Confer, Jaime C., Judith A. Easton, Diana S. Fleischman, Cari D. Goetz, David M. G. Lewis, Carin Perilloux, and David M. Buss (2010) Evolutionary Psychology Controversies, Questions, Prospects, and Limitations. American Psychologist 65 (2): 110–126 DOI: 10.1037/a0018413
Evolutionary psychology has emerged over the past 15 years as a major theoretical perspective, generating an increasing volume of empirical studies and assuming a larger presence within psychological science. At the same time, it has generated critiques and remains controversial among some psychologists. Some of the controversy stems from hypotheses that go against traditional psychological theories; some from empirical findings that may have disturbing implications; some from misunderstandings about the logic of evolutionary psychology; and some from reasonable scientific concerns about its underlying framework. This article identifies some of the most common concerns and attempts to elucidate evolutionary psychology’s stance pertaining to them. These include issues of testability and falsifiability; the domain specificity versus domain generality of psychological mechanisms; the role of novel environments as they interact with evolved psychological circuits; the role of genes in the conceptual structure of evolutionary psychology; the roles of learning, socialization, and culture in evolutionary psychology; and the practical value of applied evolutionary psychology. The article concludes with a discussion of the limitations of current evolutionary psychology.
Evolutionary psychology has emerged over the past 15 years as a major theoretical perspective, generating an increasing volume of empirical studies and assuming a larger presence within psychological science. At the same time, it has generated critiques and remains controversial among some psychologists. Some of the controversy stems from hypotheses that go against traditional psychological theories; some from empirical findings that may have disturbing implications; some from misunderstandings about the logic of evolutionary psychology; and some from reasonable scientific concerns about its underlying framework. This article identifies some of the most common concerns and attempts to elucidate evolutionary psychology’s stance pertaining to them. These include issues of testability and falsifiability; the domain specificity versus domain generality of psychological mechanisms; the role of novel environments as they interact with evolved psychological circuits; the role of genes in the conceptual structure of evolutionary psychology; the roles of learning, socialization, and culture in evolutionary psychology; and the practical value of applied evolutionary psychology. The article concludes with a discussion of the limitations of current evolutionary psychology.
RE: "Legal scholars are increasingly using knowledge of
ReplyDeleteevolved psychological adaptations to understand how to
better regulate human behavior and guide policy decisions."
The section from which this quote was taken caught my attention as the principle of using the "reasonable personal standard" seems to be in fairly stark contrast with another concept that's repeatedly been brought up in class and in previous skywritings - that of the "other minds problem". Briefly, the "reasonable person standard" is said to use the experience of some standard or average (not sure if either 'standard' or 'average' are apt in this context) 'reasonable person' as a baseline for determining whether a perpetrator of some action should be held liable. The "other minds problem" in the context of law would be applied to a jury having to judge whether a defendant acted the way a reasonable person would have. But is this "reasonable person standard" actually 'reasonable' in and of itself if the paper at hand even brings up apparent variations in the way that people perceive things and consequently cognize, e.g. the descent illusion hypothesis. Furthermore, by what merit can evolution be used as a guide for understanding what is legally right or not? If anything, another contradictory statement is brought up in the paper in regards to there being a "modern rise of sociopathic traits as a consequence of living in large cities". If I understand the authors' point correctly, living in large cities is comparable to a modern day 'survival of the fittest'. In other words, it entails more competition to thrive and a subsequent rise in sociopathic traits facilitating less empathetic and more self-serving behaviors.
This leads me to question whether using evolutionary psychology is pragmatic for something as critical as legal rulings, when people's lives can literally be at stake. Though I don't want to wholly dismiss evolutionary psychology, I do get the impression that a number of ideas generated by the field teeter on being post-hoc rationalizations that are often contradictory.
My understanding is that the authors are questioning, rather than justifying, the "reasonable person standard." They do so on the basis of potentially-evolved sex differences in perception of harassment. Without this knowledge, the standard might seem perfectly knowledge, but having it in hand we see that it's very flawed. This sort of situation is one example of how evolutionary psychology can guide the legal process.
DeleteAnd what's contradictory about there being a rise in sociopathy?
the standard might seem perfectly reasonable ***
DeleteHi Michael,
Delete'Contradictory' might've been a strong word to use; my main point there was that what really is 'reasonable'? We generally don't deem behaviors symptomatic of sociopathy to be those that a 'reasonable' person would possess or act on. Put another way, such behaviors wouldn't be ones that would be associated with carig much about the distinction between right and wrong (those same behaviors that facilitate evolution), so can we really use evolutionary psychology to guide a legal system that is fundamentally based on distinguishing between right (legal) and wrong (illegal). Perhaps I'm completely mistaken, but that was how I interpreted that section of the paper.
Liza, You are right that human society, and the laws we choose to adopt, designate what we consider right and wrong. Evolutionary psychology might (sometimes) help us better predict, understand and even explain some human tendencies and motivations and their origins. But if human judgment, laws and courts are fallible in determining what is true or right, evolutionary explanations and interpretations are even more fallible. They can usually only the "explain" the obvious, after the fact, and even then in only a statistical sense.
DeleteMichael, the question of the evolutionary origins of sociopathy (not caring about others' pain) is an interesting one, and theorists have speculated about social behavior, dominance, hierarchies, competition, combat, and the contexts in which selfish or aggressive traits may be -- or may have been -- adaptive (for our genes). Just as interesting (and perhaps even moreso) is the question of the evolutionary origins of empathy and altruism, which is again related to social behavior and especially tomammalian parental success (for our genes ). Because, on the face of it, evolution itself is sociopathic: Nothing "cares" about whether individual organisms are hurt or die; the process of genetic variation and selection based on survival and reproductive success is a purely mechanical and quantitative one.
The "hard problem" of how and why organisms feel rather than just do comes to mind: What would be the adaptive explanation of sociopathy and altruism in an insentient ("zombie") world T3/T4-indistnguishable from our own?
I think that studying the cognitive differences between people with antisocial personality disorders and normal, empathetic/ altruistic people might be helpful in designing T3. One problem AI engineers face is the fact that AI must be built with human interests 'at heart'. However, like natural evolution, deep learning algorithms are value-free. It will be interesting to see if we build in empathy/altruism into the hardware of our AI, as oppose to the software. I wonder how that could work... I also wonder if the behaviour associated with empathy and altruism must be 'feeling' dependent, or if we can design machines with empathetic and altruistic behaviours, without the capacity to feel.
DeleteAn evolutionary psychologist might say that our feelings give us cognitive short-cuts, helping us ascribe values and judgements to our world without much cognitive work or processing time. Our feelings also give us an infinite array of experiences, (qualitative data) to then judge. I wonder if this theory would be enough to persuade AI engineers that reverse engineering our emotional system is the best route to designing empathetic, altruistic AI...
So the conclusion I take from that paper is that human's cognition evolved as adaptations to challenges and opportunities that came with their increasing social life (compared to other species). This document and the previous paper on the psychological evolution of humans through the need for adaptation to their environment, lead me to make parallels with a paper on microbiology I read last semester. The reason for that is that bacteria have a "social" life, they share food which can be linked to human altruistic behaviors, they create protecting barriers as groups which is similar to psychological cooperation, and most of all they know to have one member commit suicide to protect the rest of the group (apoptosis in order to liberate molecules produced that are meant to kill the competitive/enemy bacteria group). If the bacteria evolved to have "social" behaviors because it was these behaviors provided a reproductory advantage, then how come these planned-suicide properties came to be? Because clearly the reproductive advantage is for the individual that is not saving the rest of the group by killing themselves. My point is to use this situation as an example for all the cases in which a certain psychological/cognitive trait was conserved because it allows better survival of the species, even though it does not provide a reproductory advantage for the individual that has the trait. " Population genetics – Altruist makes sense in groups, because all the altruist is doing, even with self-sacrifice, is giving his fitness to the group – to circulate in the collective economy"
ReplyDeleteJulie, there is a problem with finding a causal mechanism for altruism: Genes are the ones that code for heritable biological traits. The genes that code for traits that help their bearer's chances to survive and reproduce are the ones that are selected for (i.e., the ones that successfully get passed on to the next generation). The genes that reduce their bearers chances to survive and reproduce are selected against, through the same mechanism. So how and why could genes code for suicide, or even for wasting any energy at all helping other organisms and their genes (altruism) rather than just themselves?
DeleteA partial answer is "includive fitness": Genes are not individual organisms; they are parts of organisms. And also parts of their parents and their progeny. So there could be conditions in which it is adaptive to have a gene that codes for sacrificing yourself for the success of other copies of the same genes in your relatives. The genes may have a better chance of making it into the next generation that way than if its every gene for itself alone.
There are also social theories according to which it is adaptive to individual organisms in a population if all organisms return favors when they receive favors (this is called "reciprocal altruism"). This advantage would work if there were also a tendency (evolved or learned) to detect and punish "cheaters." The basis for it all would still be the selfish gene: the social cooperation and altruism that they code for would still have an indirectly selfish basis.
But doesn't this mechanistic, Darwinian explanation break down with a species that has (evolved) cognitive capacities like ours, such as language and social institutions) that are based on cultural factors (which may change with cultural circumstances or fashions) rather than genetic ones? The cognitive capacities are genetically determined, to be sure; but is it still sensible and explanatory to say that all the things we may actually choose to do with those capacities are genetically determined too?
