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.
I find that evolutionary psychology has a lot going for it which can explain some features of human psychology. It’s a good reminder that some of our actions are from our evolutionary past. But I say some because I don’t think it provides a full picture of human psychology. Partly because I think our psychology changes at a faster rate than genetic evolution would allow for and because, of course, evolutionary psychology does not do well in the explanation/prediction of individual differences (e.g. you might say there are sex differences but that won’t help in being able to know where any individual man or woman stands among those differences). I would think that a lot of resistance to evolutionary psychology is caught up in the false “nature vs nature” dichotomy. I don’t think anyone really denies the real impact of sociocultural influences, but the point is that some things we mistakenly attribute to culture may actually be better understood through evolutionary psychology. The best thing about evolutionary psychology as opposed to other fields in psychology, in my opinion, is its search for good explanations (i.e. an explanation that is hard to vary and actually accounts for what it purports to explain), in which there have been more successes in finding out why or how humans do certain things.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean by an explanation, and what are some of the explanatory successes of evolutionary psychology?
DeleteYou bring up an important point regarding that our psychology changes at faster rates than genetic evolution would allow for. In the article they explain how modern cues that mimic these ancestral cues, such as pornography, "hijack evolved psychological adaptations in ways that may not be currently adaptive". I think this point helps to illustrate that perhaps not everything can be explained through evolutionary psychology and we need to also consider other explanations in certain situations.
DeleteEvolutionary psychology has some good and some bad. I tend to focus on the bad. The first negative I would propose would be the structure in which the foundations of certain evolutionary psychology theories are founded (or attempted to be founded) on. For example the The kin altruism hypothesis of male homosexuality (discussed in the article), seems to be just based off of intuition, instead of good verifiable scientific backing. This would explain why it failed, however this kind of foundation seems to be common in the field. The nature of evolutionary psychology is also highly correlational, which is problematic as the findings are often portrayed to the public as causational. All of this being said I do find the emphasis on the variance of genetic progression and it's effect on our psychology valid and fascinating. It might even be applicable to rapidly developed individual differences, with a root explanation in epigenetics. All this being said, major reform needs to occur in the field for it to progress into a reliable arm of psychology.
ReplyDeleteYour problems with evolutionary psychology don't seem to be specific to the field, but rather a more general problem with science and the way it is portrayed by the media. I didn't find the section on failed hypotheses to be problematic at all, negative findings are equally important, and it seems to me that as long as the methods are sound it shouldn't matter what inspires the hypothesis. What is a problem is declaring causal relations where there is only a correlation, as you have said, but this is certainly not restricted to Evolutionary Psychology. It's interest to the public does make it more likely that findings will be exaggerated to attract readers however.
DeleteSacha, I agree with your comment. I find that evolutionary psychology engages in a confirmatory bias kind of research most of the time, starting with a question and narrowing the possibilities down to a conclusion instead of trying to disprove the initial question the way good science is done. The case of kin altruism hypothesis for homosexuality is a counter example of that statement. However, other theories of evolutionary psychology seem a bit far-fetched if you look at the details behind them. For example, the reading described the prediction that "women will prefer men as potential mates who express a willingness to invest in them and their offspring (Buss, 1995)" as embedded within 3 other hypotheses, namely that (1) "females will use cues to a man’s willingness to invest as a criterion for mate selection", (2) the parental investment theory, and (3) the inclusive fitness theory. This kind of logic weakens the evidence for such theories in my opinion.
DeleteOk but contextually, how does this logic weaken the evidence? Evolutionary psychology, as I understand it, works in a slightly different way from other branches of psychology because of the evidence and data there is to work with. Since most cognitive and psychological evidence can't be found through fossils, a lot of research is done through retrospective behavioral observation; for this reason, statistical probabilities are given more weight than they might be for other fields, because of the limited amount of "concrete" data available. Predictions can certainly be disproven, but it's the trial-and-error of evolutionary psychology that makes it valuable as a research tool. While this might not be the gold standard in research, I think evolutionary psychology is definitely instrumental in getting a better understanding of why a certain cognitive function exists the way it does; the "ultimate explanation" of the evolved function of cognition.
DeleteCausation vs. correlation is not a problem unique to EP. But looking for biological explanations for human cultural practices might be. Very hard to find the line between sense and nonsense in EP.
Delete"Evolutionary psychology forcefully rejects a genetic determinism stance and instead is organized around a crisply formulated interactionist framework that invokes the role of the environment at every step of the causal process."
ReplyDeleteThis is a crucial point, a lot of the resistance I’ve seen to evolutionary psychology is actually a resistance to the idea that there’s a specific gene for every behavior, which is not at all what the field is about. Applied to categorization, the idea that all categories are innate would not work under an evolutionary psychology framework, since it would fall under the genetic determinism stance disavowed above. An idea that better fits this framework is one where the ability to detect certain features leads to an increased rate of survival. This leads to those features being more salient to future generations, since anything that cannot detect these features will be less successful. The increased salience of some features compared to others would allow the formation of basic categories, since there’s no longer the issue of having infinitely many equally weighted features to choose from. Is this the evolutionary psychology response to the question of the ugly duckling?
Going off of this quote as well, how do you think that evolutionary psychologists would respond to stories of identical twins where one has Autism Spectrum Disorder and the other does not, or likewise counts of identical twins separated at birth who meet later in life and share the same interests and even have their hair dyed the same colour and cut the same way? Does evolutionary psychology discount the Chomskian theory of Universal Grammar? How can we account for behaviours observed in infants not taught by parents if not with an innate framework that would specify these?
DeleteI'm not familiar enough with the case of autism in twins to comment on them, but I'm fairly familiar with linguistics and I don't see why it would be a problem for evolutionary psychology. UG would be absolutely useless without environmental input, a child raised in isolation does not miraculously learn to speak Phrygian. Language acquisition is actually a great example of the environment having a role in the process. The child is born with a number of innate parameters that allow them to make sense of the input and fill in the blanks, but without exposure to a language they have nothing to apply these rules too. On the other hand, without UG, there's just not enough information in the spoken language for a child to learn everything that's necessary for a complete grammar. To me this is exactly what the quote in my original post is saying, we're not born knowing everything we'll ever know and how to do everything we'll ever do, but it's also not the case that we're just blank slates making it up as we go along. We're born with the capacity to learn in a certain way, and this shapes the way we interact with the environment, but the environment is still providing information that wasn't genetically determined.
