视读进化心理学
2009-1
安徽文艺出版社
（英）迪兰·伊文斯,（英）奥斯卡·扎拉特
180
刘建鸿
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心智是如何进化而来的？人类的心智为何不同于祖先的心智以及亲缘最近的物种——猿类的心智？如果我们是由自私的基因建构而成的，为什么我们又会表现出合作的行为？男性和女性的心理差异是否能用进化论的观点加以解释？上述问题都是进化心理学的核心，而进化心理学又是近些年来兴起的一种新的研究学科。 依靠进化生物学和认知心理学的发展，同时借助人类学、灵长类动物学和考古学的研究数据，进化心理学家逐渐拼贴出一幅完整的有关人类本性的科学图景。 《视读进化心理学》是帮助读者了解这一领域的最佳入门图书。迪兰-伊文斯生动简练的撰文，配以获奖艺术家奥斯卡·扎拉特的插图，带领读者轻松走入心智研究的历史。
译者序什么是进化心理学？认知心理学行为由一系列心理的信息加工过程所引发行为主义心理学人的大脑就是一台计算机心理的隐喻一个可检验的模式进化生物学遗传和突变基因遗传突变适者生存和自然选择有用的设计关于设计论的争论绝非偶然自然没有飞跃建立在偶然变化基础上的进化眼睛的进化盲眼钟表匠组合拼图的两块拼块通用的问题解决程序学习语言语言习得视觉模块多模块理论没有中央处理器模块和适应适应和环境进化而来的模块共有的模块和特有的模块走出非洲社会环境适应问题躲避食肉动物攻击的心理模块发现食肉动物错误报警两种神经通路食物倾向性模块脂肪和糖环境的不相称恶心建立同盟的模块生活在群体中同盟和联合人数激增的群体互惠的利他主义搭便车问题合作的进化针锋相对社会交换的认知适应帮助孩子和其他亲戚的模块亲缘选择你们有多少的亲缘关系？汉密尔顿公式裙带关系的进化灰姑娘的事实给后代分配资源资源分配模块父母一子女冲突我那一份有多少？断奶断奶的益处读懂他人心理的模块群体规模和社会智力马基雅弗利心理理论通俗心理学赛利一安测验心理理论和自闭症 说谎和策略性的欺骗语言模块语言获得机制语言的进化再论互惠的利他主义流言蜚语间接的互惠名声的重要性配偶一选择模块配对游戏选择中的基因漂亮的重要性身体的对称性有没有证明对称性偏好的证据？美的生物学意义能生育的因素选择一个能照料孩子的配偶人类的夫妻制父母照料和人类的脑容量你会是一位好父亲或好母亲吗？配偶选择的性别差异父亲和花花公子两性冲突还是进化的军备竞赛？一夫一妻制的女性的神话女性的非固定性伴侣什么是最佳策略？资源丰富的男人有关配偶倾向性的测验魅力与年龄年龄与生育忠诚：性欲和情感男性的妒忌和女性的妒忌心智图谱对进化心理学的批评泛适应论副作用和副产品并非都是模块假设和证明好像是在讲故事？逻辑是副产品吗？华生选择任务找出欺骗者心理模块的两大属性重提模块性简化论最简单的精确理论基因决定论是否过于看重基因的影响呢？先天VS后天行为遗传学人类的不同以及人类的本性人类的行为是不能改变的吗？ 。为现状辩护？自然主义谬误错误的批评和误解历史遗留问题达尔文派的左翼分子？达尔文的革命心理学的未来拓展阅读附录
什么是进化心理学？ 进化心理学由两门科学交叉融合而成，这两门科学即进化生物学和认知心理学。如果我们想要拼出人类行为的完整图谱，那么这两门学科就是这幅拼图的两块拼块，缺一不可。 我们先来单独看看这两门科学，然后我们再去了解一下进化心理学是如何把二者糅合在一起并最终达到科学理解人类本质的目的的。
自1991年问世以来，先后以三十余种文字出版 行，销量达2.4亿册。 中国作家协会主席铁凝联袂国内著名专家、学者、作家鼎力推荐，世界经典科普巨作——INTRODUCING（介绍丛书）。 孟冰，中国戏剧家协会副主席：它是一粒种子，可以埋进青少年的心田…… 杨宜音，中国社会科学院社会学研究所研究员：如果你想走进世界，那么就请打开它吧！ 你的内心世界是他人的心外世界，他人的内心世界是你的心外世界，心理学是沟通心里与心外的一扇窗。如果你想走进内心世界，那么就请你打开它吧！
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这本书很精炼，对于了解进化心理学的初学者特别适合。作者用简练的文字向读者展示了一个宏大的人类进化历史进程，读了让人收益良多。慎重推荐！
进化心理学很有趣，配的图片倒是不太能在家长面前看……
如果想要看看人类的本能反应源头买这本很适合。
用图画来解释进化心理学，适合普通人阅读，好书，呵呵
关于认知的种系发展心理学，很不错的书
以前没有接触过这个主题，但是这本书让我一下子看到这门个（知识的）世界，好。
该书将深奥的理论图片化，再配以简短的文字。轻松中不乏睿智。值得推荐
挺好玩的一本书，跟想的差不多，而且送货很及时，不错
正经事儿，系列丛书
不错～值得一看～通俗易懂
通俗易懂好书
划算，很好的
不错的书，送给小朋友的
不管内容如何，简笔速描看上去很过瘾而且直观！！
itisawonderfulandterrificbookforreaderswhoareinterestedinevolutionarypsychology!!!
