Alters and Alters discuss in Chapter 5, Why Should Students Learn Evolution?, that the importance of evolution is not only in the science world but also in our daily lives. Evolution tends to be a touchy subject as some believe it is not important to be taught in schools while others think it is. I went to private school for most of my life where I was not taught evolution. I did not know what evolution was really until I came to college. Of course I had a basic understanding that human came from chimps but essentially that was it. It was not until taking this class even that I realized the importance of evolution. Being that I am a psychology major with a minor in sociology, I have taken many classes on human’s and their behavior. Without truly understanding evolution and the importance of it, I feel as though I have not truly understood how human’s are impacts and how this impacts behavior and daily living.

Alters and Alters state that, “evolution is a unifying theme among many sciences”. This statement I very much agree with. In psychology, specifically, I have learned that although human’s seem very similar, we all work and live very differently. Especially during development we see how much human variability there can be. If you were to examine a classroom of first graders you would see many children around the same age but at very different stages of physical, mental, emotional, and intellectual development. Evolution explains to us why they are at different stages, how they will develop later on, etc. all based on the knowledge of how generations before have answered these questions. Without understanding evolution we do not have a full understanding of the biological sciences as Alters and Alters explain. Evolution helps us answer the questions of ‘how’ and ‘why’. The focus of psychology is answering those ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions as well just not about biology, instead about human behavior, our development, our emotions, and much more.

The readings and videos did make me think about my field of study a bit differently. A lot of research in psychology focuses on the here and now. Instead, I feel as though I found an understanding of why things happen here and now as they have happened over centuries of time. This could be really useful to understand mental illnesses and their causes. I think if looking through an evolutionary perspective at this topic, we might find that there are some key patterns to mental disorders throughout generations. Knowing how our ancestors lived, even though it was very different times, can help us to live better lives today. This alone shows that evolution is extremely important. It truly effects our daily lives, whether we realize it or not. I myself realized that this can be used to better understand the field of psychology. I’m sure evolution can be used in many fields for better understanding.