9 Evolutionary Reasons to Fall in Love with Evolutionary Psychology
Preface Darwin's Lens 15

The first extended evolution, Mind Reading 23
Second extended planet, different selection pressure 39
Gene-driven behavior 49 for the third extension gene
Fourth Extension Culture and Biological Evolution 59
The Fifth Extended Pathogen, Collectivism, and the Busan Seagulls 69
Darwin, the sixth extension, goes shopping 79
Seventh Extension: Laughing Brings Good Fortune 89
The Eighth Extension: The Heart of the Meat 99
9th extension I like it hot 109
The view beyond the tenth extended evolution window 119
Eleventh Extension: The Beauty of Nature 127
The Twelfth Extension Queen Naked Mole Rat's Private Life 137
Biology 145 of the Thirteenth Extension Story
The fourteenth extended mating season did not disappear. 155
Fifteenth Extension Hairless Sexy Ape 165
Sixteenth Extension: What Autumn Colors Say 175
Seventeenth Extension: Morality is Instinct 185
Eighteenth Extended Periodic Table of Morality 193
Why Does the Nineteenth Extended Music Exist? 203
The twentieth extension religion is an unavoidable cost of 213
How do you explain the twenty-first extended homosexuality? 223
The Twenty-Second Extended Memory Purpose 237
The Evolutionary Psychology of Low Birth Rates: The Twenty-Third Extension, Part 247
Twenty-Fourth Extension: Man's Closest Friend 257
Twenty-Fifth Extension: Why We're Passionate About Sports 267
The Twenty-Sixth Extended Perfume: The Story of a Certain MHC Gene 277
The Origins of Traditional Medicine, Part 287
Twenty-eighth Extension: Even clapping requires two hands to make a sound. 295
Twenty-Ninth Extension: Why Do Females Care More for Their Offspring? 303
The Thirty-First Extension, Weak One, Your Name Is Male 311
The Thirty-First Reason to Avoid Incest 321
Thirty-Second Extension Political Animal 331
The 33rd Extension of Welfare and Distribution 341

Conclusion: Evolution is the Foundation 351
357 to the supplementary edition
References 365
Search 385

The Best Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology
Politics, sports, welfare and distribution, gender roles, pets, etc.
Expanded edition with 12 new topics and 144 pages!

★ APCTP's 'Science Book of the Year'
★ Munji Cultural Center's 'Science Book of the Year'
★ Recommended Books for College Freshmen, Selected by the Korea Publication Industry Promotion Agency
★ 'Recommended Books for Youth' selected by the Korea Publication Ethics Commission
★ Books included in Changbi's 2015 "High School Korean Language 1 Textbook"

“Why do people living in modern industrial societies, which are far more resource-abundant than in the past, voluntarily reduce the number of children they have rather than increasing it?”, “Why are people willing to punish fraudsters and even suffer losses in the process?”, “What causes wasteful and inefficient conspicuous consumption, such as luxury earplugs worth millions of won?”, “Why do women invest more time and resources in raising children?”, “How have millions of years of hunter-gatherer life shaped our minds to view welfare and distribution issues?”, “How do companion animals manipulate the human mind to pour love into dogs or cats instead of our genetic children?”


From cooking, humor, and shopping to music, religion, politics, and morality, the best introduction to evolutionary psychology, "The Old Extension Cord," which delves into the true face of our minds, instincts, and desires through the daily lives of modern society and modern city dwellers, has been published in an expanded edition.
Professor Jeon Jung-hwan (Humanitas College, Kyunghee University), the first Korean evolutionary psychologist, wrote 『Old Extension Cord』, which was written to introduce evolutionary psychology, which was an unfamiliar field to Korean readers at the time, in a fun and friendly way. It became a bestseller immediately after its publication in 2010, and was selected as a recommended book for college students and teenagers and as the ‘Science Book of the Year’ that year.
Moreover, as a leader in truly comprehensive research that explores human nature across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, he played a role in opening new horizons in the landscape of Korean scholarship.


The expanded edition maintains the framework of the first edition, corrects some outdated or incorrect parts, and adds 12 new stories.
This book examines topics and phenomena that were not included in the first edition but are important parts of the lives of modern urbanites, such as different gender roles in child rearing, pets, sports, memory, body odor, traditional medicine, low birth rates, incest, male-female mortality rates, politics, welfare, and distribution, through evolutionary psychology.
In addition, among the related books that began to pour into the domestic market after the popularity of evolutionary psychology following the publication of the first edition of 『Old Extension Cord』, books that will help readers feel the latest research trends in evolutionary psychology are introduced by dividing them into detailed fields such as art, culture, law, management, morality, religion, literary criticism, aesthetics, and cooking.
Through 『The Old Extension Cord』, a long-loved popular book on evolutionary psychology, let's uncover the secrets of the Stone Age mind within modern humans and the human nature hidden in our daily routines.