里面都是图片看起来很有意思 书都没有损坏 看起来 挺好的
文字结合图片，道理说得浅显易懂，是本好书
对进化心理学有一点点兴趣的人，可以买这本书来入门——了解一些基础的知识
视读系列都不错的。不会令人失望。
进化论是最伟大的科学...因为它可以解释到很多很多的现象！
配图很可爱，成人孩子读都可以。
可以学习到很多浅显易懂的知识呢！
深入浅出，可读性强，对于想简单了解该知识的人是一本快速读物！
一到手就翻了几页，是插图的，文字很少。。。
还没读呢，拆开了包装觉得其实很一般纸质什么的
消遣类的书，闲来无事翻翻看的，还不错，可惜是黑白版，要是彩版就好了。
很适合非专业者阅读，很有意思
画面不太舒服，学术性有待提高
很浅显易懂，就是老旧了点
理论普及的好读本，视读形式阅览称得上轻快，图画似乎太浓重，乱糟糟的
1.进化心理学是建立在进化生物学和认知心理学这两个成熟学科上的一个相对新的学科。
2.认知心理学的两个基本观点：行为是由一系列心理的信息加工过程所引发的；大脑就是一台计算机；
3.进化的原因：遗传、突变、自然选择。
3.语言能力是我们与生俱来的，是自然选择让我们获得的心智能力之一。
4.人类与大猩猩600万年前分道扬镳，之后就生活在东非的热带大草原上，大约10万年前开始，人类走出非洲并最终占据了世界各地。人类的文明史，也就是从1万年前的农业社会开始，对我们心智的进化都是没有太大作用的。
5.社会环境影响我们的心智：食物匮乏，造就了我们队高热量食物的食欲；腐败变质食物带来的疾病使我们对对这些食物没有胃口；
6.社会性动物需要解决的几大问题也是对应的几个心理模块：（通过基因传递给下一代的能力，当然也是通过自然选择来实现的）
① 躲避肉食动物的攻击；a.即使会误报，报警机制也要非常灵敏；两条神经通路：感觉丘脑-杏仁体（灵敏但不够精确）、感觉丘脑-大脑皮层-杏仁体（缓慢但精确）
② 食用正确的食物
③ 建立联盟和朋友关系：a.解决“搭便车”问题：某些个体经常碰到一起；个体能够认出之前的个体并把他们和其他陌生人相区别；个体能记住之前的个体如何对待自己
④ 为孩子和亲朋好友提供帮助（亲戚之间是特殊的社会交换问题）；a.基因决定了我们是自私的；孩子希望得到的资源总是比母亲平均分配的资源多一些；
⑤ 读懂其他个体的心理；通俗心理学，塞利-安测验
7.语言模块：利他注意，要区分出欺骗者和合作者；间接互惠；流言蜚语；名声；
8.配偶选择模块
① 审美对称偏好：将优良基因传递给下一代；能生育，愿意为培养下一代付出心血和努力；
② 人类一夫一妻制，共同照料孩子，对几百万年前脑容量激增起到重要作用
③ 鉴于共同抚养后代，所以选择配偶的标准与选择合作伙伴一样：从行为中判断是否友善、有耐心、慷慨和值得信任；
④ 性别差异，长期配偶策略两性相同，但短期配偶策略上男性占优势（短期策略的男性可以逃之夭夭，短期策略的女性被识别并抛弃后需要独自抚养后代）
为辨别男性是长期配偶策略还是短期配偶策略，女性形成拖延策略，女人比男人更加谨慎。
⑤ 女性生育年龄：生育能力20岁达到顶峰，30岁后急速下降；由于失误营养原因，现代生育能力能往后推迟一些；
⑥ 男性更嫉妒女性的感情出轨，女性更嫉妒男性的性出轨。完全符合进化论的观点。
先谈下这本书。
书不错，思路清晰，简明扼要，不失原创性。
至于进化心理学这个概念，原来是生物学（进化论）与认知心理学交融而成的一个概念。应该说，这种交合是很有意义的。心理学不能只是局限于心理学的范畴，也不能囿于生物生理学，既便是加上哲学也还不够。心理学是研究人的心理的学科，那就离不了谈人，要谈人，就离不了与人有关的历史与环境，所以，可以想象，心理学是有关所有学科的科学。心理学必须整合所有的学科。而进化心理学在这个方向上算是向前迈了一步。（至于此点，我在《重新认识心理学》一文有比较详细的描述：http://1160404007.blog.163.com/blog/static/11774958320094215924216/ ）
进化心理学从人类的进化过程来谈人的心理的进化，这种研究方法就撇开了个体性，而主要来研究群体心理特征（也就是现在所说的集体意识），又因为研究点是建立在既往的人类历史上的，所以，在此基础上的人类心理就成了人类的共同的心理，并且更重要的是人类潜意识的群体心理特征（就是荣格所说的社会原型，或集体潜意识）。本书在最后很明确地表达了自己的观点：“进化心理学本来就是为了研究人类行为的相似性。”“进化心理学家感兴趣的是所有人类共享的、基本的心理特点，即人类先天的共同点。”P158
需要指出的是，进化心理学可以作为一条心理学的研究思路，一个方向，但绝不是心理学的全部，此书作者就有以偏概全的倾向，认为未来进化心理学一定会成为心理学，那就犯了一叶遮目不见泰山的错误。
不管怎样，就此书而言，值得推荐。