DeleteI have always been a fan of evolutionary psychology, particularly because I find that it answers the ‘why’ question more often and more scientifically than a lot of other disciplines. It’s unfortunate that evolutionary psychology has such a bad reputation, largely due to abuse of its power and general misinterpretation by both academics and the general public. To connect this with categorization, which I presume that’s why it has been assigned, it would appear that we have “innate” categories for objects such as the snakes and spiders mentioned. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, and I find this kind of explanation is frequent among students, but those who assert that certain categories are innate tend to believe that they exist in and of themselves, as if they popped out of thin air. We tend to forget about evolution in this context and how our ancestors learned these survival mechanisms using their sensorimotor systems to interact with their environment. For example, a prominent innate category we have discussed so far is color and other properties of our visual system such as convexity and concavity. These properties of our visual system have allowed us to the discuss categories that we haven’t directly learned, such as the mountain and valley example in class. These categories are inborn and only need mere exposure (the naming isn’t important here). Using this example of our visual properties, we know that the visual system has a long history with evolution. Our ancestors who can rapidly and accurately identify the snakes and spiders have a greater evolutionary advantage. In general, those who possess the mutations that enhanced their visual system, and by environmental pressures, the descendants reaped the benefits. Obviously, this applies to any system we want to discuss. Placing the innate categories we discussed in an evolutionary context, we’ll see the acquisition throughout history. To be more precise, what we call innate categories, should be called evolved categories. I also think that people tend to forget about the two other products of natural selection: by-product and noise. Many researchers (and the public) look for adaptations because it’s the hallmark of evolution, but we forget that some behavioral motivations can be explained as a by-product or noise. These are crucial, although harder to confirm.
ReplyDeleteInsightful comments.
DeleteBut what proportion of our categories do you think is likely to be innate?
I think the reading makes an important point about the need to not form dichotomies such as "nature vs nurture". Instead it indicates that these two forces are constantly interacting in a number of ways, contributing to our psychological evolution. The challenge is then to "identify the nature of underlying learning adaptations that enable humans to change behavior in functional ways as a consequences of particular environmental input. This seems almost like a definition of what they believe evolutionary psychology to be, or what it the field examines. They assert three examples to support this position: incest avoidance, food aversion, and prestige criteria. For each they note how aspects of both learning and evolution have contributed to our development of these phenomena. I think the food aversion one is particularly convincing. There are certain food aversions that are have innately evolved to protect us. For example, aversion to rotting food and uncooked food, which is driven by evolved nausea reactions. Interestingly, there are a whole category of learned food preferences that can overcome these evolved aversions. To name one, the Icelandic national food, Hákarl, is basically a rotting shark. Though a delicacy to some, others, who have not learned to overcome the repulsive smell, struggle to keep it down. A case can also be made for those who enjoy spicy foods. We all are born with aversion to capsaicin, the active compound in chili peppers. However, as we are all aware, this can be overcome with learning to create the preference for spicy foods. To conclude, many aspects of our daily life, down to the food we eat, are driven by the combination of evolutionary pressures and learned preferences.
ReplyDelete"Although the ambiguous referent “culture” is generally presumed to have a single, coherent meaning, it can actually refer to at least two distinct concepts: (a) evoked culture— differential output elicited by variable between-group circumstances operating as input to a universal human cognitive architec- ture; and (b) transmitted culture—the subset of ideas, values, and representations that initially exist in at least one mind that come into existence in other minds through observation or interaction "
ReplyDeleteCould something help me understand what they authors mean by « evoked culture » ? I really don’t quite grasp this notion.
It seems to me that « transmitted culture » is all that is handed down and added on from generation to generation. It is the Doxa, the collective beliefs, the mythical glue that binds us together but what is "evoked culture"? Is it an attempt to find a universal basis ? Is it, in any way, similar to: all culture are different, but they tend to ‘correlate’ on some universal matters and this goes to make up the basic human architecture?
I understand that the notion of « evoked culture » is an attempt to fully integrate culture into their interactionist framework, whereby we are both fully culture and fully nature, but I still need precisions to grasp it fully.
My understanding of evoked culture is described as types of environmental conditions that can evoke universal reactions or responses from people. This is different from transmitted culture which is more focused on culture being shared and transmitted by social practice. So I do believe that it is similar to the notion that "all cultures are different, but they tend to 'correlate' on some universal matters and this goes to make up the basic human architecture" as you stated above. It focuses more on what brings us together culturally rather than divided. Hope that helps!
DeleteMarianne, from what I understand ‘evoked culture’ refers to the differential expression of underlying psychological mechanisms as a result of differing cultural environments. Confer et al. (2010) provide the example of cultural variations in mate preference. More specifically, in areas with high incidence of parasites (which degrade physical appearance) greater emphasis is placed on physical attractiveness when choosing a mate, as this is an indication of fitness and health. On the other hand, mating strategies in other cultures may place less emphasis on physical attractiveness as pathogens and parasites are less frequent in their local environment. Overall, evoked culture refers to the environmental differences that then cause shared psychological mechanisms to be activated to different degrees or triggered in different ways, generating these differences observed between cultures. I hope that helps!
DeleteI find evolutionary psychology to be such an interesting field, especially now as technology has progressed significantly and many societies are entering a new age.
ReplyDeleteThe section that peaked my interest the most is that of how the environment affects human evolutionary psychology. Because most people are connecting between each other through social media, a shift seems to be happening concerning human communication and closeness. Could it be that this will have a negative impact on human psychology?
Of course not every society will become emotionally unavailable, but the rise of the internet and its accessibility has created a completely new environment where humans are not completely in control of. For instance, political movements are being shaped by comments left on social networks and because most news outlets are accessible from the internet now it's becoming increasingly difficult to notice what is true or not.
Isaure, I also find this topic very interesting! I am bringing you some more food for thought, from a more anthropological perspective.
DeleteYou raise two big issues associated with Internet (check out Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality if interested) ! One issue being our new modes of communication, both face to face and through correspondence, and the other being the constant overflow of information. Not so long ago, people had to wait weeks, or even months to receive a written letter. Now, we live in a world where everything is at the reach of the fingertips. Not only are we constantly demanding to get everything RIGHT AWAY, but we are also radically altering our ways of connecting with and responding to one another as well as wider collectives (your example of collective social mouvements).
