definition, isa biosocial–scientific endeavor which analyzes human(and nonhuman) psychology through the lenses of bio-logical evolution. One of the empirical objectives of thediscipline is to discover and examine EPAs—also knownin the field’s literature as mental mechanisms or modules(Barrett and Kurzban 2006)—in human nature (Schmittand Pilcher 2004). However, the discipline has yet topossess a classification system of its own (Mills 2003).Hence, the primary objective of this paper is to map outthe vision of PsychTable.org, the world’s first taxonomyof human evolved psychological adaptations.

Given current Internet technology and the field’ssubstantial body of literature today, the logistics ofcreating a taxonomy on such a large scale are nowfinally possible. This paper proposes the creation of aweb-based taxonomy of human evolved psychologicaladaptations. The PsychTable taxonomy has five broadpurposes:

1. To classify the observed taxa (EPAs) that have beendiscovered so far

2. To aggregate both supporting and negative findings forproposed EPAs, and thus evaluate the strength of evi-dence for each in a more objective way than is currentlyavailable

3. To propose empirical evidence and studies that sup-port and challenge the existence of individualEPAs, and highlight where further research isneeded

4. To educate the general public, critics, and skepticsabout the evolutionary social sciences by provid-ing open access to information about which EPAshave been discovered and the evidence for themso far

5. To enhance a culture of synthesis in the internationalresearch community by raising the importance of classi-fication as a force multiplier for research breakthroughs,Web-based scientific collaboration, and interdisciplinaryconsilience

PsychTable.org will be an interactive, user-friendlyclassification system which aims to organize empiricalevidence that supports and challenges purported evolvedpsychological adaptations, and presents them all in oneneutral, authoritative location on the Web for furtherexamination, hypothesis testing, dialogue, criticism, and

investigation. The data underlying PsychTable will con-sist of existing, publicly available citations of published,peer-reviewed articles. These studies and abstracts can beaccessed online via ISI Web of Knowledge, SciVerse, GoogleScholar, and related academic databases. PsychTable aggre-gates these citations using an algorithm to evaluate thestrength of support for each proposed EPA and generates agraphical table which will serve as both a referencetool and a snapshot of the currently available evidencewithin the field.

Scientists, educators, students, contributors, and the gen-eral public will be able to use PsychTable.org to:

& Explore detailed descriptions of hundreds of proposedEPAs

& Connect directly with a worldwide community of scien-tists, educators, students, contributors, and the generalpublic

& Propose empirical evidence and studies that support orchallenge the existence of individual EPAs

& Easily evaluate the existing literature to determinehow robustly any purported EPA is empiricallysupported

& Help compile individual dossiers that profile individualEPAs’ neurolocalizations, neurochemical substrates,elicitors, outputs, and so on

& Nominate hypothesized EPAs that may be substantiatedor appear in the future via emerging research

& Gain rapid insight into which areas of evolutionarysocial scientific research are open to further empiricalinquiry

& Provide a helpful web-based study tool for students

PsychTable as a Tool for Settling Empirical Debates

Evolutionary psychology’s cultural, religious, and politi-cal controversies are well documented among academiaand the general public (Barrett and Kurzban 2006; Geher2006). In addition, elements of evolutionary psychologyare also still empirically controversial within the biosocialsciences, with scholarly critiques by some biologists andpsychologists asserting that certain basic assumptions andtenets of evolutionary psychology are empirically unsup-ported (Barrett and Kurzban 2006). Further, a broaddefinition of “evolutionary psychology” which includesall evolutionary approaches to understanding the mindhas often been neglected in favor of a narrow definitionwhich refers only to certain research programs withinevolutionary perspectives on behavior (Wilson 2009),further fragmenting the body of research in this domain.Therefore, beyond descriptive collections of EPAs andtheir biological components, PsychTable will allowresearchers and contributors to aggregate studies and

Evo Edu Outreach (2012) 5:312–320 313

evidence from across the spectrum of the evolutionarybehavioral sciences to classify the adaptations that havebeen soundly supported, as well as call attention to thosewhich may be lacking in empirical support. In this way,the project will help researchers debate and empiricallyevaluate which psychological phenomena are evolvedadaptations and which are not, irrespective of formalacademic boundaries.