“Evoked culture arises from human cognitive architecture and expresses itself differentially according to local conditions.”
ReplyDeleteThe explanation of culture as arising from various cognitive architecture and depending on changing and specific local conditions caused me to reconsider the notion of a universal TT robot. Because culture has such a strong influence, answers to questions one would use when corresponding with a TT robot could vary based on culture and time in history. Therefore, although there is an argument for certain homogeneity in human capabilities, is there a possibility that a TT could pass on a human judge in 2017 USA but fail against a human judge living in the deep amazon in 2017? (or vice versa). I understand the notion of disabilities does not apply to the TT robot as it is first trying to replicate human ability, intellect and capacity. However, if cross-cultural differences are so strong and apparent, how can we reconcile a universal TT robot?
I wonder if humans vary enough because of social/culture that a Turing robot that passed the TT in one place and time, could not pass off as a human at another place and time. If Dominque was transported to Japan 2035, I think that they would certainly recognize she was North American (I assume Dominique?), and probably a little old fashioned with odd slang words and taste preferences, but I don't know if she would really fail the TT.
DeleteI suppose we need to ask ourseleves if being receptive to local cultural conditions is something that humans do, therefore something that a true TT robot would need to be able to do. This I think strengthens the argument that to have complete computational cognition, there would need to be some interaction between experience and underlying software (ie. our environment and genetics). Again, it looks like T3 would only be able to pass the test if we believe that culture/social/evolution is necessary to the human.
Aliza, I found your comment very interesting and related to my own thoughts. In class I form an opinion about the potential of AI and the workings of cognition when we focus on the (extreme) micro; yet, with readings such as this that examine the macro (e.g. evolution, threat of extinction etc.) I find it difficult to envision a TT robot that passes without these complex processes that are embodied in our genes and "cognitive architecture". I tell myself to only evaluate behavioural equivalence and disregard the (absent) processes in a potential TT robot. None the less, culture is something that I too wonder about. How can it be integrated in a sophisticated and authentic way? So as far as your question goes, I agree with Cassie that the same way a human from another culture or generation does not have its identity questioned; I imagine the same principle would go for a TT robot. None the less, I would suggest that culture must be incorporated with grounding. After all, everything we ground is immersed in our specific culture. And in light of this, I too wonder if a TT robot would be questioned on this basis. Unlike a human that is more dynamic in its engagement of culture (integrating things around him/her; changing perspectives etc.), a robot is presumably programmed to be human as human exists in this culture in this time. Adopting the same complex dynamic features of cultural impacts on humans would certainly be difficult and surely a testament to true reverses engineering.
DeleteThe concerns that have been brought up, are about the ability of a Turing robot to pass the TT regardless of the relevance of cultural reference or framing point. By cultural reference/framing point, I mean the cultural background of that robot and relevant time period the Turing robot is meant to be from (time period would also have an effect on culture). As Cassie and Jessica have eluded to, cultural framing of our Turing robot may be a necessary but not sufficient requirement to passing the TT. Cultural framing would be relevant for the robot to have the appropriate outputs but cultural framing alone will not guarantee its outputs will be sufficient to pass the TT. Evolutionary psychology is intertwined with cultural, genetic, environmental and social explanations of behavior. From the article I have extrapolated evolutionary psychology’s close ties with reverse engineering of the Turing robot with regards to hardware (the brain), software (genes), and importantly input (environment, socialization, culture) and output (evolved behavior).
DeleteIn order for the Turing robot to pass the TT, it needs to appropriately interact with the input it is given and produce a suitable output. The robot needs to have the ability to interact differently with a given input (much like with categorization), depending on the context which that input is given. Based on Aliza, Cassie and Jessica's comments about the importance of cultural framing, if a TT robot was built in 2017 and it was put through a TT in 2040, like humans, the robot should be able to take the input that is given to it in 2040, and readjust or learn new appropriate outputs that are more in line with 2040’s ‘culture’. A simpler example would be the ability of people to learn to respect different cultures when they travel. Although learning of new customs may take time, a human is still capable of doing so. I am interpreting this learning as the robots (or humans) ability to categorically learn to do the right thing, with the right kind of thing. To learn what a good vs. a bad behaviour looks like in a context dependent manner. This categorical learning need not apply in a cultural context alone but may apply to different environments, social situations etc.
Aliza, first, I think you mean T3, not TT (i.e., T2). Second, what would your answer be to the question of whether a real person from another culture could pass T3? If yes, then T3 is culture-independent.
DeleteCassie, again, it's T3 we're talking about. And that means it's not just about computation (because T3 cannot be purely computational). Yes, being able to change and to be able to adapt to other cultures is part of every (normal) person's T3 capacity.
Jessie, to be able to pass T3 is to have the cognitive capacity that Dominique has (which includes her capacity to change and adapt to other cultures). What do you know about "robots" that makes you think a robot could not be Dominique or vice versa? And what do you mean "programmed"? Computational? But we learned in week 2 that computation is so powerful that it can learn and go beyond what any "programmer" knew it could or would be able to do. (And besides, T3 capacity can't be all just computational.)
Nadia, yes, our "cultural capacities" are part of our cognitive capacities, hence part of T3. (Besides, how much interpersonal interaction does it take to deserve to be called a "cultural" change, rather than just learning to do different things under different conditions?)
I particularity liked the reading this week, I too was fairly skeptical of evolutionary psychology before the reading so was happy to hear a more comprehensive overview of the field, but I'm not sure I'm totally convinced yet. I'm interested to hear what the rest of you all think.
ReplyDeleteI think an important point for looking at this type of analysis is that evolutionary psychologists are dealing with populations of humans and not individuals. They mentioned this as a limitation at the end, but I think it is useful to remember that evolutionary mechanisms occur statistically and the generalizations that this field makes only really can be applied to a so called "average" non-existent human. And so we can think about genetics and evolution not as deterministic bits of code, programming us to be non-trusting commitment-hungry women, rather as explanations for probabilistic dispositions for certain traits and behaviours. Studying evolution can give us possible mechanisms for why these genetic predispositions came to be, which I agree can certainly be useful to understand how the brain's cognitive architecture came to be. I think pairing this field with genetics and neuroscience is particularly interesting because it's like jealously and food taste are behavioural affordances of the organisms genetics, they can only come to be because the brain is structured the way it is.
Cassie, yes, but isn't perhaps the most powerful and important feature of human cognitive capacity the degree to which we can act against our biological dispositions? Other species can learn to do some of that too -- especially under human pressure and training -- but for us this vast, fast potential (like our huge infinity of potential categories) seems to be the hallmark, and based more on or linguistic capacity than anything else.
DeleteI would add that not only our cognitive capacity can act against our instincts, it can also enhance them and above all disguise them as products of our rational thinking. This is also one of the reason it is so hard to draw the limit between « instinct » and « rationality » : as thinking beings able of language it is hard for us to accept that some of our behaviors are determined, and many evolutionary hypothesis are dismissed in favour of more rational ones even if there is not particularly more evidence for any. This may ironically be an evolved feature of our species: the struggle of identity and self and the fear of not being master of our own life.
Delete@Professor, yes that is a good point, that genetic/biological material can only go so far as to helping us explain cognition when in fact much of high level cognition appears to go beyond our dispositions. But if everything, even our ability to create infinite categories must arise from genetics and biology, then there must be some relevance to discussing it. Perhaps that evolution is too low of a level of analysis and that examining our higher up linguistic abilities is more helpful in understanding how human cognition came about. This might be true if the genetic component of our cognition is insignificant to explain beyond our "animal programming".
Delete@Mael, I'm confused by how you are understanding rationality here. Aren't evolutionary hypothesis rational when given decent evidence (as done in this article). I think that evolutionary theories don't appear rational when we already have a preconceived notion or intuition as to why things are the way they are, which I suppose is actually irrational.
Hi Cassie, to speak to your point, "there must be some relevance to discussing it. Perhaps that evolution is too low of a level of analysis and that examining out higher-up linguistic abilities is more helpful..." Perhaps genetics and biology are components that interact with each other and higher order components that make up human cognition. I totally agree with you that genetic/biological material are necessary but not sufficient when considering human cognition.
DeleteRegarding the idea that fear of snakes & spiders more readily “pop out” of the visual system natural for humans, humans condition more rapidly to fear them than other similar stimuli and are especially difficult to distinguish.
ReplyDeleteDoes this mean that humans are born with the categories for spiders and snakes? We discussed in class that the claim that humans are born with all categories is ridiculous, but this piece of evidence seems to favor the idea of at least some categories being present at birth. Could it be that humans are born with a fear of the characteristics that snakes and spiders have? As an example, are humans innately afraid of sharp fangs? But aren’t “fangs” in themselves a category?
A possible explanation is that they fear the characteristics without having a name for them, in the same way that most animals would fear a snake or spider without having a name for them. I’m struggling to come up with an explanation for this, does anyone else have any ideas?
Categorisation as we have discussed in class is doing the right thing for the right kind of thing. As long as we produce fear responses for the kind of things that we ought to fear, then we have successfully categorised it. I don't think being able to name it is necessary.