A real-life example: I paint on Othman’s face, he wants to see what I had done so I hand him a mirror. He holds it up in front of his face and looks into it. Sitting behind him, Ines asks to see. Instead of turning his face around so that she may see him, he hands her the mirror !! I watched the scene, stupefied.
Othman is someone who spends a lot of time on his phone, mindlessly scrolling down his Facebook newsfeed and what I witness in that moment was how much the technology has become inscribed onto his body. The phone is his extended self, he has internalized the idea of seeing his face projected onto a screen and when asked to see what was on his face, he gives the mirror which was laying in his hands (probably cued a procedural memory ).
Furthermore, our virtual worlds and their physical extensions are completely re-defining selfhood and practices of the self. We have rapidly, in the span of 20-30 years, have, amongst many other things, ‘created’ new illnesses with our necks hunched over our computers, with our eyes blinded with artificial lights, with our ears being blasted with constant music and noise. With our constant information flow, are we better deep-readers, deep-thinkers than 20 years ago? Your comment and everything it entails really shows the interaction between “culture” and “nature”, we cannot separate one from the other, they are completely enmeshed into each other.
I am really curious about what evolution will, or not, select from our age. How much time do you think it takes for ‘evolution to select adaptions’ ? On the surface level, it seems that our epoch, with the exponential growth of social and technical technologies is so very-fast changing, potentially more so than any other historical time.
Maybe, and this just something to think about, we are being super "modern centric" in thinking that our current modernity is so much more advanced than past civilizations were, that our 'development' and 'progress' far exceeds that of past cultures. I imagine that our species’ history has known periods of tremendous change and progress which were, relative to their moment in time, maybe considered more important, than what we are living today, I do not know.
I gave the example of the phone as extended technology which is shaping new behaviors and practices, but historically, the advent of different tools also had the same consequences and effects. So I ask, how radically different is this epoch from past ones?
I for one, think we live in very uncanny times, where we are completely disconnected from many beings and worlds.
What evolutionary adaptations, if any, will ensue from our epoch do you think? What survival advantage could the ‘wired worlds’ bring us? Will we develop "false information detector" mechanisms? Could it be that our virtual worlds, which relatively modern novel environments, prove to be phenomena that reduce our reproductive success?
When will we know ? How much time does evolution take to make selections ?
- Isaure: I think you bring up a really interesting topic concerning the changes that social media could cause to the evolution to humans. First off I think it is much too early to be able to tell what effects social media could have on our society since many people have not been able to experience social media (or even our modern technologies) throughout their lifetimes. Aside from this I think this question ties in very nicely to the idea of evolution versus transmitted culture. To phrase it differently we could be asking: will the lack of sociability required in our social media age be passed on in our culture long enough for this to become an evolutionarily adaptive trait? (In my opinion I hope not, but I have no scientific evidence to back this up.)
Delete"A programmatic series of studies has shown that an intense fear of snakes exists in humans and other primates; snakes and spiders embedded in complex visual arrays automatically capture attention far more than do harmless objects - they "pop out" of the visual array…"
ReplyDeleteThis "pop out" effect of things that we are afraid of is interesting. I imagine that this was not always the case: organisms without this effect would have to successfully categorize snakes and spiders, learn that it is an obstacle to survival and reproduction, and from that produce an appropriate fear response. The organisms who are able to most easily identify snakes and spiders are most likely to survive and reproduce, so this characteristic is successfully passed on through natural selection. Eventually, as is true of our present world, we are born with this "pop out" effect already built in. I wonder if this means that snakes and spiders are one of our innate categories, given that they seem to have their own feature detectors that have been shaped by evolution.
So if this is true about snakes and spiders, then do we have innate categories for all things we fear (such as heights or the dark)? How would this apply to categories that are more fantastical, such as children's fear of monsters under the bed? 'Monsters' such as vampires and werewolves may cause such a fear response because of characteristics, like sharp teeth, that they share with predatory animals. But how about in the case of modern-day 'monsters' (think clowns, or Slenderman) which don't have any animal characteristics - does evolutionary psychology have an explanation?
I think you make a very interesting point, Devona.I believe that this article does imply that the fear of snakes and spiders are innate as they are shaped by evolution and passed on. Like you said, it would be interesting to see other traits that are innate and explore the common fears of today.
DeleteIn regards to clowns or slenderman, would these be more due to constructs of society and evoked culture, rather than innate fears? Maybe an explanation could be that being that they're both characters that have traits different than the norm, instilling fear in children. It would be interesting to examine research that expands on these ideas.
Hi Devona, I had a similar thought process as you while reading about the “pop out” effect of snakes and spiders. However, I am questioning whether this fear is truly an evolutionarily engrained “innate category” as you put it. I believe the psychological effects of a fear of snakes and spiders could equally as likely originate from external influences (ex: parents and culture) simply telling us to be afraid of snakes and spiders. Certainly there could be, and there likely is a significant evolutionary influence on the fear of spiders and snakes, but the conclusion this article makes seems to idealizing and oversimplifying a psychological scenario. I would be interested in reading the background research that Confer cited with regards to the “pop out” effect. I am left with a question about how we can tell whether fears are culturally engrained or are evolutionary attempts at self-preservation.