Evolution, dissecting modern society and humanity!
From cooking, humor, and shopping to music, religion, politics, morality, and culture.
Uncovering the hidden truths of our hearts beneath the daily lives of modern city dwellers.

If French sociologist Henri Lefebvre used linguistics as a tool to draw greatness from the tedious, repetitive daily routine, "The Old Extension Cord" approaches modern society and the daily lives of modern city dwellers through the new framework of evolutionary psychology.
Choosing fresh meat and vegetables at the supermarket, laughing out loud while watching TV comedy shows, listening intently to celebrity gossip, sitting in a corner seat on the second floor of a cafe waiting for a friend, and shedding tears while singing “Oh! Korea, we will win~”… … From cooking, humor, and shopping to music, religion, morality, and culture, the sometimes trivial and sometimes heart-pounding daily lives of modern city dwellers are analyzed from an evolutionary perspective, revealing the true nature of human nature and the long evolutionary history of mankind contained within them.


Evolution, Reading Human Nature

Evolution and modern urbanites, evolution and modern society? Wasn't evolution an outdated concept, used only to explain the claws of Tyrannosaurus rex, which vanished from the Earth tens of millions of years ago? How can evolution possibly explain the behavior and minds of humans living today? For a long time, common sense has held that, unlike other animals governed by instinct, we humans are beings who create and pass down culture based on rational reason.
Therefore, human nature was considered to be an object that biology, which deals with plants and animals, could not dare to approach.
But today, 150 years after the publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, this 'common sense' is rapidly crumbling.
The Darwinian revolution, based on evolutionary biology, is shedding new light on all human knowledge systems, including the humanities and social sciences, as well as art, literature, law, religion, management, and morality.

Evolutionary psychology is at the forefront of the Darwinian revolution and has had the greatest influence.
Evolutionary psychology is not a branch of traditional psychology that arose naturally through pruning, like developmental psychology or positive psychology. Rather, it is an interdisciplinary science that was born from the process of sociobiology, anthropology, cognitive science, and psychology coming together to reflect on human nature based on Darwin's theory of evolution.
The evolutionary psychology craze that began in the 1990s reached its peak in 2009, the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. Major Western media outlets are competing to publish special articles examining fields previously considered unrelated to science from an evolutionary perspective, and popular science books that explain human behavior in an easy-to-understand way based on evolutionary theory are also very popular with general readers.


Our country is no exception; books on evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology are translated into Korean almost immediately after they are published overseas, and examples explaining male and female behavior from the perspective of evolutionary psychology or sociobiology can be found on various websites, blogs, television, and newspapers every day.
However, given the severe shortage of evolutionary psychology experts in the domestic academic world, even if general readers become interested in the evolutionary exploration of humans, it is not easy to find a guide that can systematically guide their intellectual curiosity.
Most of the popular books on evolution that are pouring out are translations, so it is not easy to distinguish between the good and the bad.
If you search for 'evolutionary psychology' on a search portal, you will find a lot of inaccurate information.
Science Books, Inc., together with Professor Jeon Jung-hwan, Korea's first evolutionary psychology expert, has published "Old Extension Cord," which introduces evolutionary psychology in an easy and fun way through examples frequently encountered in everyday life, tailored to the readers' level.
The author, Professor Jeon Jung-hwan, is a true integrative scientist of this era, having received his master's degree in ant behavioral ecology from the laboratory of Professor Choi Jae-cheon of the Department of Biology at Seoul National University and his doctorate from the laboratory of Professor David Buss, a renowned evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas, who is familiar to our readers for his books such as "The Evolution of Desire," "The Murderer Next Door," and "The Dangerous Passion."


The author, currently a professor at Kyung Hee University's College of Humanities, is researching cooperation and conflict between family members, altruistic behavior toward distant relatives, and aversion to incest and promiscuous sexual relations. He is a senior scholar who has published papers in leading international academic journals such as Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Behavioral Ecology, American Naturalist, and Psychological Inquiry, and has been introduced in detail in daily newspapers and magazines such as The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, and Der Spiegel.
Also, as mentioned in Professor Choi Jae-cheon's recommendation, "He has a unique talent for explaining difficult topics in an easy and flavorful way... with materials that everyone from teenagers to the elderly can relate to." He has published popular columns in various newspapers, magazines, and blogs (http://evopsy.egloos.com) and actively communicates with the public through public lectures such as KBS's "Humanities Lecture Rock." He is also working on projects with companies such as Amorepacific, Samsung Electronics, and Pulmuone to ensure that human psychology is reflected in the design and production of consumer goods.