DeleteHowever, I think your question pinpoints exactly the nuance that is articulated in this paper about the difference or similarity between learned and evolved. In particular, what do you mean by "innate"? From this paper, I can conceive of a time when no living organisms had this pop-out visual response and that organisms had to learn in their lifetime to categorise snakes and spiders and learn the appropriate invariant fear response. However, over time, because of naturally occurring genetic mutations, organisms who possess mutations that causes selective enhancing of our visual identification of spiders and snakes are more evolutionarily advantaged to reproduce and pass on these mutations. These then further get honed by evolutionary pressures such that eventually the descendent organismal species are born with these snake/spider categories. In this case, evolution, like learning, is picking out the invariant features and mapping the responses and doing the categorising and not a particular individual in the course of their lifetime. So, these categories only seem innate when looking at the time of a person's life, but when we consider the phylogenetics of the human species, an acquired category through evolution.
Interesting question, I think that evolutionary psychology would be comfortable with the following theory: of course there are innate fear categories, because children would be more vulnerable without them. Innate categorization of fearful objects is common in Chimpanzees and Gorillas, and has been observed in humans as well. If anyone is interested, this article talks about innate fear conditioning in humans http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00753.x/full.
DeleteI think your point is correct though that the category of 'snake' is not an innate one, rather an innate sensitivity of fear and long thin things in the grass. While the category is not innate, one would think that children with a sensitivity to a certain stimulus would form categories around it more easily. If they find the stimulus more interesting/stimulating, they would be more curious about it, and this would be selected for.
Perhaps this suggests an explanation of why children like scary stories, or learning about exotic animals, dragons, and construction equipment. Even why parents tell their children scary stories. However, as warned against in the article, this is speculation, not something that can be generalized from.
Edward, I tend to agree with your suggestion that "snakes" in themselves are not be the innate category for a fear response but rather the long thin things on the ground. Something I have heard is that babies and really young children are actually not afraid of snakes (a claim from an ethnographic source and http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151022-where-does-our-fear-of-snakes-come-from).
DeleteAn example that comes to mind is the that of mis-recognition. Say you are are walking down a street and see a long rope that you mistake for being a snake. The first response is that of fear, but on closer inspection it turns out to be a rope. Immediately your fear response dissipates. In this case the cause of fear is in the pre-existing thing which is the snake/rope. It can be anything long that causes a fear response, but the next reaction might be culturally conditioned or reiterated.
Even if we accepted the claim that we are born with an intrinsic fear of snakes. And to do the right thing (categorization) is the fear or avoid snakes. We can't account for why some cultures and professions (snake charmers) try to actively engage with snakes.
Karl, yes, spiders, snakes, heights, water, the dark -- these are among our species (few) innate categories, with their own inborn feature detectors, shaped by evolution, like the frog's bug-detector.
DeleteYi Yang, what is meant by "innate traits" is evolved traits. So, yes, our innate categories and their feature-detectors evolved by genetic "trial and error," "supervised" by the consequences for survival and reproduction.
Edward, human snake-feature-detectors (like frog bug-feature-detectors) don't have to be "exact." (How exact can they be? Every snake and bug looks different!) They just have to abstract the invariant features that distinguish members from non-members (to a close enough approximation to get you a sandwich from the sandwich machine or to find the person you need to pick up at the train station!). (Not clear why kids like scary stories and scary amusement park rides. Might be adaptive rehearsal for the real world, like play-fighting in kittens; or might just be a biologically neutral cultural artifact in a protected environment?)
Soham, part of human cognitive capacity is to learn to inhibit or overcome inborn tendencies.
I wonder if something like "monsters" can be considered an innate category. Many children fear that a monster might be hiding under their beds or in their closets at night, and of course our ancestors evolved around the potential threat of real life monsters like bears, tigers, and wolves. Archetypal monsters tend to have sharp fangs or claws, come out at night, and eat people - all things that actual predators do. Despite its apparent fantastical nature, it seems at least plausible to me. Has any work been done on this subject?
DeleteHi Michael, you bring up a cool point! When I think of monsters, I think of the traditional mythical monsters such as werewolves, zombies, vampires, and Monsters Inc type creatures. I think at some level those fears can be explained as evolved fear adaptations to creatures that are common to humans but twisted and alien.
DeleteWhat is more interesting to me is how all monsters we fear are fictional and man made. In this sense I do think this fear is innate, as it is an innate projection of fear and danger into an imaginary creature. It could be an innate need to paint evil people/characteristics with an association to a dangerous animal characteristic/behavior.
There are the most recent "monster" myths to consider too! What comes to mind is "Slenderman", who has no obvious animal characteristics. Perhaps this myth is a sign of modernized fear projection (ie fear of lone figures in an isolated place, etc)?
The various examples presented throughout the paper were extremely interesting & informative - this may have been my favorite article to date. However, I do find one of the questions a bit unnecessary. Specifically, question 3 - "Aren't human behaviors the result of learning and socialization, not evolution?"
ReplyDeletePersonally, I've found that in all of my university classes, it has been emphasized that behaviors are the result of an interaction between environment and genetics. In not one of my classes has it been stated that a resulting behavior is due to genetics or environment alone. Perhaps when this article was written in 2010 there was a more widespread belief that behavior resulted from learning/environment or biology exclusively. Nowadays, though, at least on the university level it seems common knowledge that behaviors are due to an interaction of the two.
I also found that section particularly interesting. The “interactionist framework” of evolutionary psychology does allow for a more encompassing explanation for our behaviors, and certainly, agrees with the explanation of CP as both a learned and evolved perceptual mechanism. It seems highly unlikely that our behavior could be the result of either genetics or environment alone, since we are inevitably affected by the environment we live. It’s interesting, however, to think of how our immediate “environment” influences both our genetic construct and learned behaviors. I wonder how evolutionary psychologists are able to differentiate between a trait that is universal to all humans versus a trait that is dependent on a particular environment or historical circumstance. How do they determine if a trait is both time and place-independent or just a result of their current cultural context? How do evolutionary psychologists escape these ethnocentric assumptions?
DeleteLaura, there's no question but that everything we do is influenced by both our genes and our learning. The question is: what role does genetics play in behaviors that are the results of our (genetically evolved) cognitive capacities and their experience and use during our lifetimes, rather than of genetic traits themselves? Don't you notice that some things (fear of snakes) are readily explained by evolved genetic dispositions, whereas other things (preference for Victorian literature) are not? And that there are a lot more of the latter?
DeleteJaime, In the other reading for this week, David Buss and co-workers think they have found universals in our gender differences in sexual preferences...
Whoops, the Buss reading is indeed this one...
DeleteI certainly agree that there are many more things that are not directly explained by genes and evolution than the authors of this article seem to believe. Even when talking about something universal, like evoked and transmitted culture, the authors state, “neither of these distinct senses of culture, however, can be divorced from the content-structuring, evolved organization of the human mind.” I find that cultural aspects of society are a product of interaction between people, although they probably also have an evolutionary root.
DeleteFor example, the authors repeatedly mention that for evolutionary reasons, people don't desire to mate with their relatives. This is generally accepted across cultures due to the fact that this would result in complications with one’s offspring, but may be because incest is a social taboo associated with immense disapproval across cultures. I wonder, however, how an evolutionary psychologist would describe the origin of contrasting cultures where men or women have polygamous relationships, or the opposite where two partners are solely monogamous for their entire lives. Alternatively, some people choose to refrain from being with a partner (or partners) at all. These examples may be culturally imposed or simply a very valid personal choice – either way they are all present in our society today. How can these extremely different cases all directly be a result of evolved genetic dispositions?
Annabel, the inhibition of incest is there in all mammals, not just humans; it can be enhanced by culture too, but it has direct genetic roots. A tendency can be genetic, but it can be influenced or even over-ridden by culture; the cognitive capacity for culture, in turn, is genetic, but its potential infinity of outcomes certainly is not genetic.
DeleteHi Professor, the aversion to incest is a result of a biological drive for genetic diversity, right? Since genetic diversity often creates a higher likelihood of species success.
DeleteWhat would you say is the link between biological drive, like the aversion to incest, and our cognitive rationalizations of such a drive? Biology drives our cognitive abilities?
A specific part of the article I found very interesting - "Psychological adaptations will be activated by the cues, or close approximations of those cues, that those adaptations were designed to detect, regardless of whether the adaptations currently serve the functions for which they originally evolved."
ReplyDeleteHere, the authors use an example of how in the modern world a man's tendency for sexual jealousy may not make sense, yet will still occur. However, I would argue that this might not be the case - in the article the authors use birth control as an example... if a woman is on birth control, the man should not display sexual jealousy when considering that she would not produce an unrelated offspring to the man. However, it is a well-known fact that birth control is not 100% effective - therefore, can the authors even argue this? Even if the chances of the birth of an unrelated offspring were decreased, there is still a possibility that it could occur - which I would argue still supports the psychological adaptation of sexual jealousy in this particular case.
Wouldn't that lead to the prediction that jealousy should scale with the chance of being impregnated?
Delete@Michael Based on the psychological adaptation view it shouldn't matter whether the adaptation currently serves the function it was evolved for. But the researchers are making it seem like birth control would protect 100% from impregnation - this isn't the case, so their example isn't the best, in my opinion. Perhaps they should be using a woman who has passed menopause instead as an example?
