I’ve been musing about Evolutionary Psychology (EP) and evolution in general. This article in Discover Magazine
starts to address one of my concerns. As some of you know, EP argues most of present day human behavior (dating, organizational behavior in the work place or the neighborhood, family relationships, creating art…) can be explained by human psychology shaped over a hundred thousand year history spent by Homo Sapiens in small tribes on either the African Savannah or (most recently) along the human migration routes. Now, I actually don’t disagree with the main thrust of this argument. I accept the idea that how we behave, what we believe and our over all psychology has evolved to maximize our genes’ ability to reproduce (for an introduction to this line of thinking check out: Why Beautiful people have more daughters). However, I’ve always thought this line of thinking, in addition to being overly reductionist, also argues for a strangely abridged form of evolution. I’ll deal with reductionism in a future post. Here, I want to address the idea that homo sapiens’ psychological evolution has (from the present day perspective) effectively stopped as of 10K years ago. The theory posits 10K years is a blink of the eye relatively speaking, so that while we might be still evolving, we wouldn’t see the changes caused by the industrial revolution, urbanization, agriculture… in so short a period of time. However, as the above article points out, evolutionary adaptations and mutations may be speeding up, due to increasing population (and therefore more opportunities for mutations and adaptation) as well as the increasing speed of communication. The article gives a variety of examples, mostly focusing on physical adaptation and mutation, but I want to focus on the idea of culture as a means for evolutionary change in EP.

As I’ve explored in previous posts, an individual’s brain is constantly changing (neuroplasticity), remapping, finding new connections… Further, this constant change can result in changed behavior and perceptions. If these changes are communicated to others who adapt and or change their behavior accordingly, a cascade of changes can occur throughout large swaths of humanity. Some readers will recognize the concept of memes, ideas that “try” to reproduce throughout a culture. While I’m unaware of any good science supporting the theory of memetics (though I’d think it could be tested in online communities) my hunch is the underlying idea has some merit. In short, due to more people communicating more ideas more efficiently, cultures are changing at an increasing pace. The more a culture changes, the more individual’s behaviors are altered which then alters the individual’s brain, causing a cascading back up the line. According to this hypothesis, one of the key changes to the individual and the culture at large, will be an increasing importance placed on competing in the “cultural environment”.

A couple of examples of human behavior not easily explained by traditional EP are suicide bombers and a typical adult’s love for their parents and grandparents. After all, a suicide bomber ultimately ends his/her chance at reproduction and thus the ability to pass on their genes. Spending resources (love, money…) on your grandparent would seem to be a waste of resources better spent on either one’s progeny or in finding a potential mate. Now, an immediate response to the Grandma problem is that if grandma spends time taking care of your kids you can spend more time gathering resources… but this hardly feels like a full explanation. After all, even the kidless take care of their parents and besides, how to explain the kidless themselves not to mention suicide bombers.

Okay, so far, so good but here’s where I start walking even further out on the plank of speculation. Perhaps, a person’s culture should be looked at as an environment subject to evolutionary pressures where the individual, motivated by the twin needs of self-preservation and reproduction, is competing. However, in this environment, self-preservation is measured as the amount people you respect, talk about and remember your stories, regardless of whether the physical you has passed away. Reproduction would be measured as the amount ideas (and stories) you feel are congruent with your beliefs (represent you) are spread through out the culture at large. Thus, culture, as exemplified by the preservation of stories (whether on Youtube or the family couch) provides the evolutionary environment, at least from an EP perspective. INOWs, as we become more and more capable of capturing a person’s life and ideas in a permanent form viewable by those who come after us and, as those ideas that we espouse become more easily transferred and reproduced by others there will be an increasing emphasis put on competing in the cultural environment as compared to competing in the physical environment. This of course has always been true, after all, many people have chosen fame over children in the hope that they would live on through their stories or for that matter, becoming (in)famous or taking care of one’s parents and grandparents. The difference now, is the ability to capture one’s stories and be assured that they will be available for viewing is greatly enhanced by the digital revolution. If this is true, we should expect more people trying to win in the cultural environment and fewer people focused on the physical environment, especially in those cultures with a lot of access to cheap storage and reproduction of stories and less true in those societies will less access. More and more, we are competing in the cultural environment to ensure the reproduction of our stories, sometimes at the cost of competing in the physical environment to ensure the reproduction of our genes. This may prove beneficial for grandparents who can better share how their kids are taking care of them and for the kids who can better advertise their commitment to care giving but also for suicide bombers who want to better communicate their ideas. Hell, perhaps that’s why I’m blogging right now, rather than teaching my kids how better to survive and reproduce. Andy Warhol would be proud.

One last thought, while I wrote I wouldn’t address reductionism I do feel the need to argue that I don’t believe the above discussion is adequate from a subjective viewpoint. INOWs, I don’t believe we take care of Grandma JUST to burnish our reputation but from an “Objective” standpoint, burnishing one’s reputation may be an adequate predictor of behavior. Like I said, this is a much larger point that I haven’t managed to condense.