下面的文字，是看此书时的些思考，却并不是全部建立在此书的基础之上。感兴趣的朋友可以一起探讨。
在开始这个话题之前，我首先要对这个标题作一说明。我把一些行为称为自我伤害行为，在这里，我有意的想与自虐作一区分。应该说，自虐包括在自我伤害行为之中，但自我伤害行为不等于自虐。自我伤害行为在这里是一个更为宽泛的概念。我把那些对自我不利——包括身体，精神，以及个体在社会中的地位等等——都叫作自我伤害行为。举例子来说，比如自虐（这是比较典型的），抽烟，肥胖，自杀，各种瘾，手淫，失眠，贫穷等等，这些行为都在我所谈的自我伤害行为之内。可能大家会对贫穷感到意外，这怎么会是自我伤害行为呢？这又怎么会是因为内在的心理动力引起的呢？在后面，我们探讨电影《心灵捕手》男主人公威尔时会谈到这点。另外，意外事故也是自我伤害行为，甚至疾病也同样如此。关于这点，露易丝•海在她的著作《生命的重建》中描述得很详细，甚至在最后还列了一个表，把一些疾病与心理动力对应起来。
我想，这在一开始可能是较难理解的一个概念，会出乎许多的人意料，在我较深入地思考这个问题后，我发现，自我伤害行为虽然表现形式不同，但在这不同背后却有一些相同的东西。就如前面提到的，第一个相同之处就是，这些行为都是对当事人不利或有害的。我发现另外一个相同点，那就是：这些行为的精神动因都是恨。而由恨引发的情绪是愤怒。（我这样说多少有些概括了，实际上，我们有很多词来描述那种负能量的精神动力，王凤仪仙长在他的著作《化性谈》中，把恼、怒、怨、恨、烦称为五毒，是造成各种疾病的原因，在《黄帝内经》中亦有类似的描述。）
我们来继续把这个问题引向深处，当事人在恨谁？谁是他的愤怒的对象？结果我发现，恨谁、对谁愤怒并不重要，重要的，有自我伤害行为的人，他把对另一个人的恨与愤怒移情到了自己身上，也就是说，他把自己当成是他所恨的对象，因此，现在你可以理解，具有自我伤害行为的人在实施自我伤害时，实际上是对另一个人的惩罚。当然，这是属于潜意识的行为，当事人是很难意识到的，这也正是我有必要在这里进行讨论的原因。
当事人之所以把对另一个人的惩罚转变成是对自我的伤害，一个重要的原因是，在现实生活中，当事人无法对另一个人表达愤怒，更别说是对另一个人进行惩罚，换句话说，当事人把对另一个人的愤怒压抑起来了。比如说，当事人愤怒的对象是一位已经过世的人，或者，是自己的父母，或者，是自己的爱人，或者，是自己的上司，总之，当事人无法对愤怒对象表达自己的愤怒，于是，自我伤害行为就产生了。我突然想起了那句话，“别拿别人的过错惩罚自己”，讲的真的是太对了。当然，当事人如果能够真接对愤怒对象表达自己的愤怒，自我伤害的行为就不会产生。然而，这又会引发另一种情况，那就是会受到道德、良心的惩罚。比如，直接对父母表达愤怒，那就成了不尊重老人，直接对爱人表达愤怒，那就有可能威胁到正常的家庭关系的稳定，直接对上司表达愤怒，那就意味着可能自己炒自己的鱿鱼。所以，从这里我们可以明白，自我伤害行为的背后，是自我生存与发展与社会道德之间的冲突与矛盾。而在这二者的关系中，社会道德是处在第一位的，个人利益是处在第二位的，所以，恨与愤怒的压抑就更为常见些。另外，比较而言，把自己当作愤怒对象进行惩罚似乎比直接惩罚愤怒对象来得更为容易些，这也是为什么大多数的人会采取自我伤害作为惩罚所恨的人的一种途径。需要再次说明的是，当事人是意识不到这些的，当事人一旦意识到他自我伤害行为的真正动力，他就不会再这样做了，这正是我想来谈这个问题的原因。
我之所以会得出这样的结果，我的依据是，自我保护是人的最重要的本能（也可称之为生存本能）。这种本能的特征是使自身强大且不受伤害。而这也是万物最基本的特征。不管是在动物界、植物界、生物界，甚至是物理界也都是如此。我们知道，物质的形成是由于引力的作用，而引力的作用又形成了各种星体，这就是牛顿发现的万有引力。引而伸之，生物的形成也是引力作用的结果，因为生物的复杂性（比如人），用引力来解释就显得有点困难，所以，就只好借用另一个词了，那就是“生命力”。生命力在本质上具有引力同样的特征。引力使物质凝聚一起并不断变大，生命力则使得人不断强大而不受外界伤害。好了，这个问题就此打住吧，要想把这个问题说清楚，用一本书的文字都有点困难。总之，我得出的结论是，自我保护是人的最重要的本能，这种本能的特征是使自身强大且不受伤害。因此，自我伤害行为显然与这一本能相矛盾，当事人对自我的伤害绝非本意，他要伤害的对象绝非自己，一定是他弄错了，他把自己当成了他想要伤害的对象（这是潜意识，他很难意识到）。
实际上，从另一个层面来讲，恨本身也是一种自我保护行为，这是一种情感标志。之所以当事人会恨，是因为当事人曾被所恨对象伤害过，当事人为了不再继续受到伤害，于是，他竖立了一个情感标志，就是恨，因为有恨，当事人就对所恨对象保持一种高度的警惕状态，避免再受伤害。当然，如果可能的话，当事人会采取报复与打击行为，如果被恨对象受创伤被“镇压”下去，受伤害的危险就解除了。不过，人们往往忽视了一点，那就是，敌对状态对当事人是害大于利的，在敌对的状态中实际上是消耗了当事人的能量。而当事人心中的恨与愤怒如果不能排解，最后就会形成自我伤害行为。
