Feeling Good: An Evolutionary Perspective on Life Choices

Author: Menelaos ApostolouPublisher: Transaction PublishersPaperback:ISBN 10: 1412863333ISBN 13: 978-1412863339Hardcover:ISBN 10: 1412862698ISBN 13: 978-1412862691Every day, people make life choices that, ideally, increase their evolutionary fitness – the chances of survival and successful reproduction – and lead to positive feelings of fulfillment, accomplishment, and happiness. Sometimes, however, individuals experience quite the opposite: feelings of sadness caused by fitness-decreasing choices. Fortunately, many advancements in evolutionary theory and evolutionary psychology have increased humans’ capacity as a species to address the question of how to live a life characterized by more positive than negative feelings. Feeling Good reveals anyone can learn how to trigger mechanisms that generate positive feelings and increase positive fitness levels. The key is to employ an evolutionary perspective on how mental mechanisms generate feelings in relation to our life choices. From an i