Based on the number, relevance, and quality of user-added citations, PsychTable uses an embedded mathe-matical algorithm to automatically assign an evaluativepeer-review score to each EPA’s evidentiary breadth anddepth. Therefore, even critics and skeptics who reject, tovarious extents, the claims and findings of evolutionarypsychology should appreciate the project’s promotion ofscientific scrutiny and debate—indeed, one of the con-sequences of aggregating published evidence to supportor refute purported EPAs will inevitably be the revela-tion that some or many mental mechanisms proposedand even accepted in the evolutionary psychology liter-ature will not pass empirical muster. We therefore viewPsychTable.org as the first step toward a novel meta-empirical solution to some of the challenges that evolu-tionary psychology faces from within the biological andsocial sciences.

Background

PsychTable is based largely on the proposal of Bala-chandran (2011) to create a classification system forhuman evolved psychology. The first known attempt ata taxonomy for EPAs was originally made by Mills(2003), who proposed a classification system for EPAsthat included a “list of ancestral problems and subse-quent putative mechanisms.” PsychTable includes thesedescriptive items, as well as features for achievingempirical metagoals such as quality control, hypothesistesting, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and didacticutility.

PsychTable’s classification system uses as its basis theranking system of Schmitt and Pilcher (2004) for eval-uating whether a psychological trait qualifies as an EPA.Schmitt and Pilcher (2004) recommend that to supportthe claim for an EPA, evidence must be marshaled fromeight disciplinarily diverse lines of support: theoretical,psychological, medical, genetic, physiological, phyloge-netic, hunter-gatherer, and cross-cultural evidence.

The Schmitt–Pilcher framework then assesses each po-tential EPA against two sets of standards: evidentiarybreadth and evidentiary depth. Evidentiary breadth is de-scribed as how many aforementioned lines of evidence a

hypothesized EPA possesses. For example, Schmitt andPilcher (2004) tentatively propose that:

…having one box of adaptation evidence should beconsidered a “minimal” level of evidentiary breadth.Two or three boxes in a nomological network shouldbe considered “moderate” evidentiary breadth. Four orfive boxes of evidence should be considered “exten-sive” evidentiary breadth, and six or more boxesshould be considered “exemplary” evidentiarybreadth. (pp. 646–647)

Lastly, evidentiary depth is described as the qualityof the research studies marshaled as evidence for theexistence of a given EPA. For example, Schmitt andPilcher (2004) suggest that within each line of evidence,a “minimal” level of evidentiary depth might be theappropriate ranking for single studies with one modeof measurement, poor methodological control, and un-representative sampling. “Moderate” levels of evidentia-ry depth might be the appropriate ranking for at leasttwo studies with more than one mode of measurement,good levels of control, and good sampling techniques,while “‘extensive” levels of evidentiary depth might bethe appropriate ranking for numerous studies with morethan two modes of measurement, high levels of control,and high sampling quality. Finally, “exemplary” levelsof evidentiary depth might be the appropriate rankingfor lines of evidence with dozens of studies with mul-tiple modes of measurement, the highest levels of con-trol, and true representative sampling.

PsychTable.org uses this framework as the basis for asystematized evidence evaluation system, as described indetail below. It should be noted that all details regardingPsychTable’s operation and functioning are subject tochange, both as a result of practical considerations as thesite is developed, and in response to feedback from thescientific community; as the project will be a tool for wide-spread collaborative use, its developers are necessarily sen-sitive to the needs and opinions of those who will helpcreate and benefit from it.

How PsychTable Works

PsychTable is built on a Drupal-based framework for onlinecontent management, modified to fit needs of the EPAclassification system. Drupal is an open-source web appli-cation written in the scripting language PHP, using aMySQL database. The web application allows for custom-ized levels of access, administration, and content manage-ment. Drupal’s modular design also permits easydistribution of PsychTable’s data through XML, a cross-platform standard.

314 Evo Edu Outreach (2012) 5:312–320

The Homepage

Figure 1 is a tentative sketch of how the PsychTable.orghomepage will look. Upon opening the website, userswill be able to click on any of the menu buttons at thetop of webpage to view site information, a FAQ, andtutorials via the About page; individual taxa via theEPAs page; shared bibliographies via the Literaturepage; as well as educational handouts and multimediavia the Teaching Resources page. Sections may beadded or modified as the site is developed. The live

activity ticker on the left side of the page displays useractivity, discussion comments, site updates, citations,and changes made to taxa in the form of a real-timenewsfeed.