我想还是先举个例子来讲可能会比较好些，不然的话可能会有些太抽象了。有一位网友，有一次和她聊天，谈到哲学，她说我不懂哲学，但我觉得我对哲学还是有一点了解的，所以，我就完全借用儒、释、道几家的原话回复她，她后来很生气，一连写了十几个“你不懂，你不懂！”让我去好好学学哲学。我对此并不生气，只是感到奇怪，觉得她这样聊天很失态，她为什么会是这样呢？后来了解到，她与父亲关系不好，父亲对她要求很恪刻，她的一篇文章在一家报纸发表，父亲却打击她，有本事就发表到更大的那家报纸上。在前天的聊天中，她告诉我她想自杀。当然，这次想自杀与她父亲无关，她写了几封信给教她命理的老师，但那老师没回她。也是从她身上，我开始思考自我伤害行为的。她的自杀的想法就是自我伤害行为，很明显，背后的动力就是恨与愤怒，她所恨与愤怒的对象就是她的老师，她因为老师未回复她而感到受到伤害，她无法表达她的愤怒，无法伤害老师，所以，她采取了自我伤害行为（虽然还只是想法）。
不过，从她身上我又发现了另一个重要的信息，象她老师未回复她信这样的事应该算不上什么大事，却使她愤怒并产生自杀的念头，这应该只是表面的现象，只是个诱因，而不是内在根本的动力。真正的动力我想应该与她父亲有关。她真正恨的是她父亲。她从父亲那里没有感受到父爱，因此，她不知道什么是爱，如何去爱。她心中缺乏爱，渴望爱，但又总对爱存有质疑。事实上，她眼下也的确在感情问题上存有困惑。有位心理咨询师说她有同性恋的倾向，而她当晚告诉我，她最近聊天的90%的都是女性。我想，这种倾向是可能的，她与父亲的隔阂使她对来自男性的爱持有质疑与排斥，从而有可能把这种爱转移向女性。
总结一下，具有自我伤害行为的人大多都与童年缺乏爱或受到伤害有关，他们具有以下特点：猜忌，以自我为中心，相信权力或能力，追求完美，有控制欲。因为他们没有得到真正的爱，所以不知道什么是真正的爱，从而对所有的爱、所有的人都不相信。因为对周围的人不相信，那唯 一能相信的，就只有自己了，所以，这些人大多都是以自我为中心。他们对权力或能力有一种非常强烈的欲望，因为，他们认为，他们之所以不被爱，是自己还不够好，不够强大，当他们够好够强大时，他们就会得到爱，就不会被伤害。当然，这样会使得他们比其他人更容易获得某方面的成就，比较典型的代表人物算是音乐天王迈克•杰克逊了，他因为缺乏父爱，因此，激发了他超人的音乐表现力，让他在音乐方面取得了超人的成就。他把希望从父亲那里得到爱转移到了他的歌迷身上，他不惜为了博得歌迷的爱而整容（这就是自我伤害行为，这表面上看是对爱的渴求造成的，而对爱的渴求正表明爱的缺乏，而爱的缺乏则反映了父亲的暴力与杰克逊的内心的伤害，而这必然会造成恨与愤怒。这是更深一层的原因。），最后，当歌迷不再爱他，开始抵毁他时，他甚至不惜以死为代价以重新唤得歌迷的爱。类似的事例在历史上并不少见。因为害怕失去，所以就会极力想要控制。只有在自己的控制下才会有安全感。就比如那位网友，她多次给老师发信，这在潜意识里是想对老师有所控制，当老师未回复她，她感到失去了控制，因此也就失去了安全感。她之前与我聊天，说我不懂哲学，言辞激烈，这也是一种控制，如果我表现得很好，她就会有受伤害的威胁，所以她要打击我，我被打击下去了，受伤害的威胁也就解除了。很明显，她的这种行为已经无意识地继承了她的父亲，因此，可以判断出，他父亲也是曾经颇受打击的人。
另一个比较典型的案例是电影《心灵捕手》。《心灵捕手》讲述了一位年轻的数学奇才却甘愿做麻省理工学院的清洁工，与几个死党混在一起，后来接受心理专家的治疗，心理专家终于打开了他的心门，发现了他的心结，原来，小时候父亲经常酒后对他施行暴力。这使他成年后不相信真爱，不敢把自己完全呈现给别人，使他尽管怀有超人的天份，却甘愿做一个清洁工（这就是自我伤害行为，有意使自己陷入困境。）
具有自我伤害行为的人在治疗时会有一种抗拒心理，这种抗拒心理可以说是对他人的不信任，但从本质上来讲，是持续的恨与愤怒，不愿意释放。就象《心灵捕手》中，主人公对于心理治疗的抵制。对于那位网友，当我尝试和她一起寻找问题的原因时，她却表现出抵制状态，她说她就是这样，她就是想死。
然而，真正的解决之道就是释放，释放掉心中的恨与愤怒，原谅与接受那个所恨的人，学着去爱他，当做到这点时，当事人就不会再有自我伤害的行为，同时，当事人会从之前所恨的人那里获得有用的能量。
最后想要说明一点的是，这里谈的是影响人的两大内在动力——爱与恨，并不具体，实际上，每一具体的行为都有一个具体的精神动力。我只想探讨一下最基本的动力问题。
另：对心理学及解梦感兴趣的朋友可加入我建的“梦&解梦”小组：http://www.douban.com/group/89937/