Through 『Old Extension Cord』, the first and only full-fledged evolutionary psychology book by Korea's evolutionary psychologist, we will look at our daily lives, which seemed completely unrelated to evolution, through the new lens of evolutionary psychology. By doing so, we will look at our behaviors, which we have taken for granted and passed over without a second thought, from a different perspective, and will face the reality of the human mind, instincts, and desires hidden behind them.
You will also be able to gain a proper understanding of evolutionary psychology, which has been introduced superficially here and there and thus sometimes caused various misunderstandings, through a friendly explanation from an expert.


Meet the true face of our hearts

Evolutionary psychology, based on the recognition that humans are also products of evolution by natural selection, defines the human mind as a collection of diverse psychological mechanisms designed to effectively solve the specific, realistic, adaptive problems that our evolutionary ancestors have continually faced over millions of years.

The adaptive problems that our ancestors had to solve while living a hunter-gatherer life on the African savannah grasslands were numerous.
Knowing how to distinguish faces, avoiding scary predators, avoiding infectious diseases, choosing an attractive partner, finding fresh food, staying in a safe place, raising children well, avoiding scams, controlling a philandering spouse, preventing enemy invasion, and maintaining good relationships with superiors are just a few examples.
When camping outdoors, you will encounter various problems such as carrying bottles, cutting cloth, hammering nails, and stripping wires.
There is nothing more foolish than going camping with nothing but a hammer, hoping to prepare for all these different problems.
The author argues that just as we need a toolbox filled with specialized solutions like bottle openers, knives, hammers, screwdrivers, and saws to be flexible and adaptable in situations that may arise at any time, the human mind is also like a toolbox filled with numerous psychological "tools" specialized to solve various adaptive problems.

However, because our minds are designed to solve problems that arose millions of years ago during the hunter-gatherer lifestyle in Africa, like moths that mistake the light from a campfire for a mating signal from a female and jump into the flame, we sometimes have unfortunate results when faced with unfamiliar problems that emerged after the advent of agricultural or modern industrial society.
Agricultural societies, which began about 110 million years ago, and modern industrial societies, which lasted less than 200 years, were far too short a time for the emergence of complex psychological adaptations accompanied by the evolution of complex neural structures.
In other words, our minds are like old extension cords, containing only traditional tools like saws, hammers, and screwdrivers, and not even cutting-edge tools like electric planers and slide saws, which have only recently become necessary in modern times.
In the past, when food was scarce, the psychology designed to taste high-calorie foods sweet so that more energy could be consumed may have been adaptive, but in today's environment where sweet and fatty foods are readily available 24 hours a day in supermarkets, cafes, and convenience stores, it can soon become the cause of various adult diseases and obesity.

In this way, evolutionary psychology provides a new understanding of the human mind, desires, and instincts by studying the purpose of the mind's design, assuming that it was designed to solve many specific, realistic, everyday problems that our ancestors faced millions of years ago, such as what food to eat, which mate to choose, and how to avoid wind, rain, and enemies.


Digging into everyday life to uncover the secrets of human nature

This book is an effort to invite evolution into our daily lives by exploring the minds of modern urbanites and various sociocultural phenomena that are an extension of them through the new framework of evolutionary psychology.
Evolution is not just a useful concept when explaining long-extinct creatures like Tyrannosaurus rex or mammoths.
Evolution is a very useful tool that allows us to get closer to the true nature of human nature by scientifically analyzing the trivial and sometimes heart-pounding daily events of our lives.

If we look at our daily lives through the lens of evolution, we can understand not only our physical appearances, such as why humans, unlike other primates, are hairless, and why women have hidden estrus periods, but also human behaviors, such as why we burst into laughter at MC Yoo Jae-suk's self-deprecating jokes, why we perk up our ears to celebrity gossip, why we sit in a corner seat with a view outside the window when we go to a cafe, why we can't help but cry and runny nose when we eat spicy food, and why men and women have different items on their shopping lists.
Furthermore, it can also clearly explain various socio-cultural phenomena, such as ethnocentrism and collectivism that lead to the rejection of foreigners, religious devotion that leads people to risk their own lives to commit terrorist bombings, and morality that seeks to repay kindness and condemn the ungrateful.

After closing the last chapter of this book, the trivial and tedious aspects of our daily lives, which once felt boring and shabby, will unfold before your eyes as a splendid and colorful landscape.
You might encounter prehistoric humans in a subway, a baseball stadium, or a forest of downtown buildings.
You will read vivid desires in the clothes of your man or woman, and you will realize the long history of human evolution in the sight of your coworker putting mustard on his cold noodles and your mother's hands carefully selecting meat.
Just take a peek at your daily life.
We will meet the true face of our hearts.