In the center of the homepage, users can view theentire classification table of EPAs. This table is thegraphical output of PsychTable’s data and citation algo-rithms (detailed below). Each EPA’s assigned number,three-letter abbreviation symbol, and evaluative rankingsof its evidentiary breadth and depth are displayed “upfront” on the table. The current version of the table is

Fig. 1 PsychTable.orghomepage, featuring table ofEPAs

Evo Edu Outreach (2012) 5:312–320 315

based upon the initial project plan by Balachandran (2011),and alternate, information-rich revisions are possible and like-ly as the project unfolds. By clicking on individual EPAsymbols, users can drill down into dossier-style descriptionsand related multimedia for each EPA.

EPA Dossiers

Inspired by taxonomic best practices, the tentative classifi-cation system described in this paper proposes that eachEPA on PsychTable be assigned a three-letter symbol, afunctional class, and a classification number, similar to thePeriodic Table of the Elements. In addition, each EPA’sputative functions in the ancestral environment; neurolocal-ization; neurochemical substrates; elictors; and behavioral,cognitive, or physiological outputs will be displayed, as wellas an appended list of past and emerging interdisciplinarystudies for updating and revision whenever relevant researchand dialogue emerges.

An example of such a dossier is provided in Fig. 2.On this sample dossier for one EPA, core disgust, userscan view and propose changes to the taxon’s putativefunctions in the ancestral environment, neurolocaliza-tion, and so on. Most importantly for the informationstructure of the site, eight clickable tabs each displayone of the diverse lines of support from the evidentiaryframework of Schmitt and Pilcher (2004): theoretical,psychological, medical, genetic, physiological, phyloge-netic, hunter-gatherer, and cross-cultural. Selecting a tabbrings up all the supporting and challenging citationswithin that line of evidence which have been contribut-ed to PsychTable by its users, along with a literaturerating for each, and an aggregated strength subscore forthat line of evidence (see following section). Clicking acitation takes the user to a page for that citation, fea-turing full bibliographic information, an abstract, andcontributor ratings and comments.

Contributors and the Rating System

Within each EPA dossier, users will find citations of researchstudies which support or challenge the existence of that EPA.These citations make up the core of PsychTable’s content. Asin the Linnean Encyclopedia of Life (http://www.eol.org),citations are user-generated—that is, added by expert contrib-utors, researchers, educators, students, and the general public.Users have varying levels of access to add or rate researchstudies/citations and edit information on the site based on theirexpertise in pertinent fields (see Table 1). Potential expertcontributors submit resumes or CVs along with a letter ofinterest and may be given curatorial levels of access, whilemembers of the general public will not have the ability to editor add citations but may submit comments or proposals

regarding dossier content that the curators or project leaderscan take into consideration.

PsychTable’s evidentiary evaluation process functionsas follows: a member of the site who has curator accessor higher enters the dossier page for a particular EPAand may rate existing citations and/or add new ones.When adding a new citation, the curator includes anexternal weblink to the citation for validation purposes,chooses whether it supports or challenges the existenceof the EPA in question, selects which of the eightSchmitt and Pilcher (2004) lines of evidence the studyspeaks to (a single study is allowed to fulfill multiplelines of evidence), and assigns the study a rating, on ascale from 0 to 100, for each line of evidence the studyaddresses. This rating is based on how robustly or con-clusively the citation either supports or challenges theexistence of the EPA within that line of evidence, withrespect to the study’s methodology, rigor, rationale, results,or conclusions. For example, a single study may—in themind of a curator—provide fairly strong theoretical ratio-nale and moderate cross-cultural support for a particularEPA but weak support for physiological mechanisms.Thus, the curator might choose to assign this citation ascore of 85 for supporting theoretical evidence, a score of60 for supporting cross-cultural evidence, and a score of 15for supporting physiological evidence. A single study may,of course, contain both supporting and challenging evi-dence; in our example, the curator may decide that thissame study also makes a fairly convincing case againstthe genetic evidence for adaptation and thus may givethis study a 75 for negative genetic evidence. Supportingand negative citations within a line of evidence aredifferentiated graphically with positive or negative signs(see Fig. 2).

In addition to rating new citations s/he has contribut-ed, the curator can also rate existing citations (i.e., thoseadded by other curators). The following mathematicalalgorithm is suggested as a method of aggregating theratings from various curators and outputting the finaltable (note again that these formulae are open to modi-fication as the project develops).