个人边看边用键盘敲的，如有错误见谅吧！开头部分，开看时还没想到敲；后面内容，打得太累就没坚持。非常虎头蛇尾，有兴趣的就将就着看吧！还是挺浅显易懂的。
……
Not by Coincidence…
Paley was right about one thing.Complex machines like watches and eyes are extremely improbable arrangements of matter.To claim that they could have come into existence in one single cosmic coincidence would be ludicrous.That would be about as likely as a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747 out of the scrap metal.
Natura non facit saltum (nature does not make leaps.自然界并不进行突变式发展)
But Paley was wrong in thinking that the only alternative to such a ludicrous scenario was that eyes and other adaptations had been desingned by God.Darwin’s theory of natural selection provides another alternative.Darwin argued that complex machines like the eye could evolve by a completely natural process,without the aid of any super-naural being.
Improvement by accident
This is how evolutionary biology explains the evolution of complex desings like the eye.Adaptations do not come about all in one go,by a single large mutation,but evolve gradually by accumulation hundreds of very small mutations.The mutations occur at random,with no plan in mind.
The evolution of the eye
In the case of the eye,for example,the first small change was probaly a slight increase in the sensitivity to light of a small piece of skin.All skin is slightly sensitive to light anyway,and it is not difficult to imagine that the offspring of one of our eyeless ancestors happened to be born with a bit of skin slightly more sensitive to light than normal.This was just an acident,of course.
It also just happened that this particular accident was a lucky accident,because it allowed the mutant baby to detect the shadow of a predator more quickly,and thus escape faster than its eyeless parents and siblings could do.
Of course,there were many other accidents that weren’t quite so lucky—many other mutant babies whose unusual features were disadvantageous rather than beneficial.These mutants did not have any offspring.
