Human memory is an evolved trait, fine-tuned over generations by the process of natural selection. Using the technique of forward engineering, our laboratory has derived empirical predictions about remembering by focusing on the main criteria that drive natural selection. Memory systems must have evolved because they enhanced fitness — i.e., survival and reproduction — so we reasoned that memory’s operating characteristics likely show sensitivity to fitness dimensions. As we review in this chapter, this strategy has led to the discovery of a number of novel phenomena, some of which are among the most potent memory-enhancing techniques yet discovered in the memory field. Included in our discussion are the effects of survival processing, animacy, potential contamination from disease, and finding potential mating partners. Throughout, we consider the merits of taking an evolutionary perspective on the discovery and interpretation of mnemonic phenomena.

A popular assumption in evolutionary psychology claims that reciprocal altruism is supported by a cognitive module that helps individuals to detect and remember cheaters. Enhanced memory for cheaters would be suited to avoid social exchange situations in which we run the risk of getting exploited by others. In line with this idea, previous studies found a source memory advantage for faces of cheaters relative to faces of cooperators. However, such findings should not be interpreted uncritically. This effect can also be explained with more general cognitive mechanisms. A general preference to attend to and remember negative and unexpected information may ensure that our limited processing resources are focused on relevant information. Therefore, enhanced source memory should be found for a variety of situations, proving to be more adaptive than a mechanism exclusively focused on cheating.

We review a selective history of the literature on related concepts such as belongingness, selective associations, and constraints on learning, as well as evidence for general learning processes. We then review the more recent and nascent literature on adaptive memory specializations in humans, vis-a-vis general models of memory. Following this introduction, we propose two insights that resolve the tension between general processes of learning and memory, on the one hand, and adaptive specializations, on the other. In the first insight, we use the analogy of how the general processes of DNA transcription and translation produce adaptively specialized proteins that are cell- and tissue-specific to serve as a model for understanding how learning and memory processes can reflect a common process at one level of analysis (e.g., cell-molecular) and adaptive specializations at another level of analysis (e.g., neural circuitry). The second insight comes from understanding how similarities in behavioral phenomena can arise due to shared ancestry (homology) or convergent evolution (homoplasy). These insights promise to unite psychological explanations of behavior with the rest of biology.