Mind Reviews; October/November 2007; Scientific American Mind; by Kenneth Silber, Meredith Knight and Amelia Thomas, Nicole Branan, Corey Binns, Melinda Wenner; 2 Page(s)

Evolutionary psychology, a school of thought whose influence has grown over the past decade, seeks to explain human behavior as if it were aimed at maximizing "reproductive fitness." In other words, we do what we do because it enabled our ancestors to have more offspring than others--and thus pass on the genes that predispose us to behave in such ways.

In Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa, sociologists by training who have embraced evolutionary psychology, apply this viewpoint to matters ranging from dating and marriage to crime, employment, religion and war. (Miller, who taught at Hokkaido University in Japan, died in 2003; Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science finished the book alone.)