Evolved Affects: Evolutionary Perspectives in Affective Neuroscience

Dear Colleagues,

Affective neuroscience has substantially advanced our understanding of the neural, hormonal, and physiological substrates of both basic and complex emotions. Concurrently, evolutionary theory has long emphasized the adaptive significance of emotions, dating back to Darwin’s foundational work. Despite their conceptual complementarity, these two approaches,  examining proximal mechanisms (how emotions function) and ultimate explanations (why emotions evolved), are often pursued separately. However, only through their integration can we achieve a more complete understanding of emotional processes.

This Special Issue will support and promote integrative approaches that unite affective neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, focusing on how evolved adaptive functions shape emotional experiences and how these are instantiated in brain and body systems, as well as how such integration can deepen our understanding of the emotional mind. We encourage research that highlights domain-specificity, recognizing that emotional systems may have evolved to solve distinct adaptive problems across domains such as pathogen avoidance, mate selection, parenting, status negotiation, or moral regulation. We welcome theoretical, empirical, and review articles that examine emotions through both proximal (neural, hormonal, physiological) and evolutionary (adaptive function, ecological context) lenses.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Neural, hormonal, and immunological correlates of specific emotions and their adaptive significance;
• Domain-specific emotional systems (e.g., disgust in pathogen vs. sexual contexts; anger in status negotiation; jealousy in mate retention);
• The role of ecological and social context in modulating emotional responses;
• Emotional adaptations and their physiological underpinnings (e.g., ovulatory shift, menstrual cycle effects);
• Domains of disgust (e.g., pathogen, sexual, moral): triggers, context, and biological correlates;
• Evolutionary models of crying, jealousy, anger, and their neural mechanisms;
• Integrative approaches linking affective neuroscience and moral psychology;
• Sex differences in emotional processing from an evolutionary and neurobiological perspective.

We particularly encourage submissions employing diverse and integrative methodologies, including neuroimaging, hormonal assays, psychophysiological measures, behavioral experiments, and comparative or theoretical analyses. Interdisciplinary research that synthesizes insights from psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and related fields is especially welcome. 

Dr. Ivana Hromatko
Guest Editor

Dr. Una Mikac
Guest Editor Assistant

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• affective neuroscience
• evolutionary psychology
• adaptive function of emotions
• domain-specificity
• proximal mechanisms
• neural correlates
• hormonal correlates
• ecological context
• emotion and adaptation