DeleteAs a tangent thought:
DeleteIf one is to assume that snakes and spiders are one of our innate categories, given that they seem to have their own feature detectors that have been shaped by evolution, and simultaneously that innate CP is not malleable, is it to suggest that even though if mankind continues to exist in this urbanized (away from nature) environment for hundreds or thousands of years, would we not eventually lose the fear of snakes and spiders as they no longer behave as persistent threats, and thus our innate categories would be transformed thus breaking down the idea we have of innate CP? Although I am not quite sure if my understanding of malleability is quite what the professor meant
Dedicated psychological adaptations, because they are activated in response to cues to their corresponding adaptive problems, operate more efficiently and effectively for many adaptive problems. A domain-general mechanism “must evaluate all alternatives it can define. Permutations being what they are, alternatives increase exponentially as the problem complexity increases” (Cosmides & Tooby, 1994, p. 94). Consequently, combinatorial explosion paralyzes a truly domain-general mechanism
ReplyDeleteThe question becomes then, how can we account for the sheer number of different ‘psychological circuits’ we would need to have? If every adaptive trait has its own completely specific mechanism, where are all of these stored? I think that the solution to the problem is similar to problem of computationalism. In the same way as computation can explain part but not all of cognition, perhaps dedicated psychological circuits should be used to explain only a subset of adaptive, reactive attitudes. Maybe a combinatorial approach where domain-general rationality is guided by specific hardwired adaptations is the best way to explain our reactions…
This article raises some very interesting points about evolutionary psychology. What particularly struck me was the example of Steve Ilardi's depression treatment: his patients were prescribed the adoption of a more ancestral-like lifestyle. This lifestyle involves being outside and experiencing the sun, contact with close ones, a nutrient-rich diet, and other¬-presumably elementary-actions. This, however, truly underlines the fact that these are no longer elementary; we have entered a depressive epoch, one where we are lonelier than ever despite being significantly more interconnected, with consequently naturally increasing depression rates. It is therefore a very interesting approach-despite its simplicity-to return to our organic lifestyle, that which our genes are still wired to thrive upon. However, this raises the following question: should we push into our current lifestyle until an adaption breakthrough occurs and we find well-being (i.e. our genes adapt to perceive our modern, secluded lifestyle as healthy)? This would be complicated, as our lifestyles now evolve at much faster rates than they used to (due to technological advances and whatnot), which would imply that our organisms would stay much further behind and never get a veritable chance to adapt.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting that according to the authors, evolutionary psychology tends to call “ultimate explanation” one that explains “why” the evolved function of a psychological mechanism exists. Of course, the “why” explanations are part of the story of finding the causal mechanisms that allow our brains to do what they do and how, but these “ultimate explanations” are posited after retrospective behavioral analyses and through what we imagine our ancestors environments and livelihoods to be like. In trying to understand the survival advantage of a certain function and uncover why we have inherited certain functions, we are implicitly construing narratives about our past.
ReplyDeleteWhile fossil records offer us some kind of evidence as to the environments past humans lived in, the rudiments of their diets, the types of social organization that existed, they lack the potential to tell us about their beliefs, their “transmitted cultures”. Thus, the big picture we are painting of our ancestors might be rudimentary. If culture is just as much a force of nature as biology, then we need to understand the role it played in the evolution of certain traits.
Therefore, while I think evolutionary psychology has an important role to play in trying to uncover the causal mechanisms that allow for cognition, I think it is important to be critical of these “ultimate explanations” which can never be fully "ultimate" as they are a reflection our own present biases and essentialist ideas. Furthermore, what evolutionary psychology often undermines is the fact that we can and often do act against our biological predispositions.
It was brought up in this article that the "why" is just as important as the "how" when it comes to understanding a physiological mechanism, and that they mutually complement one another. I found this interesting, as up to this point in class, we have mainly focused on "how" a mechanism works and try to reverse engineer it so that we can better understand it. Also, the fact that humans may be predisposed through evolutionary adaptations to certain kinds of learning and culture leads me to believe that a robot, even one that could pass T3, could never be indistinguishable from a human. Even with sensory experience, a T3 robot could never acquire these minute, ingrained tendencies humans have acquired through generations of natural selection. These complex processes are embodied in our genes and cognitive architecture. Even if we disregard the absent "evolved" processes in this robot, what about culture? How can this robot be integrated into our society in an authentic way, without possessing the necessary tools to socialize and be socialized, and evolve with the culture? Everything we ground is immersed in the culture specific to us. Unlike a human, that is dynamic in its engagement of culture (can continuously integrate new information, change perspectives/opinions), a robot would not have the capacity to adopt new cultural information (as evolutionary psychology predicts, based on the fact that it would not have predetermined, evolutionarily defined domain specific modules). A robot truly adopting cultural impact would be difficult and would be a reverse engineering feat.
ReplyDeleteI find your distinction between how and why really interesting and also the questions you pose. I think the how is the easy problem of cognitive science, the how we do things in particular and that is why we are able to replicate it in toys or eventually one day in t2/t3 robots. But than as the distinction Professor Harnard makes is the how of emotions and particularly the why of emotions. Why do we feel and what is the evolutionary benefit of this? And thats something really interesting to think about, is stress and sadness a necessary part of our life? Some would say yes, and some would say no, but the evolutionary benefit of it? I'm not certain, maybe it is what motivates us to keep working to survive.
DeleteIn response to your question about integrating a robot into society, if we successfully created a T3 robot, it would contain the mechanisms, or ones similar to the ones we have for all of these evolutionarily effected processes. Because we would be engineering it based on our understanding of the brain which includes these processes, now it won't have the history of the evolution, but neither do we as single entities. And then just like us in integrating into culture wouldn't a robot do the same? We are able to move to different countries and therefor adapt to new cultures so I imagine the process of this robot would be similar.
As a counter argument to Daria, I would say that we are in fact possessing the history of evolution, our brains are the cumulative acquisitions of evolutionary modifications, and because we have DNA we can continuously undergo evolution as a population (because evolution does not happen to an individual). However, a robot who lacks dna even if we were to somehow instill in them a sense of fear to spider and snakes, because robots neither reproduce nor understand truly the fear of death and thus have no emotional quality to their desire to survive, evolution would never be able to exert bias selection on a T3 robot (because it would have no driving force). So if a T3 robot is one that is indistinguishable from Isaure, the only way to make that possible is for it to encompass both learned CP and innate CP responses, of which I believe the latter is impossible for the reason above and the points mentioned by Phoebe.
Delete“In short, modern cues that mimic ancestral cues can artificially hijack evolved psychological adaptations in ways that may not be currently adaptive. In some ways, of course, modern environments do resemble ancestral environments, and adaptations functional in the past may continue to be functional in the present”
ReplyDeleteThis is the main argument put forth in this paper in support of evolutionary psychology, but this key point can also be viewed through the lens of cognitive psychology and perhaps add a piece to the puzzle of creating true AI. Perhaps it is these evolved psychological adaptations which are triggered in many facets of life that set humans apart from our models of cognition based on categorization or computation. These evolved traits contribute to our imperfect and unpredictable nature, our emotion and response to emotional stress. Certainly, if we wish to create AI that can do all things we can do, this added environmental-genetic complexity must be understood and modeled.
Charles - could you elaborate on how it might be possible to model this? I find the idea of incorporating innate ancestral cues into AI to be quite interesting, but I am not sure if I fully understand how this environmental-genetic complexity would add to artificially created cognition. It seems to me that emotion and stress impact the psychological evolution of many species - although we still face the other minds problem, it seems that considering this to be the key to cognition (versus computation) wouldn't allow us to have any more insight into the hard problem.