Mathematical Algorithm for Evaluating the Existenceof EPAs

Each citation within a particular line of evidence for aparticular EPA is given two aggregate literature ratings,one for its supporting citations (Ei

+) and one for itschallenging citations (Ei

−), where E denotes the specificline of evidence (see Table 2) and i indicates an indi-vidual citation.

Ei+ is calculated for each citation as the mean of all

supporting scores plus the median of all supporting citation

316 Evo Edu Outreach (2012) 5:312–320

Table 1 Possible membershiplevels and capabilities

Each role also has the capabilitiesof all those below it

Proposed role Proposed capabilities

Senior curator Appoint curators, change dossier information

Curator Review/manage ratings and proposed changes, approve contributors

Associate curator Add or rate citations

Contributor Comment, propose changes

Fig. 2 Dossier for anindividual EPA, showingindividual citations and scores

Evo Edu Outreach (2012) 5:312–320 317

scores, all divided by 2. Ei− is calculated similarly except

using challenging citation scores:

Eþi ¼ meanþ þmedianþ

2

E�i ¼ mean� þmedian�

2

Next, an overall supporting and overall challenging subscore(E+ andE−) for each line of evidence within the EPA are createdby using the maximum supporting score (i.e., the citation withthe highest Ei

+ score) and maximum challenging score (i.e., thecitation with the highest Ei

− score), respectively, from all cita-tions within that line of evidence. A total subscore for each lineof evidence (LE where E, again, represents the specific line ofevidence as in Table 2) is then calculated as follows:

LE ¼ðEþ � E�Þ

ffiffiffiffiffiffiffi

NEþ2

q

ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi

E� þ 1p

where NE+ is the number of supporting citations in line ofevidence E. LE is artificially constrained between 0 and 60, sofor all negative values, LE00; for all values greater than 60,LE060. The psychology subscore, LP, is shown in Fig. 2 forcore disgust.

An evidentiary depth score, D, for each EPA—a quanti-tative version of the standard proposed by Schmitt andPilcher (2004)—is calculated by aggregating all line ofevidence scores as follows:

D ¼ LT þ LP þ LM þ LZ þ LG þ LY þ LH þ LCNL

where NL0 the number of lines of evidence with at least onesupporting citation; i.e., evidentiary depth equals the averagescores of all available lines of evidence; D necessarily has amaximum value of 60. A nonquantitative Depth label is dis-played on each dossier and EPA symbol (see Fig. 2) and isbased on the quantitative depth score D as follows: 1−100minimal (MIN), 11–250moderate (MOD), 26–450extensive(EXT), 46–600exemplary (EXE).

An evidentiary breadth score, B, for each EPA—a quan-titative version of another standard proposed by Schmitt andPilcher (2004)—is calculated as follows:

B ¼ 5� NE>15

where NE>15 is the number of lines of evidence in which E+−E−>15 (i.e., in which the rating of the strongest supportingcitation is more than 15 points greater than that of the strongestchallenging citation). As there are only eight lines of availableevidence, B necessarily has a maximum of 40 and a minimumof 0. Note that the arbitrary value of 15 may be raised orlowered in the future to tighten or relax the criteria for evi-dentiary breadth. A nonquantitative breadth score is displayedon each dossier and EPA symbol (see Fig. 2) and is based onthe value of NE>15 as follows: 10MIN, 2–30MOD, 4–50EXT, 6–80EXE.

Finally, a total score (S) for each EPA is calculated bysimply summing the breadth and depth scores:

S ¼ Dþ B

The maximum obtainable score for each EPA is thus100 (shown in a gold box for the example EPA in Fig. 2).The strength of an EPA’s final score relative to that of otherEPAs will be graphically demonstrated in the final tableoutput (as shown in Fig. 1) by varying opacity of eachEPA’s clickable symbol on the table. A minimum scorecriterion will also be set, such that purported EPAs scoringbelow this value are considered “unsupported” and will notshow up on the table. These unsupported EPAs will beaccessible via their own section of the website, where userscan browse which proposed modules have thus far failed topass scientific muster; this section can also serve as a guidefor future research, as it suggests where more data may beneeded. This minimum cutoff score can be raised as timegoes on and more data is added to the site, to graduallyincrease the standards of rigor.

