- Evolutionary psychology is built upon the premise that human psychology is largely the result of evolutionary adaptations. This includes social behavior, the propensity for altruistic behavior and the formation of social groups. It rejects arguments that human behavior is largely the result of cultural or social pressures, arguing that it is instead the result of inherent mental adaptations.
- Cosmides rejects what she calls the Standard Social Science Model, which she defines as the dominant paradigm in the social sciences. According to Cosmides, this is a "blank slate" model of the human mind that argues that all social adaptations are received from sources external to the human mind, via acculturation, inculcation and indoctrination into the social world. According to this definition, mental functions are content-independent until behaviors are learned.
- Cosmides argues that humans developed the ability to map out social relations from the same cognitive mechanisms they use to create spatial relations maps. Therefore, humans have an innate faculty for social cognition that is wholly independent of their social world. The ability to create structures for social relations is inherent to the mind and therefore is not imposed, or is only minimally the result, of social pressures.
- According to a series of experiments performed by Cosmides, social contract rules function by way of cost/benefit analysis. People use the rules of cost/benefits to identify social contract cheaters. She tests whether these rules are innate or learned by giving subjects hypothetical situations in which there are cheaters and altruists and observes how well the subjects identify cheaters versus altruists. Upon discovering people identify cheaters more often than altruists under certain circumstances, she concludes that social exchange rules--and thus social contract rules--are the product of a biological adaptation to notice cheaters.
- The versions of social science concepts Cosmides critiques are largely caricatured. For example, social contracts have long been considered in terms of consent, habituation and social norms, only sometimes paying heed to the kind of cost/benefit model Cosmides relies upon to rebut all of social contract theory. Additionally, the "blank slate" model of the human mind she ascribes to the Standard Social Science Model has been explicitly adopted by only a few social theorists, even if they largely ignore the problem of inherent mental functions, preferring instead to talk about personality, observable behavior and choice. Indeed, most social scientists and anthropologists subscribe to the tenet that "culture is human nature," a tenet that is not incompatible with Cosmides's own view. Finally, Cosmides's claims to universality do not take into account the mind's inherent plasticity, claiming instead that social logic is consistent across cultures and individuals. This wholly ignores the fact that value remains relative between cultures.
