<P> The history of evolutionary psychology began with Charles Darwin, who said that humans have social instincts that evolved by natural selection . Darwin's work inspired later psychologists such as William James and Sigmund Freud but for most of the 20th century psychologists focused more on behaviorism and proximate explanations for human behavior . E.O. Wilson's landmark 1975 book, Sociobiology, synthesized recent theoretical advances in evolutionary theory to explain social behavior in animals, including humans . Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby popularized the term "evolutionary psychology" in their 1992 book The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and The Generation of Culture . Like sociobiology before it, evolutionary psychology has been embroiled in controversy, but evolutionary psychologists see their field as gaining increased acceptance overall . </P> <P> After his seminal work in developing theories of natural selection, Charles Darwin devoted much of his final years to the study of animal emotions and psychology . He wrote two books; The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex in 1871 and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals in 1872 that dealt with topics related to evolutionary psychology . He introduced the concepts of sexual selection to explain the presence of animal structures that seemed unrelated to survival, such as the peacock's tail . He also introduced theories concerning group selection and kin selection to explain altruism . Darwin pondered why humans and animals were often generous to their group members . Darwin felt that acts of generosity decreased the fitness of generous individuals . This fact contradicted natural selection which favored the fittest individual . Darwin concluded that while generosity decreased the fitness of individuals, generosity would increase the fitness of a group . In this case, altruism arose due to competition between groups . The following quote, from Darwin's Origin of Species, is often interpreted by evolutionary psychologists as indication of his foreshadowing the emergence of the field: </P>

Who was a major figure in the evolutionary perspective