Implications of the Evaluative System

Since EPA scores on PsychTable are essentially peer-reviewratings by a trusted community of expert scientists, thecontent of the site will represent the current (and ever-changing) state of the empirical evidence, as well as theevolving consensus of the scientific community. As in Wiki-pedia, users can also engage in discussions and debatesabout each EPA via the site’s commenting system.

Though intense confrontations, “trolling,” and flamewars are possible negative byproducts of an open-accesstaxonomy, herein lies the strength of this type of system ifan international collaborative framework is achieved: everyevolutionary behavioral scientist has his/her subdiscipline ofthe biological or social sciences and his/her own focusedarea of research; thus, each brings his/her own expertise tothe task of collectively filling in the dossiers for each EPA.Soliciting research volunteers to focus on specific EPAs andpresent their findings online would help bring in the entireintellectual community of stakeholders vested in the processof both classification and empirical evaluation.

Table 2 Lines of evi-dence symbols used inalgorithm

T Theoretical

P Psychological

M Medical

Z Physiological

G Genetic

Y Phylogenetic

H Hunter–gatherer

C Cross-cultural

318 Evo Edu Outreach (2012) 5:312–320

Additional Features of the Website

Additional website elements may include: space for users topropose empirical evidence and studies for each EPA; spacefor users’ comments, debates, and discussions; and RSSfeeds for live, real-time updates of key contributions to thesite. At some point, the site will also be opened to webdevelopers for the creation of third-party applications, tools,and educational application programming interfaces. Thewebsite will be translated to multiple languages for a globalaudience, and will draw from best practices in taxonomyand database design, web-based social networks, and onlinecontent management.

In the future, we anticipate additional features onPsychTable.org, including (but not limited to): brainimages of associated neuroanatomical structures for eachEPA, phylogenetic trees showing likely evolutionaryhistories of each EPA, a section exploring the geneticunderpinnings of each EPA, and models of developmen-tal/environmental variance of the phenotypic expressionof each EPA. Additionally, the evaluative system couldutilize more objective statistical measures of publishedstudies such as significance values and effect sizes tocomplement the current peer-reviewed rating system.

Endorsements and Recognition So Far

This project’s vision has so far been officially endorsed bythree large academic organizations: The Evolutionary Stud-ies Consortium, the Northeastern Evolutionary PsychologySociety (the regional sister organization of the Human Be-havior and Evolutionary Society), as well as the AppliedEvolutionary Psychology Society. It has also received praisefrom roughly 25 distinguished evolutionary behavioral sci-entists and philosophers of science, including Steven Pinker,Robert Kurzban, Michael Mills, Donald E. Brown, GlennGeher, Mark van Vugt, David Buller, Robert Trivers, andothers. We welcome new endorsements from additionalacademic organizations, scholarly societies, institutions,and individuals as well.

Benefits to Scientists and the General Public

By maximizing the collective brainpower of the globalresearch community, PsychTable can facilitate scientificbreakthroughs that can energize academic research groups,generate funding and jobs, create new research opportuni-ties, stimulate innovations in education, and contribute vi-tality, cross-disciplinary dialogue, and consilience within theresearch community.

PsychTable can serve as a focal point for the emergingglobal culture of Web-based scientific collaboration. Addi-tional benefits of the website to both scientists and thegeneral public include:

& A central location of all EPAs and their details for easyreference and comparison

& A snapshot of the current state of knowledge in the field& Arbitration of debates about the existing evidence for

any EPA& A place for students to explore and study EPAs for

exams or research& Revelation of new research opportunities, e.g., which

areas are open to empirical inquiry& Connections between an international community of

scientists, teachers, students, and general public& An opportunity for critics to debate, engage, find con-

trary evidence, and display it on the site if they disagreewith the existence of EPAs on empirical grounds

& A resource for the general public to learn the evidencefor EPAs

& An authoritative location for researchers to showcaseand discuss the EPAs they have discovered or arestudying

& A road map of the human mind which can informapplied scientific fields, from clinical psychology toartificial intelligence

PsychTable will be an invaluable interdisciplinaryresource for investigators from multiple disciplines. Bysynthesizing and classifying the wide-ranging, multidisci-plinary, and somewhat balkanized literature on EPAs, theproposed classification system aims to bring quality control, ataxonomic approach, and consilience to the evolutionarysocial sciences.

Whither Taxonomy?