But the lucky mutant was more successful and had lots of offspring.Moreover,it passed the new gene for light-sensitive skin-bits on to its offspring,so the new gene spread through the population and eventually everyone had the light-sensitive skin patches.Later on,there were other mutations,some of which were also beneficial.The light-sensitive skin patches became light-sensitive concave dips,which were then filled in with transparent fluid and finally covered over with a lens.The eye had evolved by a process of natural selection.
The blind watchmaker
Natural selection,then,builds adaptations by accumulating many small accidental changes.The British biologist Richard Dawkins has compared natural selection to a “blind watchmaker”.It is a watchmaker because it produces complex desingns,but it is blind because it doesn’t produce these designs by conscious foresight,but simply by accumulating a series of random accidents.
This concludes our brief survey of evolutionary biology.Now it is time to fit the two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together.
Fitting the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together
Evolutionary psychology is the combination of cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology.But why should we combine these two sciences?What have they got to do with each other?The answer is simple.
Cognitive psychology tells us that the mind exhibits a very complex design.Evolutionary biology tells us that complax designs in mature can only come about by natural selection.Therefore,the design of the mind must have evolved by a process of natural selection.What is meant by saying that the mind is a “complex design”? Just how complex is the mind?
General-Purpose Problem-Solver?
When cognitive psychologists first began to investigate the mind,they thought that it would be a very simple kind of program.
We thought that it would be an abstract,general-purpose problem-solver.All that the mental software required was a few general procedures that could be applied to any information.
When they set out to test this hypothesis,however,the cognitive psychologists found that they were wrong.They wrote some very simple programs that could sovle very abstract problems,but they found that these programs were unable to do many of the things that humans do easily.
Learning a language
One of these things that humans do easily is learning a language.In the late 1950s,the American linguist Noam Chomsky showed that a general-purpose learning program simply could not learn a language under the same conditions as normal human children.
In order for children to learn a language,they must first hear adults speaking it.But adult speech contans lots of errors,and no indication of what is correct and incorrect.
The technical term for this faulty data is “the poverty of the stimulus”.Learning a language based on this information alone would be like trying to figure out the rules of chess just by observing a few chess games in which some of the moves were illegal (but without knowing which moves were illegal).This would be impossible unless you already knew what information to look for.
Language Acquisition
So the only program that could learn a human language is a specific one that has been pre-programmed with specific information relevant just to language learning.Chomsky concluded that there is an innate “language accquisition device”(LAD) in the mind which knows what kinds of rules human languages can have.Human languages have a limited number of structures,which are collectively known as “Universal Grammar”.
When a child learns its first language,he or she doesn’t start from scratch.They simply select from their innate knowleged of universal grammer the rules that they hear being used around them.
In sense,language isn’t something that is learned;it is more appropriate to say that it just develops naturally,like a biological organ or an instinct.
Vision
Chomsky’s pioneering work on language was followed by similar discoveries in other areas of psychology.David Marr showed how another apparently simple task-seeing-was also very complex.Writing a program that could enable a robot to recognize even simple objects proved incredibly difficult.
So I found that vision required special software for seeing,with specific rules for detecting edges,motion,colour and depth.
David Marr’s theory of vision:We reconstruct three-dimensional images by building them up from simpler shapes like cylinders. (Hand-forearm-arm-human)
Modularity
Cognitive psychologists began to realize that the mind was far more complex than they had first imagined.In 1983,the American philosopher and psychologist Jerry Fodor reached a stunning conclusion.
The mind could not possibly be a single,general-purpose program.Instead,it has to be a collection of many special-purpose programs,each with its own rules.
Fodor called these special-purpose program“modules”.
The modular theory of mind is still quite new,and is not yet accepted by all cognitive psychologists,but it is becoming more influential.Although it is very new idea,in a way it is also a return to a very old idea.For hundreds of years,people have divided the mind into“faculties”.In the 19th century,Franz Joseph Gall divided the mind into dozens of distinct capacities.
Just as the older universities were divided into different “faculties”…
Faculty psychology was largely abandoned at the beginning of the 20th century,but now,with the modular theory of mind,it is regaining prominence.
Massive Modularity
John Tooby and Leda Cosmides,two American psychologists who have pioneered many developments in evolutionary psychology,argue that there are hundreds,perhaps even thousands,of these special-purpose modules in the human mind.
We compare the mind to a Swiss-Army knife with lots of different gadgets.Each one is designed for a specific task.
This view is sometimes called the “massive modularity”thesis to distinguish it from a more limited view of modularity.
When Fodor proposed a return to the tradition of “faculty psychology”in his 1983 book,The Modularity of Mind,he didn’t envisage hundreds of modules.He proposed that there were only a few of them.There were modules for processing sensory input(vision,sound,taste,touch,smell and language),but no more.Fodor claimed that these “input processes”fed information into general-purpose programs called “central processes”.The central processes were not modular in Fodor’s account.Fodor thinks evolutionary psychology has gone too far.
