Motivation and Emotion

Evolutionary psychologists explain human motivation in the same ways that evolutionary biologists explain human anatomy and physiology, but it goes much further. Evolutionary biologists explain human anatomy in terms of adaptive physical structures that became progressively more complex over time. Evolutionary psychologists explain motivation and emotion in terms of adaptive mental structures that have become progressively more complex over time. Every human motivation and emotion exists because it served an adaptive function that increased the chances of survival and reproduction. Love, art, faith, sacrifice, determination, envy, anger, and more, from a naturalistic psychology perspective, are not transcendent, supernatural, or even special. They are illusions
– ways of understanding and interpreting innate patterns of behaviors and mental processes that themselves are no more than biochemical processes which exist solely to help us pass along our genes to the next generation.