DeleteLaura and Michael: You are overlooking the crucial difference between the ancestral environment (the EEA: the "environment of evolutionary adaptedness") that shaped a trait, and the effects of the trait in the current environment. You are also missing the difference between the "distal" adaptive cause (hence "purpose") and the immediate psychological ("proximal") cause: The classical example (which I'll remind everyone about in class) is children's sweet tooth. Here it is in cartoon simplification:
DeleteSweets raise blood sugar which gives energy, so they help human young to escape predators. In our ancestral environment, sugar was rare and predators were abundant. So children with a voracious appetite for sweets whenever they found them escaped predators; children that were more take-it-or-leave it about eating sweets were more likely to be eaten. So the surviving kids all have a sweet tooth today.
But in today's environment there is a candy machine on every corner, and what the sweet tooth gets you is cavities, obesity and diabetes.
And the reason we feel like eating sweets is not so as to raise our blood sugar to be able to escape predators. We feel like it because we (evolved to) like the taste.
Now apply the ancestral/current environment distinction, and the distal/proximal cause distinction to analyze the sexual example you raised...
The daughter guarding hypothesis, as explained in the reading is “greater parental constraint on the sexuality of daughters would have provided three functional benefits”, notably protecting their daughters mate value, sexual reputation and from being exploited. To me this seems like a plausible explanation as to why (across almost all cultures) parents tend to be more likely to control their daughter’s mating decisions.
DeleteObviously, as you mentioned Laura, with birth control this is no longer an issue. Sexual activity and reproduction have become dissociated and therefore this is another example (like the sugar and diabetes example) of how the EEA has formed an adaptation that does not fit within the current environment.
I would argue that, today, it not rational to be protective of your daughter’s sexual reputation or to feel angry when you catch your wife in bed.
As the reading asks, “Are men pausing to rationally deliberate over whether this act jeopardizes their paternity in future offspring and ultimate reproductive fitness, and then becoming enraged as a consequence of this rational deliberation?”
In class Prof. Harnad asked us “Why does it have to feel like something to taste sweet?” I think that it must feel like something to taste sweet for the same reason that it feels like something to be jealous and to be protective. These emotions serve as shortcuts which guide us to behave in ways that will increase (or would have in our EEA increased) the survival of our species.
I found this article interesting because it offered a somewhat new view to psychology than I am used to hearing and learning about. In many of my psychology courses there's a lot of emphasis on the influence of genes and environment on individuals, which this article doesn't completely discredit but emphasizes that evolutionary adaptations have also had a large effect on modern day human behavior.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious whether evolutionary psychology has more of an effect on general trends in behavior, such as learning to avoid incest or toxic foods and how to increase status and prestige. Whereas genes and environmental influences have more specific individualistic effects. For example, as mentioned in the article, prenatal exposure to androgens influence within-sex differences, such that females exposed to higher levels will be more masculine.
The authors mentioned that they don't deny the importance of environmental influences. Therefore, maybe a good way to look at it is both evolution and environment play a role in shaping behavior, such that neither alone would be sufficient in explaining it while both are necessary in doing so.
I don't think the article was suggesting that there was a difference between the scope of impact in evolutionary psychology and genes. In fact, it talked about how evolutionary psychology may be genetically based as well as based on environmental cues.
DeleteIn section 6: what role do genes play in the framework of evolutionary psychology they discussed the interaction between genes and evolutionary psychology. They debunked the possibility of genetic determinism (evolutionary psychology cannot be entirely gene based) but they did not ever say it was not entirely genetic.
Possibly what you are referring to is the difference between physical adaptations and psychological adaptations.
Re: practical applications of evolutionary psychology
ReplyDeleteThe authors don't go into much detail on this point, but another example of applications of evolutionary psychology can be found in behavioural economics. Classical economics was based on rational agent theory, the idea that people act and make economic decisions in a rational way based on calculated cost-benefit analyses. However, the work of psychologists like Amos & Tversky has shown that humans are far less rational and consistent, and our decision-making processes are far more malleable to influences that, rationally, seem irrelevant.
For example, classical economics would predict that given a choice of products A, B, and C, a person would make the same choice in every situation. So, whether you present them [A B], [B C], or [A B C], they will always choose B, say. But, the evidence from behavioural economics & decision-making psychology suggests that what someone chooses depends largely on presentation order (something looks more appealing following a lower-valued alternative than a higher-valued one), framing effects (the opinion of the person presenting the choice), and other factors that have little to do with the products themselves. This and other evidence suggests that human decision-making is far from ideally rational.
Given this understanding, I think evolutionary psychology could be used to better shape public policy and other regulation of human interaction (interpersonal or through media). It can illuminate some of the ways in which people can be subtly manipulated to buy, vote, or act a certain way, or can be used to encourage people to act more pro-socially. For example, some parts of the UK have been taking advantage of people's desire to fit in to successfully encourage tax-owers to pay up, by including things like "90% of people in your neighbourhood pay their taxes on time" in government-issued correspondence.
I really like your practical approach to these subtle behaviours that are likely overlooked (especially in this article) for being counterintuitive toward evolutionary psychology. Your example in the UK of getting tax-owers to pay up is a great case where motive is introduced by means of a kind of humane empathy. Not necessarily towards direct benefit to another, but identifying one’s own by means of identification with the other. Part of me feels that what decision-making psychology has shown us is the ways in which sociality, our desire to conform, influences our choices. What better way to design policy than the kind which reminds people that they are part of a larger whole, not just one penny in the jar?
DeletePeople develop adaptive functions that are selected by evolutionary force. It’s always interesting to note that these adaptive functions can be seemingly “negative”, such as pain and fear as protection means against threats. People with congenital insensitivity to pain (inability to sense pain) will in fact die from burning or hurting themselves without feeling anything. Another example could be dissociative identity disorder, which could be developed by children under harsh environment while not being adaptive when they grow up or when they move to another environment. Referring to what we’ve covered in class before, should an adaptation like pain be characterized into a category that is innate to us?
ReplyDeleteIn considering the role of pain in evolution, pain states are associated with damaging experiences is the result of natural selection. Pain can be an adaptive trait and improve the survival value. But in other cases, pain is only a by-product of natural selection. (http://www.socrethics.com/Folder2/Biology.htm)
DeleteI agree that both pain and fear have its importance in helping us to survive, but I am not sure if we can say pain as solely an adaptation, if pain could also be just an unpleasant sensation (and emotional experience) without the function of enhancing survival. For example, menstrual pain does not have any function in helping you to survive or to avoid injury. There are also phantom limb pain and pain sensation that happens without having an injury (There is a story that a builder had an accident that a 15cm nail went through one of his boots. He was super painful, was sedated with painkillers but ended up it was found that his foot was entirely uninjured after removal of his boot).
While trying to reply your comment, I was trying to define adaptation, and I would like to share:
If and only if a trait fulfills the following criteria will evolutionary biologists in general declare the trait an adaptation:
1. The trait is a variation of an earlier form.
2. The trait is heritable through the transmission of genes.
3. The trait enhances (the probability of) reproductive success.
(Adaptationism, Wikipedia)
I think the topic of pain is very interesting in terms of adaptive function. Clearly pain has important uses to human survival (to get out of situations that cause pain, since often they can be life-threatening; to avoid using an injured body part which would allow healing, etc). I do think pain could count as an innate category, since besides very select people, it is universal and generalizable. It seems to be present at birth and not something learned. Something that is interesting to think about is the vast difference in pain tolerability and how that has continued to occur, instead of being regulated by genes/evolution. Another point to consider is the occurrence of chronic pain. This seems clearly non-adaptive, causing many health problems. Could we look at this in an evolutionary standpoint? Short-term pain processes could have caused long-term/chronic pain as a by-product, being non-beneficial but necessary in order for pain to exist at all.
DeleteWell for long-term pain without a physiological damage it’s surely not something adaptive, rather it’s like a broken alarm. But generally speaking the alarm system of pain (when it’s a “hit” not a false alarm), is an adaptive by-product of natural selection.
DeleteRe: Novel Environmental Phenomena
ReplyDeleteConfer et al. propose two ways that recent novel environmental phenomena may affect evolutionary psychology. First, certain ancestral adaptations may be negated due to the development of a modern environment, an environment that doesn’t allow for the behavioural adaptation to serve its original function, or that has rendered the behaviour obsolete. Second, novel environmental stimuli may serve as a cue, or approximate cue, that trigger the psychological adaptation since it resembles the ancestral cue that the adaptation was originally evolved to detect.
The article provides an example of “male sexual jealousy” as an adaptation that has become obsolete, since as a result of the growing use of contraception, the purpose of male jealousy (to avoid investing in unrelated offspring) no longer seems necessary in its current context. Could the same explanation be used to account for maladaptive behaviours, in that the current environment no longer allows for the psychological adaptation to serve an appropriate or useful purpose, but rather fosters an unfavourable outcome that is detrimental to the animal’s survival and reproduction (like in the example of male homosexuality)?
"To take one concrete example, sexual harassment
ReplyDeleteand stalking laws typically invoke what is called a “reasonable
person standard,” which means that a person can
be liable for behavior if a reasonable person would have
found the behavior to be sexually harassing or fear inducing.
Evolution-guided research, however, has shown that
women consistently judge a variety of acts to be more
sexually harassing than do men, and women experience
greater levels of fear than do men in response to specific
acts of being stalked (Buss, 2003; Duntley & Buss, in
press). But if reasonable women and reasonable men have
different reactions, how exactly can a jury apply an ungendered
“reasonable person standard”?"
