Leveraging Evolutionary Psychology for Tourism Research: Identifying and Addressing Key Challenges

Evolutionary psychology has led to an increasing number of important and novel findings on tourist and resident attitudes and behaviors. However, in parallel with such advances, several challenges hinder the further application of evolutionary psychology in tourism studies. In this letter to the editor, we therefore identify and address six key challenges to the use of evolutionary psychology in tourism. These challenges are: (1) a difficulty in distinguishing proximate from ultimate explanations, (2) a belief that evolutionary psychology focuses on nature, and ignores nurture, (3) a belief in human exceptionalism, (4) an impression that evolutionary psychology overemphasizes gender differences, (5) a view of evolutionary psychology as a single, unified theory, and (6) a belief that evolutionary psychology can be used to justify genetic determinism, sexism, and racism. In identifying and responding to these challenges, we hope to inspire scholars to consider adopting an evolutionary psychology lens in their future research.