PsychTable.org is a comprehensive online collaborative ef-fort to amalgamate the existing data in one place for refer-ence. It deploys a cohesive, unified system that can enablegreat leaps forward in research, and it brings together manyof the distinct disciplines that have been attempting toanswer larger evolutionary questions of human behavior,often using very different vocabularies, methodologies,and theoretical frameworks. The interdisciplinary evaluativesystem will be especially useful for calling attention topotential areas for new research, which will be an invaluableresource for investigators from multiple disciplines.

Of course, the website’s current operating plan describedhere is only our own version of the proposed taxonomy, andthe future versions 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 and so forth are mostlikely going to look very different several years or decades

Evo Edu Outreach (2012) 5:312–320 319

from today. For the taxonomy to be effective, it must growand evolve from an international collective effort of manyminds. Therefore, we trust that this taxonomy is, at the veryleast, a good starting point for a mass collaborative endeavordesigned to refine it. Any needed improvements will mostlikely be executed by the collective brainpower of the inter-disciplinary evolutionary behavioral sciences communityover time.

The evolutionary study of human behavior is neces-sarily interdisciplinary, and a full understanding of theinteractions involved requires knowledge and expertisefrom evolutionary, developmental, cognitive, comparative,and social psychology; genetics, zoology, and neurobiol-ogy; as well as anthropology, behavioral ecology, humanethology, primatology, and a number of other relateddisciplines. PsychTable is devoted to the synthesis ofknowledge across disciplines toward furthering evolution-ary science, and aims to be the best available forum foruniting researchers from diverse fields to work toward agreater understanding of humanity.

We join evolutionary behavioral scientists of all disci-plines in calling for effective meta-empirical solutions toaddressing both political and empirical controversies. Theproject’s aim is to become the first successful interna-tional collaborative endeavor to classify the evolved psy-chological adaptations of the human mind. Specifically,PsychTable will amalgamate the existing data on EPAs inone place for instant reference and a quick look at thestate of knowledge in the evolutionary social sciences,which would be especially useful for examining potentialareas for new research.

PsychTable is currently in its alpha stage of development,with a working beta version expected to be available by late2012. We are planning for the future growth of the projecton an international level, especially regarding how to in-crease empirical rigor, credibility, didactic utility, access forthe general public, and other web-based collaborative activ-ities. We welcome partnerships with universities and

scientific institutions, scholarly societies, charitable founda-tions, research groups and labs, individual scientists, andenthusiastic volunteers, as well as funding in order to estab-lish a rigorous, sophisticated website that can handle thelarge amount of data and programming required for aneffective interactive taxonomy.

By classifying, evaluating evidence, and revealing clearpathways for new research, we trust that what we haveproposed here could literally revolutionize the way researchis done in the social and biological sciences. Educating thebroader global public about the evidence for mankind’sshared collective consciousness would help to move civili-zation forward in terms of understanding humans’ originsand place in nature, as well as working towards making theEarth a better place to live.

Acknowledgments We thank Timothy Nabzdyk for his contributionsto this paper; his astute drafts of the PsychTable.org homepage andsample EPA dossiers; as well as his single-minded creation, maintenanceand leadership of the website thus far.We also acknowledgeGlennGeher,Rosemarie Sokol Chang, and Amy Jacobson for their enthusiasm, sup-port, and assistance in the launching of PsychTable.

References

Balachandran N. A proposed taxonomy of human evolved psycholog-ical adaptations. J Soc Evol Cult Psychol. 2011;5(3):194–207.

Barrett HC, Kurzban R. Modularity in cognition: framing the debate.Psychol Rev. 2006;113:628–47.

Geher G. Evolutionary psychology is not evil! (…and here’s why…).Psychol Top. 2006;15(2):181–202.

Mills M. Toward a classification of human psychological adaptations.Poster presented at: 15th Annual Conference of the Human Be-havior and Evolution Society. 2003 June 4–8; Lincoln, NE.

Schmitt DP, Pilcher JJ. Evaluating evidence of psychological adapta-tion: how do we know one when we see one? Psychol Sci.2004;15:643–9.

Wilson DS. Evolutionary psychology and the public media: Rekindlingthe romance [Internet]. Huffington Post. 2009 Available fromhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sloan-wilson/evolutionary-psychology-a_b_220545.html. Accessed 30 May 2012.

320 Evo Edu Outreach (2012) 5:312–320