Furthering the argument of the authors, I think that there are more issues with this distinction than simply the gender difference. Clearly, different cultures have different views on what behavior is acceptable and what is not, for example: when it comes to what behavior is acceptable between a man and a woman. While this might have not been an issue for laws when countries were all homogenous groups of people, nowadays, since many countries are mixtures of many different cultures, it seems quite unreasonable to have one definition of what a "reasonable person" would think on a matter.
Shouldn't the "standard" be taken from the victims point of view (and gender) rather than the stalker's point of view (and gender)?
DeleteI am having trouble understanding how much weight the authors are putting on genetics when it comes to evolutionary psychology. In my opinion I believe that certain beliefs (such as about incest and mate selection) are passed on socially, and the idea passed on is dependent based on the culture. Perhaps women have evolved to have higher oxytocin over time to create stronger maternal connections (and child survival), however I am wary to put too much weight onto genetics when even present cultures vary so much. In regards to the quote below, I am wondering if the authors considered the strain a child would put on the parents when creating the daughter guarding hypothesis.
ReplyDelete“According to the daughter guarding hypothesis, greater parental constraint on the sexuality of daughters would have provided three functional benefits: (a) protecting their daughter’s sexual reputation, (b) preserving their daughter’s mate value, and (c) preventing their daughter from being sexually exploited (Perilloux et al., 2008). Using two separate data sources, young adults and their parents, Perilloux and her colleagues found that parents were more likely to control their daughter’s than their son’s mating decisions”
For example, if the daughter has a child at a young age, the parents are much more likely to have to help raise the child - impacting them financially as well as emotionally (constant crying, babysitting, stress, amount of leisure time etc.). This could even be an issue if the daughter is not financially stable at an older age, and is marrying someone who the parents see as not financially stable/wouldn’t be a present figure in the child’s life. I believe that the daughter guarding hypothesis is very noble in that it centers around the daughter’s well-being, however I do not believe that one can ignore the potential costs the parents may face if the daughter has the child at an inopportune time.
For our ancestors, who evolutionary benefits of today, are based off of, I'm not sure I understand how/why a daughter having a baby at an inopportune time could cause serious problems (especially in terms of reproduction, since it will have been a successful reproduction). It seems like the parents would be able to take care of the grandchild just fine and make sure it successfully grows.
DeleteI think the paper is more referring to the parents controlling whether their children are mating with appropriate partners in order to successfully carry on their genes. However, I do not see why parents would be more careful in selecting daughter's mates if this were the case. They also talk about sexual exploitation, which in current society occurs more from men towards women. However, do we know that the same was true for our ancestors and that there would have needed to be evolutionary functions to help protect daughters from this threat? I found their argument of daughter-protection in general to be very rough and not convincing.
I was interested in the adaptivity of homosexuality, so I looked more into current theories and explanations on that topic.
ReplyDeleteFor example, one such theory is based on altruism/same-sex bonding. They claim:
"Support is strongest for the hypothesis that homosexual behavior comes from individual selection for reciprocal altruism. Same‐sex alliances have reproductive advantages, and sexual behavior at times maintains these alliances. Nonhuman primates, including the apes, use homosexual behavior in same‐sex alliances, and such alliances appear to have been key in the expanded distribution of human ancestors during the Pleistocene. Homosexual emotion and behavior are, in part, emergent qualities of the human propensity for same‐sex affiliation. Adaptationist explanations do not fully explain sexual behavior in humans, however; social and historical factors also play strong roles." - http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/300145.
This above source (1999) was published much before the article assigned for this week (2010). I'm wondering why the Confer et al. paper is quick to reject such evidence (without much an explanation as to why it doesn't work as an explanation), along with other theories (such as a need for non-reproducing adults to help take care of kin offspring). Moreover, this argument discusses altruism as a given as evolutionarily beneficial, but this concept has also been much discussed and argued as to what it's benefit is/could be. Both of these accounts need more nuance and background to fully explain the story
In addition, I'm wondering why science has a lot of attention on the subject of adaptability of homosexuality. Not all traits are present are adaptive, as they can come about for many reasons. Perhaps there are other scientific explanations for this occurrence.
I think you have a great point here. Some people, for example, are very fond of the color blue, and some people like wearing dresses. What is the evolutionary advantage of liking the color blue? Or of wearing dresses? It seems like it might be taking it too far to try to explain that using adaptability - These are just traits some people have, and, as you say, not all traits are adaptive. There definitely seems to be an obsession in science with trying find an adaptive explanation for homosexuality, and I'm not really sure why that is, when it's clear that non-adaptive traits can exist.
DeleteI also have to wonder - Let's we say homosexuality is completely lacking an adaptive evolutionary explanation, and is maybe even disadvantageous. What then? Is homosexuality and its existence somehow less 'scientifically valid'? Obviously not. I think this points to the fact that evolutionary psychology and its notion of 'adaptive traits', while very interesting and useful, does not provide a complete explanation for everything, and trying to use it alone to explain everything that humans do would fail and may have implications that are both nonsensical and dangerous.
When reading about the theories mentioned at the beginning of the article, I began to think of how they relate to common sayings in our language. Error management theory which says that we should prefer false positives over false negatives can be related to the saying “better safe than sorry”. Descent illusion hypothesis which describes asymmetric distance estimations when looking down vs looking up can be related to how we always say, “wow everything looks so small down there” but never “wow everything looks so small up there”. Finally, commitment skepticism bias which looks at how women under infer levels of romantic commitment can related to how women say, “I don’t trust you” a lot more than men do. These relationships made me wonder; which came first, the language or the theories? We seemed to have learned these sayings subconsciously so is there some evolutionary disposition to learn them? Furthermore, would we be able to look at similar examples in language and derive ultimate explanations for evolved function?
ReplyDeleteRE: “Aren’t human behaviors the result of learning and socialization, not evolution?”
ReplyDeleteOne must not conflate evolution with learning and socialization. While nature and nurture are not mutually exclusive, there is an important distinction to be made between biological evolution and social evolution.
Biological evolution reflects a lasting and heritable change to an organism’s genome. These biological changes occur along a time scale that radically differs from that of cultural evolution. While socialization and learning can modify gene expression, this change, although biologically integrated, is not heritable. Instead, the lasting change is transmitted socially. These social changes occur along a time scale that is much faster than biological evolution.
The issue in conflating the two is that each differ in the type of input that enables their respective psychological adaptation. For example, contradictions in the “adaptive utility” of some evolved psychological mechanisms might mean that the function of a biological adaptation differs from that of a cultural adaptation.
Therefore, although the authors highlight the fact that both forms of evolution interact with one another, the same quantitative methods cannot be applied to both because it is possible that biological evolution has a causal mechanism that differs from that of culture evolution.
I think this is a good point that points to the complexity of giving a specific evolutionary account for most complex human behaviours. We are both "100% culture and 100% nature" but this only makes the task of understanding their interaction more difficult. As the authors state: "labeling something as “learned” does not, by itself, provide a satisfactory scientific explanation any more than labeling something as “evolved” does"
DeleteOne underemphasised evolutionary mechanism that helps illustrate the complexity of tracing back a simple evolutionary story for a given trait is "relaxed selection"/niche construction. The evolution of colour vision is one example. The idea is that once our ancestors started reliably eating fruits, the selection pressure under which our genes which produced the vitamin C was relaxed, allowing the gene to mutate into a pseudo gene. But as a result we became "addicted" to fruits, without which we would die due to a lack of vitamin C. This offloaded function to the environment then caused a variety of phenotypes not previously under selection for anything to do with this function to subsequently come to function as an integrated suite. (Apparently the evolution of three-colour vision, changes in tooth structure, digestive adaptations, metabolic changes and many other primate-specific adaptations, all would have increased the reliability of access to and utilisation of dietary vitamin C). These novel synergies may then open the door to other possibilities and adaptions.
This is a relatively simple example, but it illustrates how just-so linear narratives of singular traits evolve for specific functions are potentially misleading. I don't know how one would even begin to disentangle and explain the effects of highly complex co-evolution between humans and the "artificial" niche that we have constructed for ourselves (society).
I am not quite convinced by the daughter guarding hypothesis. I believe no two kids receive the exact same parenting, no matter they are boys or girls, no matter they have the same parent or not. I wonder, to what degree is significant enough to say there is a difference in socializing daughters than sons in the sexual realm? If each kid receives unique parenting, and if we cross-culturally sum up all the mating control that parents have posed on their kids into two groups, boys and girls, and compare, then either the boy group or the girl group will be more sexually restrained than the other. Since everyone has received unique parenting, it is almost impossible to have equal sexual restraint between boys and girls. If the possibility, that daughter guarding just happens naturally/by chance to be more common than son guarding, is not excluded from the result with evidence, then the daughter guarding may not be very convincing either.
ReplyDeleteOne of the limitations of evolutionary psychology, the deficiency in explaining cultural and individual differences, further leads me to question whether evolutionary psychology is convincing, especially when without documenting its genetic basis. The daughter guarding hypothesis, so do a few examples on behavioral differences between sex, seem to lack evidence that proves these evolution adaptations really have significant survival or reproduction significance (i.e. fail to prove whether these behaviors exist solely because of evolution).
I do agree that human mind is constantly adapted to solve tasks and problems that we come up with as we evolve. And culture is a big factor that shapes our mind. But I wonder if our minds really adapt to solve problems and to do stuff, so as to survive (and to reproduce). I am not sure if surviving is the ultimate goal of cognition.