No Central Processes
Evolutionary psychologists are opposed to Fodor’s idea of “general-purpose central processes”for the same reason as they are opposed to the idea that the whole mind is a general-purpose program.
General-purpose problem solvers don’t work because there are no “general problems”,only specific ones.
If this input systems are modular,why not the central processes too?
Modules and Adaptations
A modular mind is clearly far more complex than a single general-purpose program.It has lots of interlocking parts that function smoothly together to process information.It has an innate structure that develops naturally,like a biological organ.According to evolutionary biology,these characteristics occur only as a result of natural selection.
We can therefore ask how the different bits of the mind evolved.Evolutionary psychology is the research program that attempts to answer this question.
Adaptations and environments
According to evolutionary psychology,the various mental modules are adaptations designed by natural selection.Every adaptation is designed to solve an adaptive problem.An adaptive problem is something that an organism needs to solve in order to survive and reproduce.
For example,one important adaptive problem faced by many animals is the problem of staying warm.Some animals solve this problem by developing coats of fur.Others solve it by thick layers of blubber.
Evolving Modules
Different environments pose different adaptive problems and so require different adaptations.There is not much point in having eyes if you live deep underground,where there is no light.If you want to understand any adaptation,therefore,you must know something about the envrionment in which in evolved.
What was the environment in which the various modules in the human mind evolved?This is a tricky question,because the modules did not all evolve at the same time,so they did not all evolve in the same envrionment.
Some modules evolved relatively recently,after the human species split from that of our closest relative,the chimpanzee.These modules are unique to humans.
Shared and Unique Modules
Other modules evolved a long time ago,when the commom ancestor of humans and reptiles was alive.These modules are not unique to humans.There are similar modules in the minds of reptiles.This does not mean that we have a “reptilian”bit in our mind,however.Mental modules,like all adaptations,do not stop evolving once they have appeared.They keep changing along with the environment.So,for example,both humans and crocodiles have eyes because they are descended from the same ancestral species in which eyes first evolved.But this does not mean that humans have reptilian eyes.
Human and crocodiles have slightly different kinds of eye.Because our eyes have evolved in different ways since the human lineage diverged from the reptilian lineage.
If we want to investigate the most distinctively human modules,the ones we don’t share with any other animals,we will have to look at the environment in which our ancestors lived after the human lineage split from that of the chimpanzee.
Out of Africa
Around 100,000 years ago,some of our ancestors began to emigrate out of Africa,and eventurally colonized the whole world.But 100,000 years is only about 5,000 generations—too short a time for evolution to produce any major changes.Human haven’t changed much in that time,so we can ignore it when discussing the evolutin of the mind.This means that all the history of human civilization and culture,from the birth of agriculture some 10,000 years ago until the present,is irrelevant to understanding the design of the human mind.
Our minds did not evolve in a world of cities and cars,nor even in a world of ploughs and farming.We are all “stone-agers living in the fast lane”.
The Social Environment
What was life like on the African savannahs?The climate was hot and sunny,and the flat plains were covered in long grass dotted with trees,some of which were rich in high-quality food like fruit and nuts.This was the physical environment in which the human mind evolved.However,when we are considering the evolution of the human mind,it is just as important—perhaps even more important—to consider the social envrionment.
The social environment refers to the orther minds around you.
Like most primates,our ancestors lived in tightly-knit groups with a complex social structure.Interacting with the other people in the group was just as important for their survival as bing able to detect and escape from predators.
Adaptive Problems
Now that we know a little bit about the environment in which our most recent ancestors lived,we can ask what adaptive problems they faced.When we know what adaptive problems they faced,we can make some educated guesses about the kinds of mental adaptations(mental modules)that natural selection might have produced to solve them.Then,as with any other scinece,we can try to find evidence to see whether these guesses are right or wrong.
So what were the adaptive problems faced by our hominid ancestors?Various considerations drawn from biology,primatology, archaeology and anthropology suggest what the most important adaptive problems would have been.
Avoiding predators—eating the right food—forming alliances and friendships—providing help to children and other relatives—
Reading other people’s minds—communicating with other people—selecting mates.
All of these things are crucial for passing on your genes.So we should expect natural selection to have designed mental modules that enabled our ancestors to achieve these objectives in the ancestral envrionment.In the next part of this book we will examine these modules in more detial,beginning with predator avoidance.
Predator-Avoidance Modules
Avoiding predators is a very important problem from the genes’ point of view.Genes cannot get themeselves passed on to the next generation if their owner is eaten.Any genes that tend to make their owners avoid predators will therefore spread throughout the population.
But genes do not cause behaviour directly.Rather,they help to build mental modules,and the mental modules cause behaviour. Gense for predator-avoidance work by building a predator-avoidance module.
What would a predator-avoidance module look like?It would have to be able to detect possible predators,distinguish those that were real dangers from those that weren’t,and—in the case of real danger—trigger avoidant or defensive behavious.
