Why are we still afraid of snakes? Contributions of evolutionary psychology to the understanding of certain behavioral biases

The purpose of this article is to briefly present the contribution of evolutionary psychology to the understanding of certain behavioral biases. This theoretical orientation, which is not well-known in France, explains behaviors by focusing on ultimate explanations (''why''). A strong idea of this theoretical framework is that the brain has been shaped by evolutionary pressures encountered in the deep past such as finding food or protecting oneself from predators. Thus, we have specific orientations in the processing of information in certain domains - leading to behavioral biases - in part related to the consequences of confronting these selective pressures encountered by our hunter-gatherer ancestors, which we will illustrate by experimental studies on food, predation, social exclusion and contamination.