DeleteBut I perhaps am just misunderstanding! I would love to hear what you think about it and how to incorporate this idea of evolutionary psychology into AI in a way that reflects humans specifically.
“The most obvious example is homosexual orientation, which has been called ‘the Darwinian paradox.’ Exclusive homosexual orientation seems to defy evolutionary logic since it presumably fails to increase an individual’s reproductive success.”
ReplyDeleteI found the Darwinian paradox of homosexuality extremely interesting: How can a trait like homosexuality, which does not promote reproductive success, persist through evolutionary time? Confer et al. (2010) outline the kin altruism hypothesis which contends that homosexuality is an adaptive trait for heterosexual males with low mating prospects to then direct their mating efforts into the kin of their siblings, enhancing the survival of their nieces and nephews. This theory, however, has been empirically tested (ex. Bobrow and Bailey 2001) and the kin altruism hypothesis has ultimately been refuted.
So how can we then propose an evolutionary psychological account of homosexuality? After doing some research, I found one theory suggests that the genes that code for homosexuality may also code for other reproductively-beneficial traits. This then compensates for the lack of offspring generated by homosexuals, and thus causes the trait of homosexuality to continue to be passed down.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26089486
However, ultimately, “although evolutionary hypotheses have been proposed for homosexuality, as discussed earlier, none have received empirical support thus far.” And thus, “there are puzzling phenomena such as homosexuality and suicide that remain at least somewhat inexplicable on the basis of current evolutionary psychological accounts”
Will we ever be able to generate evolutionary psychologically sound accounts for homosexuality and suicide? If not all phenomena can be explained in the context of evolutionary psychology, can such a theory still be viewed as a sound theoretical perspective?
A lot can be predicted and explained from the observation that evolution is "lazy" and does not "like" to over-code. Just as the duckling is not born with an image of the shape of "mother" (but picks it up on the fly, or rather the run, after hatching, by following the first moving thing, which, predictably, is its mother), so we are not born with an image of who are kin or non-kin, nor even what "shape" attracts us sexually and romantically. We pick it up (predictably) on the fly. Some flexibility and adaptability to circumstances is always an advantage.
DeleteEvolutionary psychology seems to be convincing on explaining basic survival strategies in primitive forms of society and behaviours, such as the ones that are shared across different species. The vigilance for predators and the strategies species adopted for reproductive advantages. However, is there any evolutionary values on things that are unique in human society, such as art, music and philosophy? Is there adaptive advantages of the endless quest for meanings? All the above mentioned subjects, according the argument proposed by professor Harnad in class, are the results of language ability, which seems to have obvious reproductive advantages such as more effective communication and tributary expansions for human survival. However, is the byproducts of languages, the human cognitive abilities can be solely explained by evolution? What is the adaptive advantages of the attempt to explain our cognition, and the attempt to create artificial intelligence that one day might lead to the the replacement of human species?
ReplyDeleteI think that evolutionary psychology can do a great job of explaining some very specific behaviors and cognitive processes, such as why humans are much more likely to see a snake in an array of shapes, or why many people have phobias of dangerous animals like spider and snakes.
ReplyDeleteWith that being said, I’m not quite sure if these researchers are trying to imply that all behavior and cognition can be explained by evolutionary psychology. I personally have a hard time believing that it’s a strong enough tool to do that.
For example, how could evolutionary psychology explain why people are addicted to instagram, or why some people are deathly afraid of riding on airplanes. Both of these are things that were not present in human environments until a century ago, so how could people have evolved to be scared of them?
I think the focus should be more on the interaction of both the environment and innate behaviours that tie into evolution rather than just evolutionary psychology through the explanation of solely innate behaviours. In order to adapt to society, it is impossible to just rely on the innate behaviours. With the modern and increasingly complex world, we adapt accordingly based on both the transmitted and evoked cultures around us as well as the innate behaviours that have been passed on through evolutionary processes.
DeleteThe paper also talked about the innateness of certain categories in human species, such as the fear of snakes. However, the paper forgets about the research literature focusing on the acquisition of fear. In our early developmental period, we tend to quickly learn the fears that our parents, friends and relatives have. This learning ability seems to have its valuable adaptive advantages since it protects us from potential harms, but it posits questions on whether these categories are evolutionarily innate. Just because it is present since the very beginning does not mean that certain people are both with this genetic traits. The quick association between fear responses and the image of snakes might just be an implicit learning mechanism, which is the real thing that is innate for us.
ReplyDelete"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."
ReplyDeleteI though the considerations surrounding novel environmental phenomena were highly relevant to the issues we have been discussing in class up to this point. While reading this paper, I often found myself referring back to our idea of the dictionary being a list of learned categories. While evolutionary psychology has great power to investigate the environmental pressures that informed many of our innate or automatic categories, the rate of change in our society (whether technological or otherwise) is much more accelerated than the time necessary for a trait to evolve within a species. As a result, the paper discusses how there is a mismatch between "adaptive utility" of traits with the modern world we live in.
It was interesting to consider how some biological drives are so strong that they respond to stimuli that only have traces of the original goal or desirable object (the paper uses the example of pornography).
This is where I found myself thinking back to last lecture about supervised and unsupervised learning - the society we live in seems to expect a high level of unsupervised learning, at a fast pace, in many ways that are incongruent with our ancestral nomadic past.
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ReplyDelete“Transmitted culture, if recurrent over generations, can influence the evolution of novel adaptations, which in turn can affect transmitted culture, theoretically producing adaptation–culture coevolutionary processes.” An example of this could be the coevolution of water containers and our efficient thermal regulating systems that make use of excessive sweating (water loss), giving us an advantage in long distance endurance running/hunting. The question that arises from these accounts asks whether they might not be just so stories. Just so stories are unverifiable narratives for cultural practices or biological traits/behaviour that don’t actually explain how they came about. So when we tell the story of the water jug coevolving with sweating in humans, for example, are we just describing a correlation, or is there causation involved? Can we sweat because we had access to water? Or did we find ways to access water because we sweat a lot? Or Both? Or Neither (maybe they didn't have anything to do with each other)?
