The purpose of this article is to encourage teachers of psychology to make greater explicit use of evolutionary theory in their courses. Examples and arguments are presented to show that evolutionary theory can help students (a) think critically about classic psychological theories; (b) understand psychology's recent shift away from general theories toward narrower, domain-specific theories; (c) think about the possible adaptive functions of psychological phenomena that are often considered only as pathologies; and (d) understand the rationales behind cross-species comparisons in psychology. The article also exposes three mis-beliefs that seem to have helped dissuade many psychologists from taking advantage of evolutionary theory in their thinking and teaching.
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