I think the authors address your concern as to the lack of genetic evidence in some of these cases. They give the example of the human eye and how it is undisputedly adapted for vision, with particular capacities such as color and motion perception, despite many of the genetic bases of these capacities remaining unknown. It is very likely that future research will reveal these genes, and indeed they will be very helpful in solidifying knowledge in this area, but I do not think genetics are a necessary "first step" upon which all work must follow.
DeleteColin, I definitely agree that what we call we call a category doesn’t matter as much as the category’s invariant properties, but in bilinguals I believe there are times where a category’s name brings up different emotions and memories than in their other language, especially if those languages aren’t from the same language family. In those cases, the name of the category does carry weight, even if the properties are the same and there’s no visible difference between the two, such as thinking about Al-Qahira in Arabic or Cairo in English.
Delete“The sexual infidelity of a man’s mate has been statistically associated with increased paternity uncertainty over deep evolutionary time. It is highly improbable, however, that men could learn this statistical regularity during develop-ment. To do so, men would have to observe a large sample of instances of sexual infidelity (which tend to be cloaked in secrecy) and then associate them with potentially detect-able cues to lack of paternity that would be displayed nine months, or even several years, later (e.g., lack of pheno-typic resemblance to the putative father). “
ReplyDeleteThis section of the article speaks to the poverty of the stimulus problem which is presented as evidence against a domain-general rationality mechanism (an alternative to the domain-specific mechanisms that evolutionary psychology favors). I think this is a weak example to argue this point on because the concept of infidelity seems to me like it could be easily communicated through social interaction. Observations of a large sample of instances of sexual infidelity would not be necessary, when just a few salient stories of unfaithful partners would be enough to stir up feelings of jealousy and anxiety. In contemporary times this is particularly prevalent due to media reporting on celebrity and political infidelity scandals, but is easy to imagine pre-media as well.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteThis is another example that gets at the blurred line between cultural learning and evolutionary predisposition. When evolutionary psychologists label a psychological phenomena as learned or evolved, they are doing guesswork. It makes sense that more pervasive psychological/ behavioural phenomena (cross-culturally) would be more likely to be evolved rather than learned, but without a better understanding of our cognition on a neurological level, we have no scientific way to make the distinction.
ReplyDeleteIf a western male child were adopted into a polyamorous enclave where monogamy/ fidelity was not a norm, then would the association between female infidelity and anger/scorn be a dormant category in the individual? Who knows...
ReplyDeleteThe paper prioritizes evolutionary explanations over social ones (I suppose by nature of the discipline, but my own begs me to differ). For example, the following six-step treatment to depression is apparently successful because it targets access to resources (hunting, building shelters, spending the day outdoors) our ancestors had access to; it suggests augmenting omega-3 consumption, getting at least 30 minutes of sunlight per day, “ramping” exercise, socializing daily with family/friends and adopting good sleep hygiene. But the article fails to concern what enables people to have access to these resources. The experience of depression is highly dependent on social status (see link below – great film on the social causes of illness). Another explanation to depression could be inferred from a capitalist ideology of gaining money as a means to an end or the emotional consequences of inhabiting stolen land by histories of colonial violence. A more practical understanding of the causes to illness may lead to better treatment regimes that target cause before symptoms.
http://mcgill.worldcat.org/title/unnatural-causes-is-inequality-making-us-sick/oclc/216930144&referer=brief_results
Krista, Confer et al's notion of cognition and explanation (and evolution) is extremely simplistic. That's why it's so hard for us to find the line between the plausible evolutionary explanations of our traits and the preposterous ones. (It seems to be continuous rather than categorical!)
ReplyDeleteThis is posted from our email exchange:
SH: Hi, this robot is certainly not T3: All it can do is walk and lift. Yet already it shakes us up to see it being knocked down. Empathy is evolved, and it has innate feature-detectors. With robots, it’s fooled. But with other animals it is faithfully telling us what we already know in our hearts…
KL: It definitely gives the shakes, but i'm not sure how that means the feature detectors are innate. Could empathy be explained by ontogeny?
As usual, it’s both, because of evolution’s laziness (or thriftiness).
We no doubt have evolutionarily “prepared” tendencies to “imprint” on the features of our kin and kind. But the features are not entirely pre-fabricated. Evolution “offloads" the task of completing their construction to experience from our early, species-predictable environment.
(We’re like the duckling, which “learns” from experience to (1) follow the shape of the first moving thing it sees — and later in life also to (2) mate with shapes that resemble that first shape, whether it was a duck or a human.)
We have neither kin- nor kind-detectors rigidly pre-tuned to the shapes of our family or our species. Just vague, generic tendencies that are banking on the overwhelming probability that what we will encounter early will be our own kin and kind. (If not, we’ll almost certainly not survive. Adoption was not part of our ancestral environment — or that of any species, except specialist “cheaters” like the cuckoo.)
This week on evolution could have been a whole course, but we’ve got to move on to language now…
(Meanwhile, the “uncanny valley” provides some more food for thought about the perception of animacy.)
In my opinion, the most convincing argument for evolutionary psychology lies in the explanation of sex differences with respects to behaviour. However, with relation to culture I find the explanation a little more incomplete. To what point is culture shaped by the psychological adaptions formed by natural selection, and when is enough momentum/a critical point reached for us to be able to say that culture also plays a contributing role in psychological adaptions. It plays into a 'what came first situation' where culture is dictated by psychology as it is dictated by environment. And to further complicate the issue, what are we to make of cultural relativism? I understand the argument for domain specific explanations, however culture serves as an umbrella for a huge number of phenomena, and similar phenomena like emotional responses, mannerisms, morality vary more specifically through different cultures. At what point does genetics entangle itself into socialization ?
ReplyDeleteI find your comment to be really interesting and furthered my understanding of the reading. Furthermore, I wonder how our socialization may have turned natural selection on its head. For example, now traits that may have been less useful for surviving have become what is 'generally' attractive. An example of this is being thin. At least in Canada and the US, thin is socialized as one of the most desirable natural traits, however; evolutionarily (in the past, before civilization) it would be an extreme detriment to survival status.
DeleteThis brings the question also to how our manipulation of the environment will affect natural selection.
The relationship between evolved tendencies and transmitted culture is a fascinating one.
ReplyDeleteI tend to lean towards the interactionist view, and the so-called "selection pressures" of transmitted culture/adaption-culture coevolution seem like a valuable directive for future study.
For instance, the authors mention specific cultural aversion to pork, which obviously would not be an initial human adaptation before the advent of agriculture and the ability to be choosy about our sources of nutrition just as veganism and sociopathy (in cities) have become equally valid, or atleast less disadvantaged/risky lifestyles. And although they probably have not had significant impact (yet) on the evolution of adaptations in our modern populace, the increasing trend towards urbanization and the ever-broadening spread of nutrition options available have resulted in transmittable artefacts, where culture may be overriding adaptation.
RE: The Validity of Evolutionary Psychology
ReplyDeleteAfter these two readings and last Friday’s lecture, I’m still not sure what exactly is incorrect about the theory of evolutionary psychology. Of course, I agree that (as with any other theory), that there are incorrect directions that it can be taken in. I think we can reasonably conclude that language did not evolve as a peacock-esque mechanism for fellas to “talk-up” ladies. And I agree that every psychological mechanism (such as the desire to rape) does not solve a particular adaptive problem, but that does not entail that every psychological mechanism couldn’t be explained in terms of evolutionary functionality (for example, by linking rape to a deficiency in the evolutionary mechanism of sympathy). In other words, do any psychological mechanisms exist in contradiction with evolutionary theory? If so, how?
Delete@Augustus. What’s wrong about evolutionary psychology? You already mentioned “Just-So” stories. Here are some other things I find myself critical about in evolutionary psychology:
(1) Testability. The article says that “domain-general rational thought is typically post-hoc” meaning that in a lot of studies it’s as if nature already tested out a hypothesis for you, you ‘discover’ the hypothesis, and then you go back to the data there is to see if it fits the hypothesis. This is quite different from having a hypothesis, finding representative samples, randomly assigning and rejecting your null hypothesis. Post-hoc hypothesis don’t have high predictive power as they are looking at data retrospectively. Now, ethics aside, if instead we created a device that could perfectly mimic evolution and we could test theories on a bunch of different samples and measure/compare the results, our theories would be more valid, replicable etc.
(2) Finding causal mechanisms. It’s hard to distinguish between which traits were adaptations for selective success vs. which ones were due to random variation, by-products or noise. This makes it extremely challenging to come up with causal theories of evolution because again we can only create theories post-hoc such as the “inclusive fitness” idea for altruism/self-sacrifice. And so there doesn’t seem to be a scientific way to create a clear line between just-so stories and potential theories. In this way, even the idea that we may have developed altruism to help our kin make it to the next generation, might just end up as another (albeit more believable) just-so story. Since we’re trying to solve the easy problem of how and why we can do what we do, this doesn’t give us very concrete mechanisms, but rather possible descriptions.
However, cognition and language is something that has evolved, therefore we cannot completely abandon evolutionary psychology. Perhaps phylogenic methods that look at evolutionary change within and between different species can give clues to why we evolved language while other species didn’t... I’m not sure, what are your thoughts?