ReplyDeleteIn his book “The Secret to our Success” Joseph Heinrich talks about cumulative cultural coevolution in relation to what sets our species apart from the rest. On an individual level, we’re not that special compared with other mammals. We don’t score that much better for working memory, attention, strategy, and we’re not physically superior or have better instincts. The cultural intelligence hypothesis places a lot of emphasis on our access to shared cultural knowledge that we wouldn’t intuitively be able to develop ourselves even within a lifetime, and the fact that we’re a cultural species that’s really good at social learning. Take something like Indigenous peoples who mix ash in with their corn to chemically release vitamin B3 that would otherwise be unavailable to them, leading to a disease called Pellagra which is characterized by diarrhea, hair loss, insomnia, dementia, and death, among other symptoms. The reasoning for this practice is not attributed to “releasing vitamin B3 so I don’t die” (much like a child craving candy doesn’t justify her desire by citing her evolutionary predisposition to consume foods that raise her blood sugar (providing her with energy) whenever they’re made available). The answer to such practices are generally more along the lines of “this is how it’s done” or “the Gods desire it so”. When corn was introduced to Europe after 1500, it became a staple in many (especially poor) areas, and Pellagra remained widespread into the 1940s, after scientists spent decades researching the disease, and then decades more convincing the public that their solution was correct. There are many examples like this of non intuitive cultural solutions to problems that are otherwise opaque to the individual and even entire other cultures. It was mentioned that evolution is lazy, and there’s no need to hard code for things that are going to be picked up anyway. This account doesn’t view the cultural practices surrounding corn from a biological perspective, but rather it emphasizes the vital role language has played as a type of learning to which we are predisposed.
Re: How do recent novel environmental phenomena affect human evolutionary psychology?
ReplyDeleteConfer et al. (2010) outline that one of the ways in which novel environmental phenomena may affect human evolutionary psychology is by exploitation/hijacking of these psychological mechanisms. That is to say that modern day cues may activate psychological mechanistic responses that while once adaptive, are no longer adaptive in the current context.
The paper provides the example of pornography, in which a 2D image of an unclothed woman elicits arousal. In ancestral times, this sighting of an unclothed woman would only occur in the physical presence of the woman herself and hence guarantee a sexual opportunity (would it ALWAYS guarantee a sexual opportunity?). However, now with the advent of computers and development of pornographic imagery, the sighting of an unclothed woman no longer necessarily indicates the presence of a sexual opportunity and hence the elicited arousal is no longer adaptive.
I believe this has to do with Steven Say’s slogan: ‘evolution is lazy’. The mind doesn’t distinguish between the physical or 2D image of the woman and rather lumps it all together as a cue of a naked woman. Similarly, the mind doesn’t have fertility detectors but rather detectors of what is ‘fertile-looking’. As a result, we can fool these detectors with cues and elicit responses that are not adaptive to the true stimulus. For instance, males tend to select female mates with young-looking features and clear skin conditions as these features indicate fertility. These features however do not guarantee fertility and males may become attracted to young females with clear skin who are not fertile (hence the response of arousal/attraction is not adaptive). Moreover, with the rise of the beauty industry, makeup, and cosmetic surgery, females are better able to mask their age and skin imperfections – and since evolution is lazy, these individuals may still be wrongly perceived as highly fertile, eliciting maladaptive responses of arousal/attraction.
First off, I have to say that this article has made a lot of interesting points and that I can't help but agree with a lot of what evolutionary psychology suggests. Following the points that Laura has already made, I find this section of evolutionary psychology to be extremely fascinating. The recognition that 'effective contraception is a very recent invention on the timescale of human history. Consequently, there has not been enough time for natural selection to forge or modify complex psychological adaptations to effectively utilize the evolutionarily novel inputs associated with birth control." is extremely important. We live in an environment that is so technologically advanced -- and that is becoming more and more advanced by the minute -- that I can't help but wonder what this means for evolutionary psychology as a field. With the advancing of technology and the way that it has already begun to alter our lives, it seems as though we as a species do not have enough time to adequately undergo the natural selection process before new and different technology is introduced. If this mismatch between the social world that humans have evolved in and the modern world that we all inhabit continues, will evolution no longer play as large of a role in certain social situations (like the instance of pornography and fertility mentioned above)? Or perhaps the time that it takes for natural selection will eventually be altered?
DeleteEvolutionary psychology attempts to explain why we have developed certain behaviors throughout the course of evolution. So far in the course it is the closest we have gotten to understanding why we cognize the way that we do as opposed to just how we do it. There remains however, some serious limitations. For one, since the phenomena that evolutionary psychologists seek to explain take a lot of time to develop within a population, they “lack detailed knowledge of many selection pressures that humans faced over the millions of years of their evolution”. In essence, the discipline is always trying to draw correlations from long ago events that are not certain due to a lack of documentation or perhaps of understanding the methods of communication used at the time. True, the discipline can utilize the knowledge from related fields like paleontology and anthropology but the fact of the matter is that such correlations are coming from events that we speculate upon and upon which we apply our own modern day perspective.
ReplyDeleteIf we want to study evolutionary adaptations from our time period, the discipline will have to wait many millennia in order to obtain any information. By that point, the world will be as different as the past world evolutionary psychology utilizes to formulate its hypotheses today. Again these scholars run the risk of misunderstanding our world through interpreting it with their perspective. Thus, evolutionary psychology will always remain in the realm of speculation which is interesting but doesn’t get to the crux of why such behaviors truly did develop long ago.
In the study conduced by Nairne and colleagues, 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". This finding reminded me of our discussions last week regarding categorical perception. I think this is evidence that at least some categories are innate and their detection is passed on through natural selection. I think the ability to innately categorize certain things in the environment led to increased survival for these individuals and therefore natural selection throughout the generations.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this article because I felt like it had many real-world applications and drew together much of what we have been learning. One aspect of the article that drew my attention was the section on the practical value of evolutionary psychology. I find it amazing that the treatment developed for depression based on mimicking ancestral living conditions had a success rate of 75.3%, much higher than the 22% reduction in the control group in this study. If this type of therapy is useful in treating depression, potentially we can develop treatments for other disorders using similar mechanisms. If this is the case, it provides more support for evolutionary psychology in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteGenetic predisposition is not destiny. While the genes we inherit and pass on through evolutionary terms are important, they are not the only things that shape an individual. Psychology emphasizes the influence of the current cultural moment and environment on an individual’s development. Evolution works on what genes we inherit, our surrounding environment works on cultural practices, and cultural practices directly shape us as individuals. Genetics alone are not sufficient to explain complex human behaviours such as social and empathic behaviours because these behaviours can sometimes be disadvantageous (such as altruism). Another human feature that cannot be explained by evolution alone are emotions. Without an environment to react to, the evolutionary disposition for emotions would be useless. Of course, it is evolutionarily advantageous for an infant to be able to exhibit distress by crying, but as we age, this becomes less advantageous and can deter others from helping. There has to be more to development than evolution.
ReplyDelete“[Steve Ilardi]’s six-step treatment for depression includes increasing omega-3 fatty acid consumption, getting at least 30 minutes of daily exposure to sunlight, ramping up exercise, socializing daily with friends and family, engaging in antiruminative activity, and adopting patterns of good sleep hygiene – all procedures designed to mimic ancestral living conditions.”
ReplyDeleteI am sceptical about Steve Ilardi’s claim that his treatment’s success is due to its mimicking of ancestral living conditions. Indeed, all of the activities he proposes are already scientifically known to improve mood and overall health, while other ancestral practices are not, and are therefore not recommended. For instance, getting enough sleep and exercise is prescribed to patients of many kinds as well as healthy individuals because it is known that these practices promote good health. Conversely, Ilardi does not recommend other ancestral practices such as hunting or making one’s own clothes, for example, as these practices are not recognized as particularly healthy. Therefore, from this six-step treatment alone, we cannot conclude that the reason that this protocol is successful in treating depression is because it mimics ancestral living conditions.
A problem I have with evolutionary psychology is that while it explains some behaviors, it fails to explain others and more importantly, it fails to explain why behaviors that are detrimental to our survival still persist in a great percentage of the population. Talk about suicide for example. It is one of the leading causes of death in the world and there still isn’t an evolutionary explanation for why people would take their own life. It doesn’t lead to our survival, so why would it persist? It doesn’t seem like there is a gene that would predispose a person to suicide as they could have one in many disorders associated with suicide and not share many genes with other people who also commit suicide. It seems like behaviors like this would have been eliminated over time, and not still be so prevalent today.
ReplyDelete“Just as transmitted culture rests on a foundation of evolved psychological adaptations, novel adaptations can evolve as a consequence of transmitted culture.”
ReplyDeleteOne question that immediately comes to mind after having learned about this interaction is the point where the transmitted culture merges into an adaptation. In the cases where culture integrates so far into our evolution and becomes an inherent part of our life I think is based on an idea of choice. To a large extent the ideas of our culture that we decide to take part in are our decisions, however I think it is safe to say that when it is no longer our decision-or rather, it has become maladaptive and therefore an objectively bad decision to go against a specific choice- then it becomes a matter of adaptation and evolution.
The biggest strength I found in evolutionary psychology, as outlined by this paper, I how truly integrative and interdisciplinary it is by nature. Perhaps due to its only recent rise, it has had all of psychology's history, past mistakes and controversies to build off of and learn from, until they had reached a happy compromise; evolutionary psychology.
ReplyDeleteThe ultimate explanation that "understanding the evolved functions of psychological adaptations is an indispensable, not an optional, ingredient for a mature psychological sense" seems very reminiscent of functionalism. That is, by understanding how we came to function this way, we can unlock all of psychological science. Conversely, the proximate explanation of understanding details of how the mechanism works, reminds me of structuralism. In neuroscience, it is said that structure determines function. I think the evolutionary psychology integration of this view point is very interesting.
It continues to say that the three forms of learning (incest avoidance, food aversion and prestige criteria) all develop from specific inputs for the functional output. I think this is a very sophisticated model of the nature and nurture concepts. The further juxtapositions of definitions for learning and evolution are combined into "evolved learning mechanisms" which is a true blend of biological inheritance and environmental experience.
Unsurprisingly, evolutionary psychologists also reject genetic determinism (which swings too much in favour of the nurture side of things) in favor for interactionism. However, one of the threats or limitations to evolutionary psychology that they didn’t touch on is also their biggest strength. I think that it is possible that by being too middle minded and compromising between two ends of the spectrum that their views can be discarded as too wishy washy and neutral. While it may work for most concepts, a truly integrated application cannot work to explain everything in the world. This can be seen in the failings of evolutionary psychology, like explaining suicide or homosexuality.
This paper gives many interesting insights into how behaviour can be influenced by evolutionarily adaptive behaviours, especially in cases where the individual undergoing the action may not be fully aware of its evolutionary advantage. For example, I found the example of paternity uncertainty particularly interesting, since it makes sense but it is not something that the average jealous boyfriend or husband would think about as their reason for being jealous. I was also drawn to the example of inbreeding depression, since incest is something that is so hardwired into us, and so taboo that nobody would want to commit an act of incest. Yet the real underlying reason for us to avoid incest (that most people are not actively thinking about when they chose not to commit incest) is the higher potential for genetic issues in the children of parents who were relatives. I found examples such as these that were provided by this paper were a very interesting take on how many of our behaviours that we think are consciously rationalizable may in fact be due to subconscious, evolutionary reasons.
ReplyDelete“Duration of coresidence with a member of opposite sex during childhood powerfully predicts lack of sexual attraction as well as the degree of emotional repulsion at the idea of having sex with him or her.”
ReplyDeleteWhile I understand that evolutionary psychology cannot be 100% accurate, I found this conclusion a little striking (at least in comparison with the other two concrete examples of not eating poisonous foods and learning prestige from peer group). It seems like there are many societies and cases where siblings/cousins that grew up together end up getting married by their own free will or from encouragement from their family. For instance, there was a recent case where a mother and her son got married because they had “always felt sexual attraction in their relationship”. I was curious to how consistently something needs to occur for us to actually conclude that it is a learned and concrete adaptation? Do we always have to exclude certain communities in order to come out with a true conclusion?
After reading this article and watching the video, I couldn’t help but think about mind-reading: the capacity to observe the behavioural similarities in other people and oneself to interpret how the others are feeling. It allows us to predict or explain the behaviour of others just through simple observation. Being able to accurately interpret how another agent feels can have an adaptive advantage because it affects how we act. For example, if I see that someone has their brows furrowed and their lips pressed firmly, I can infer that this person is mad/angry because I can recognize that these are the behaviours I exhibit when I am in that emotional state as well. It would be unwise of me to provoke this person and aggravate them. Is this something that is innate or has this become an evolved behaviour of humans?