As for whether any mechanisms exist in contradiction to evolutionary theory, I guess one of the most puzzling ones would be suicide. But there's also as we discussed in class homosexuality and altruism. There were possible explanations for each of them given in class but keep in mind that these may (or may not) be just-so stories and are hard to prove right or wrong.
You bring up a couple of good points Nimra, and I'd like to add a point that may sound a little idealistic. I have a somewhat personal moral problem with "blaming" things on evolutionary psychology. Augustus brings up the example of "the desire to rape" – if we found a biological explanation for such a desire, does that absolve the rapist of their crime? It is my personal belief that while we are biological creatures, what constitutes the basis of our morality, by extension the basis of what we consider right and wrong in the eyes of the law, aim to transcend such biological impulses. To me, turning to evolutionary psychology to put an explanation behind morally ambiguous or condemnable behaviour veers far too close to justifying such behaviour.
Delete
ReplyDeleteI think there is a lot to say for this distinction between what is “known” and what is “felt”, or, Rationale vs Intuition. Evolutionary psychologists conflate the two by rationalizing intuitions.
This is a feature of language, and it can be exemplified by split brain experiments:
Say a person with a severed corpus callosum was flashed the word “bell” to their right hemisphere (non-speaking ) and “music” to their left hemisphere (speaking). When flashed a photo of 4 instruments, he choses the photo of a bell, and when asked to explain why he chose the bell he says “the last time I heard any music was from the bells outside the lab”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82tlVcq6E7A
Essentially humans are prone to rationalize their dispositions. This article did not convince me of a concrete basis for the conclusions of evolutionary psychology, it only furthered my conviction for the human inclination to explain things in hindsight.
Because what is “rational” differs across adaptive problems, sexes, ages, and life circum- stances, there exists no single domain-general criterion of rationality
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with this point. It is dangerous to infer what rationality was like for those who have lived thousands and thousands of years before us. Not only, their surroundings and life circumstances were critically different from us, we are not completely sure to what specific extent our ancestors shared the same brain structures and brain mechanisms at that specific point in time. The danger of making assumptions about what their rational would have been in different scenarios is just as risky as saying that : “ A dog rolls in the grass because he is happy.” We project our own common sense and logic onto another “person” and therefore fail to see that he might be rolling in the grass for another reason (ie. to roll in a certain smell).
I think that two large problems with evolutionary psychology are (1) a lack of ability to demonstrate causation, due to the extremely slow process by which changes in a species take place, and (2) the circular way in which many hypotheses are likely produced— the most interesting aspect of evolutionary psychology is its ability to explain modern-day behaviour, however this will likely lead to developing hypotheses about why such a behaviour might have been useful for humans in the past. This hypothesis would, in turn, be tested through examining modern-day human behaviour, the very thing it was originally developed to explain. This may lead to a problem in differentiating between evolutionary adaptations and their by-products, since both will likely correlate with certain behaviours for which we can come up some explanation.
ReplyDeleteFor both of these reasons, I believe that techniques such as the clinical intervention for depression that was described are not only useful for treatment purposes but also for confirming or disconfirming evolutionary hypotheses. In order to fully understand the development of a certain behaviour and make conclusions about what produced it throughout evolution, we need more than to know that the behaviour is present. We need to look at what happens to participants when living conditions are changed, to determine whether their subsequent behavioural changes (e.g. reporting being less depressed) also change the way we would expect them to.
RE: Novel environment
ReplyDeleteSince the modern day environment renders certain adaptions useless, wouldn't the brain evolve towards more generally adaptability/flexibility rather than for certain things (like male jealousy.) Especially with technology, the our environment is changing so rapidly that I don't believe evolutionary psychology can account for how we are adapting. For instance, the current generation takes to technology almost immediately, which obviously cannot have been an evolved skill.
However, I believe that the brain has evolved to adapt quickly. Rather than natural selection favoring people with brains who can use technology, it favored brains that can learn new situations with ease. The article focuses too much on specific adaptations becoming obsolete (like sex drive/pornography) rather than how amazing it is that humans can adapt to these changes in a lifetime.
Ignoring the fact that humans are quite adaptable already, I don't think the brain would evolve something new for the modern environment. Things started to change for us as a species only recently, evolution can’t make changes fast enough and the way I see it, it doesn’t really have to – we are adaptable enough as is. In my opinion the specific adaptations the article focuses on are to help make the case of evolutionary psychology. At the same time, I do like the last point you’ve made – that the brain evolved to learn new situations and be able to adapt quickly.
DeleteAmar, I like your argument on the speed of adaptability of in the human brain. I don’t thank natural selection plays as great of a role in shaping our brains as it used to. Environmental/genetic factors no longer hinder the ability of humans to pass along their genes in the same manner as the earliest homo sapiens. Sabre tooth tigers sneaking in the grass no longer hinder the genes of myopic individuals to be passed on to future generations. If I may elaborate on your point, I think you mean our adaptability is our power to use cognition that may go against our biological intuitions?
DeleteDespite the article’s goal to clarify the evolution psychology stances and its practical value, my overall sentiments post reading is that the evolutionary psychology can only provide convincing arguments to explain limited sets of behaviours, such as sexual jealous and spider, snakes phobia.
ReplyDeleteYes, they did touch on perhaps more convincing, quantitative promise that “the developments in molecular genetics will be increasingly useful in testing evolutionary psychological hypothesis” – but this still doesn’t augment the practical realm of evolutionary psychology. Because by finding genetic basis responsible for a behaviour doesn’t inform scientists on how it does so, and there will still remain no causal relations.
And, from class discussion, it is underlined that evolution codes the capacity to learn in the genes; such that it programs for our capacity to learn the language and not the language itself. So it seems that evolutionary psychology has the potential to be something more, if it could focus on explaining the origin of cognitive capacity, aside from the sex and phobia stories.
I find the part of the article written about “evolved sex differences in the emotion of jealous” (p.114) interesting. The authors site many studies that proposed that there exists a difference in the forces that lead men and women to become jealous, and that women tend to be more jealous about emotional infidelity, whereas men are jealous about sexual infidelity. However, I think that these claim is a bit problematic, in that it assumes that there exists some sort of definite biological and evolutionary difference in the brains of men and women. We discussed the supposed biological difference in male and female brains in my neuroethics class, and from what I have researched and learned, it is still a very contentious issue. I believe that the main crux of the argument is that it is true that there are differences between the male and female adult brain, but whether or not those are due to environment and social conditioning, or due to a biological mechanism, remains up for debate. The authors of the article discuss the “nature vs nurture” debate further on in the article, however I believe that their explanation is a bit wishy-washy. They state that since “evolved mechanisms require some environmental input for their activation” (p. 116), that evolutionary psychology does not look solely on nature or nurture, but on the interaction between the two. However, I’m not sure how concrete this explanation is. Since we know that even the adult brain is highly plastic, and changes in regards to it’s environment, is it not possible that men act jealous about sexual infidelity because society has imposed a “macho” ideal on them? If that is true, how could it be argued that it has come out from natural selection? I think maybe the authors would argue that natural selection has given the brain the ability to be so plastic, and then in turn the environment has influenced the mechanism. Although I think this makes sense on some levels, I think it is also reasonable to say that evolution could have made the brain plastic for a variety of reasons, and the fact that it works on sex differences in the emotion of jealous is entirely coincidental.
ReplyDeleteLucy, you raise some very interesting points regarding the nature of jealousy within human relationships. Could the resulting sexual dimorphism in the behavioral responses of cheating partners be due to residual biological differences in male/female development. For example, from an evolutionary standpoint, high testosterone typically drives males to be more aggressive, develop more muscularity, and have higher sex drives. So provided this hormone is a driving force behind male behavior it would make sense that a cheating sexual partner would illicit more of a response in men. That being said, there is no doubt that societal pressures, like being macho, play a role in dictating this kind of response, the “correct one” being anger and aggressiveness.
DeleteRE: The domain specific example page 3
ReplyDeleteIn this experiment they showed that “human memory [is] especially sensitive to content relevant to evolutionary fitness, such as survival and reproduction.” This brings me back to the question I asked last week on evolved CP. This experiment shows that “words previously rated for survival relevance in scenarios were subsequently remembered at significantly higher rates than words rated for relevance in a variety of control scenario conditions.” I think that this gives evidence that the categories that are innate really are passed on through evolution in order for the human species to increase their chances of survival.
7a. RE: If the relevant adaptation is a powerful emotion triggered by modern instances of ancestral cues, such as witnessing one’s mate kissing a rival, then knowledge of the wife’s contraception would not prevent the activation of her partner’s sexual jealousy.
ReplyDeleteI found this analysis of mate guarding behavior a bit short sighted on the author’s side. I understand this paper only refers to the role of evolutionary psychology in the behavior, but boiling down jealousy within human relationships to paternal certainty seems a bit simplistic. Of course, there is no dispute that this plays a role in male jealousy at a partner with potential infidelities, but I don’t think this emotional/behavioral response is restricted to just men within a relationship. Women too are subject to jealousy within a relationship but is this due to paternal uncertainty as well? Modern monogamous human relationships entail a variety of factors in order to be “successful”, one of which is trust. Could this be a potential reason at the immediate rise of aggressive or emotional behavior at the thought of a cheating partner? After all general trust between partners (in providing food, shelter, protection) would seem to be imperative in early evolution, especially in small packs of homo sapiens (or earlier species).