ReplyDelete"The researchers concluded that "survival processing is one of the best encoding procedures yet identified in human memory research"."
ReplyDeleteI wonder if survival processing and memory for survival words can be considered an evolutionary adaptation. I would be interested to know what target words were used in the study that Nairne and his colleagues conducted, and whether they were words such as "snake, spider, heights or strangers" related as these were previously mentioned as evolutionary fear-inducing stimuli. As they were trying to confirm or deny Nairne's adaptive memory hypothesis, I think a more in-depth experiment should have been conducted, with multiple control groups for "neutral" words as well as words like "car, gun" that the authors claim do not elicit the same fear response in human though they are much more like do harm to humans today than snakes, spiders and the like. I wish the authors had clarified more about the details of this study, since it the evidence is not very convincing as it stands now.
"Domain-general theories of rationality imply a deliberate calculation of ends and a sample space of means to achieve those ends. Performing the computations needed to sift through that sample space requires more time than is available for solving many adaptive problems, which must be solved in real time."
I'm interested in the domain-general and domain-specific divide. I think a more suitable divide for what the authors are trying to argue would be the one between an algorithm or a heuristic model. I agree that the domain-general rationality theory doesn't seem to align well with decision-making in real time, but neither does an isolated domain-specific approach in my mind. I think it is more appropriate to say that when an algorithm (well-defined set of steps to carrying out a task) doesn't fit well into a decision making situation, whether for a lack of time or resources, people resort to a heuristic model instead (a more practical, imperfect method of problem-solving). My suggested change to the classification of these titles does not change the fact that they could still be a part of an evolutionary adaptation towards problem-solving.
"The framework of evolutionary psychology dissolves dichotomies such as "nature versus nurture," "innate versus learned," and "biological versus cultural." Instead it offers a truly interactionalist framework: Environmental input influences their development at the ontogenetic level and the environment provides cues that activate psychological adaptations at the immediate proximal level. Thus, it does not make sense to ask whether calluses, o mating decisions are "evolved" or "learned" or due to "nature" or "nurture." All evolved mechanisms require some environmental input for their activation, be it repeated friction to the skin in the case of calluses or observable cues to mate value in the case of mating decisions."
This is so far the most convincing argument in favour of evolutionary psychology. I believe the "nature versus nurture" argument is a waste of time as almost all psychological processes that have been researched have been proven to take from both "nature" and "nurture". The way that evolutionary psychology approaches behavioral output reminds me of the diathesis-stress model of psychopathology.
The diathesis-stress model is structured as follows: because of genetic, or more generally evolutionary factors, a person is more or less predisposed towards a behaviour. This is the diathesis. Then, environmental and family factors act as stressors on the person already inclined to a given response. These are the stressors. Through this model, a behaviour is the result of both the innate diathesis and the environmental stressors. A similar model is demonstrated in this article as it pertains to the nature and nurture division.
The article mentions “strangers” as an evolutionarily ancient danger which is interesting taking into consideration how as humans have evolved and through the centuries have travelled more, were colonizers or colonised and therefore were exposed to more different kinds of people or “strangers”. Can pertinent social issues such as racial discrimination be related to the evolutionary fear of strangers? Is there a psychological adaptive explanation to why those that looked different were thought of as inferior to the extent that they were dangerous and therefore perceived as bad, rather than the mere categorization of them as having different skin colour? Ofcourse, power dynamics and racial crimes developed for a plethora of social, political and economic reasons over time but is that added association of “dangerous” to “looks different to me or anyone I know” evolutionary to some extent? Can humans not help being even slightly discriminatory because of fear adaptation? Could discrimination have innate and adaptive behavioural roots? Is it evolved? Or is it because of purposeful hatred/bigotry and something we individually have control over? The article states that all “evolved mechanisms require some environmental input for activation”, which in this context I am assuming means being taught to racial profile or attribute derogatory characteristics “activates” the evolved mechanism of fearing strangers. But how problematic would it be if white supremacists started to claim their vitriol is rooted in EP or that it is not unnatural? If EP has a role to play in discrimination, then are we challenging evolutionary adaptations for survival that cause us to see strangers as dangerous by advocating equality and denouncing it? Does this mean that in the future there will evolve a reduced fear of strangers because of how we presently work to seek a more equal, open-minded world and how it is more advantageous to not be discriminatory in terms of social acceptance/likeability? The article claims “learning requires evolved psychological mechanisms, without which learning could not occur”. So which is it? Did we evolve to hate or learn to hate because the article claims the latter could not occur without the prior? If it’s to do with culture, is it evoked or transmitted? These questions also relate to EP’s deficiency in explaining cultural and individual difference.
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ReplyDeleteIt seems that EP is at its best when it attempts only to explain basic aspects of behaviour, observed more or less universally. Although the article addresses culture, in practice I think that the extensive variability observed in cultural practices makes it hard for EP to come up with convincing, parsimonious explanations of these phenomena arise. While it's probably true that culture emerges as some set of psychological adaptations resulting from genetic and environmental interactions, the level of complexity exceeds the scope of simple testable hypotheses as described early on in both articles. The concept is sound, but the specific explanations arising from it are potentially dubious, and in some cases amount to the very just-so stories the field claims to attempt to weed out. Unfortunately the authoritative distinction between a basic behaviour and a complex cultural practice is hard to make. The extremes are clear (walking is basic, praying five times a day is more complex) but the lines in the middle are more blurred.
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ReplyDeleteThis article opened me up to thinking about a lot of things in ways I never have before. I’ve never thought of understanding neurological disorders through an evolutionary lens, and many of the ideas brought forth regarding how increased depression might’ve come to be were very intriguing. Additionally, the explanations regarding innate phobias for scary things in our environment made sense and seemed well thought out. However, I don’t agree with the notion that perhaps almost all aspects of cognition or behavior might have some sort of evolutionary backstory behind it. For example, although their explanation of the mismatch between an ancestral and modern environment for depression is very intriguing, it does seem that they do miss out on a lot of other factors that cannot be explained evolutionarily, such as better technology and diagnostic tools which could potentially be the sole reason for this increase in cases of depression. It also seems to me that even if evolution does explain why things are, it still does not explain much regarding how things are the way they are, or the causal mechanisms behind cognitive behaviors. Finally, things like social media addiction is an example of a thing that I don’t know if we can find an evolutionary explanation for, because social media is a relatively new thing that only recently entered our environments and lives.