I'm a little bit confused about the relevance of evolutionary psychology with regards to T3. I think that trying to understand human behaviour by looking at history and evolution is without a doubt important and valuable. However, even if we create an entire list of all of the adaptations that humans have undergone in response to survival and reproductive issues, I'm not sure how this would help us to create T3. Even if we understand where our cognitive abilities stem from, and why we developed from, we still don't understand how they work, or how they interact to create the human mind.
ReplyDeleteIn much of psychology, there is a lot of emphasis placed on the influence of one’s environment and social settings. This paper argues that evolutionary disposition plays a larger role in shaping an individual than does cultural learning. Evolution has helped us work around our environment better and as such we may pass down positive traits to future generations. However I do believe that what we inherit from evolution is subject to change through culture. The environment shapes culture, which shapes psychology. Genetics may have helped us survive each stage of natural election but it cannot be solely responsible for how we socialize with one another. Emotions, for instance, cannot be controlled by genetics alone. Perhaps certain emotions helped our ancestors survive some situations more than others and perhaps this is why our nervous systems have developed fight or flight responses. Evolved tendencies tell us that a tiger with sharp teeth is a threat, but this coexisted with culture for some time before it became hardwired into our genetic dispositions. With this idea, would it be possible to plant certain cultural ideas into enough generations for it to show up in evolutionary disposition? Can certain ideas in evolutionary disposition be rewired so that we produce different responses? Is there a middle stage between evolutionary disposition and cultural learning?
ReplyDeleteI was thrown off by the explanatory power ascribed towards Evolutionary psychology. By no means is hypothesizing or explaining why we think and do the things that we do functionally useless. But post hoc theories don't provide mechanisms which is what Confer et al. used to describe what evolutionary psychology brought to some relevant questions. For instance they recommend, among other things, that culture can be studied as two phenomena evoked and evolved and that an explanation of for say evoked culture phenomena requires an understanding of the evolved psychological mechanisms and the environmental input that was involved in their production. But stating that male sexual jealously results from questions of paternity and not wanting to waste resources on nonbiological offspring is not giving a mechanism of male jealously. Rather that seems more like a highly intuitive suggestion given our modern day knowledge and our knowledge of the past. I fail to see how this suggestion is explaining how male sexual jealousy occurs and mechanisms are how something functions not why. Why I run to catch something does not explain how I run to catch said thing.
ReplyDeleteDomain general versus domain specific adaptations
ReplyDeleteThe authors present an argument that a domain-general explanation of rationality cannot be an overarching mechanisms for certain behaviours that are provoked by specific psychological/social responses (page 115). In this course, we have talked about one of the goals of cognitive science to be understanding cognition. This article demonstrated that it is important to remember that many of the processes we describe under the umbrella of cognition are perhaps the result of various domain-specific (and thus adaptive and efficient) mechanisms that regulate behaviours shared between human beings and related species. I think this will be important as we move on in the course, since we started with the assumption that we possibly had a perfect cognizing T3 in the form of Dominque in our class – modelling cognition will not just be a question of how to account for a domain-general mechanism of behaviour, but also the origins of domain-specific mechanisms responsible for specific behavioural responses.
Regarding the prestige criteria, you could also argue that someone who people pay attention to is not prestigious. People have always made a spectacle of those who are shunned from society or those who have wronged others. I don’t think the prestige and status criteria in this case is that sound. Just because you are paying attention to someone does not mean that they have a higher status, I think it just means that people are more aware of their presence, for either good or bad reasons.
ReplyDeleteThe daughter guarding hypothesis was interesting. I wonder why parents would not be worried about their sons as well though? I understand that genetically speaking, the more women that the son mates with, the more likely the genes will be passed down, but to seem desirable as a mating partner, shouldn’t parents (and men) be concerned about how many women the son mates with? Because if he mates with many women, women may not be as attracted to him due to a higher possibility for infidelity, therefore reducing his options for mates.
ReplyDeleteFrom a parent's perspective, I think evolutionary psychologist would posit the difference is that pregnancy poses a greater risk to women because they have to physically carry the child and childbirth can be life threatening for the mother. They would probably also point to the paternity uncertainty hypothesis, thus implying a woman with multiple sexual partners would be less desirable because men are more bothered by sexual infidelity and want to be sure they are caring for their own progeny. On the other hand, they would argue that women are more bothered by "emotional infidelity" rather than "sexual infidelity" and thus a man with multiple sexual partners is less likely to be perceived as an unsuitable mate.
DeleteThat being said I think the point you raise is still a good one regarding the status of men with multiple partners and it raises issues I have with evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology posits women seek to secure a mate who will care for their children (for obvious survival and reproductive benefits thus allowing their offspring to pass on their genes). But if that’s true, women should still view signs of sexual infidelity (while perhaps not as serious as emotional infidelity) as universally unfavourable. From a practical standpoint, women have far greater reason to be concerned over sexual infidelity (they will be stuck with a child without support from another caregiver). Why are men so concerned with raising their own progeny? I find evolutionary psychology problematic because the same logic can be extended to support multiple different contradictory hypotheses and so the explanation can be molded to fit the evidence. I think it also greatly underestimates the influence of culture (maybe the fact that the history of so many modern nations is dominated by patriarchal societies has something to do with the reasons women are so heavily sanctioned for having multiple sexual partners?)
I have long been uncomfortable with Evolutionary Psychology as a “science.” I think this article did a clever job of dispelling many concerns for the field, but I was left unsatisfied with much of it, and with my opinion the same. First and foremost, the article states attempts to show how evolutionary psychology can in fact produce empirical evidence. One example stated: “Using a standard memory paradigm involving a scenario priming task and a surprise recall task, they found that words previously rated for survival relevance in scenarios were subsequently remembered at significantly higher rates than words rated for relevance in a variety of control scenario conditions.” The authors use this to show that this empirical study found evidence for a psychological adaptation for memory sensitive to survival and reproduction. How can we truly test that this is a result of natural selection and not a learned sensitivity? Or what about epigenetics? There is no way to perform a longitudinal, prospective study on this topic; instead, assumptions are made in an attempt to explain something that has “evolved” or perhaps been learned in the past. I do not believe evolutionary psychology can be studied empirically. The authors argue that since a hypothesis is falsifiable, it is valid. Being able to prove that a hypothesis can be falsified is not the same as proving it “true” when not proven false.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to my previous comment, I would like to voice my concerns with other evidence mentioned in this reading. Confer et al referenced the study by Hines and Greene stating that "levels of prenatal exposure to androgens influence within-sex differences, with females exposed to higher levels of androgens displaying more masculine appearance and behavior." There were extensive problems with this study that were not referenced here. First off, this was a study on children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Girls with this condition did show higher levels of masculine play behavior. Boys with CAH did NOT show any difference in masculine or feminine play behavior. Additionally, parental interaction with their children was not controlled for in this study, nor was social interaction with peers or teachers. A follow up study did the same experiment, but controlling for two types of CAH conditions, the salt-losing and non-salt losing types. The salt-losing type causes children to be chronically ill. This study showed that the gendered difference between diabetic girls, and girls with salt-losing CAH was the same; while showing the gender difference between normal girls and girls with the non-salt losing condition was the same. To me this is strong evidence that a study "proving" an evolutionary basis for gender difference among boys and girls is easily proved wrong.
ReplyDeleteThe arguments and examples used to show that hypotheses formed by evolutionary psychology are in fact falsifiable are quite interesting. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that lack of contrary evidence for a given hypothesis and discovery of specific design features that match a certain evolutional narrative would prove that the hypothesis is in fact true. I think lack of concrete criteria for proving the accuracy of a certain evolutional account might be the reason why there is no clear line between evolutionary accounts that seem plausible and the ones which sound to be entirely arbitrary. It might be the case that these evolutional accounts are not falsified by any piece of evidence but at the same time the same evidence is not enough for their confirmation. Therefore, they do not necessarily contribute to reduction of ambiguity with regards to the underlying processes of cognitive evolution.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, the arguments for falsifiability and testability of evolutionary accounts become less reliable when we consider that “evolutionary psychologists also use a task analysis of existing mechanisms to provide a window into the past”. It seems that by using the “human psychological architecture to infer about the past” we are in the danger of begging the question because the alternative evolutionary narratives we generate cannot be assessed or falsified if we use the design feature evidence to form these narratives in the first place. Therefore, our tools and resources for assessment of evolutionary hypotheses become even more limited.
This was a very interesting article and I enjoyed reading its overview of evolutionary psychology. Both the article and the comments from classmates highlighted how challenging it can be to try to explain human behavior using evolutionary psychology. Cultural and environmental factors are extremely powerful and pervasive, and trying to tease apart what is a result of ‘evolution’ (and what is adaptive, etc) from things that are ‘learned’ – cultural and environmental factors – seems like a very challenging, and at times almost impossible, task. It also showed that things are not always clear -cut – even when we consider things that are the result of ‘evolution’ these characteristics interact with each other in complex ways. Unlike physical characteristics, psychological characteristics cannot be seen and much more difficult to measure or to separate from one another. The paper (as well as comments from my classmates) also made me realize how difficult testing and definitively proving something in a psychological study is, especially in the area of evolutionary psychology. Potential methodological flaws and flaws in conclusion/analysis are many.
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