In fact,each of these tasks might be carried out by a separate module.So the task of predator-avoidance might be subserved by a group of modules rather than a single module.
Detecting predators
The first module in the predator-avoidance system would detect possible predators.With any detection system,however,there is a trade-off between accuracy and speed.Think of a burglar alarm.On the one hand,you want the alarm to be accurate—you don’t want it to be triggered by stray cats.You don’t want false alarms.On the other hand,you also want an alarm that goes off immediately a burglar attempts to break in.It’s not much use having a burgalr alarm that rings five minutes after the burglar has left the house.
The problem is that it takes time to figure out whether the animal entering the house is a burglar or a cat.
The more accurate the alarm is,the slower it is.Conversely,if you want a faster alarm,you will have to put up with a higher rate of false alarms.
Which is more costly—a false alarm or a slow detector?If it is a question of detecing predators,a false alarm causes you to waste energy by running away from something that is not in fact a danger.A slow detector,however,can cause you to be eaten.So it is better to have a fast system that occasinonally gives false alarms than a slow system that is always accurate.So we should expect the predator-detection module to be fast and inaccurate rahter than slow and precise.
False Alarms
While you are reacting to the alarm given off by the predator-detection module,another module can then take a bit more time to decide whether of not the alarm was triggered by a genuine danger.If it was,then the avoidance behaviours are maintained.If the second module decides that the first module gave a false alarm,however,it can override the avoidance behaviour.
Two Neural Pathways
There is some evidence that this is in fact the case.The American neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux has shown that the emotion of fear—which prepares us to flee from predators or freeze to avoid being seen—is subserved by two neural mechanisms.One “fast and dirty”mechanism is,as the name suggests,very quick but not very accurate.It often gives false alarms.The other mechanism is much more accurate but slower.
For example,suppose you are walking in the jungle.You look down and see a long,thin object.You freeze,because the fast and dirty mechanism thinks it’s a snake.Then,milliseconds later,you relax,because the slower,more accurate mechanism realizes that the object is in fact a stick.Having both of these machanisms is a bonus.
The fast and dirty mechanism gets you out of trouble quickly but gives off some false alarms.The slow and clean mechanism tells you when the alarms are false,and so stops you wasting too much energy in reacting to them.Sometimes the slow and clean mechanism doesn’t kick in,and we continue reacting to false alarms.This may be what happens in some phobias.
Food Preference Modules
Avoiding predators is vital for survival,but so is consuming the right food.Of all the potentially edible things around you,some are very nutritious,some are poisonous,and some are neither.
Genes that predisposed their owners to consume nutritious food and avoid poisonous food would spread through the population. As with predator-avoidance,however,genes do not cause this behaviour directly.They build mental mechanisms that lead us to desire some foods and dislike others.
Fat and Sugar
Animal fat and sugar are highly nutritious,but they were relatively scarce in the African savannah where our ancestors lived.To get animal fat it was necessary to kill an animal or scavenge one that had already been killed.To get sugar it was necessary to find ripe fruit.Both of these were complicated—and something dangerous—tasks.In a situation like this,it would have been highly adaptive to have strong desires for fat and sugar.
Those who have such strong desires will be more likely to seek out fat and sugar.Despite the attendant difficulties and dangers.
On balance,they would tend to consume more of these nutritious foods,and so they would be more likely to pass on their genes—including their genes for liking fat and sugar.
Environmental Mismatch
Fat and sugar are bad for you if you eat too much of them,but in ancestral envrionments these resources were scarce,so there wasn’t much chance of consuming too much.Today,however,we have supermarkets and fast-food resaurants to cater for our evolved tastes.Fat and sugar are no longer difficult to find.
We were desinged to live in such a different envrionment,and this “envrionmental mismatch”is the source of many current problems.
Disgust
Eating the right food does not just involve seeking out nutritious food.It is also important to avoid poisonous food.Just as natural selection has desingned modules that make us prefer fat and sugar,so it has also designed modules that make us avoid eating rotting flesh and faeces.
These poison-detector modules work by means of the emotion of disgust.
In other words,when the module detects a food that it thinks is poisonous,it activates the feeling of disgust,and it is this feeling—not any conscious deliberation—that makes us avoid the food.
Alliance-Formation Modules
The two adaptive problems we have just examined—avoing predators and eating the right food—are problems posed by the physical envrionment.Howver,as we have already seen,when considering the evolution of the mind,it is just as important to consider the problems posed by the social envrionment.
The social envrionment refers to the other conspecifics (animals of the same species)with whom you live.For many animals,the social envrionment is virtually non-existent,because they live solitary lives.
Toad:I live on my own.I only meet other toads when I want to mate.
Living in Groups
Primates are unusual in that they live in tightly-knit social groups with complex hierarchies and alliances.
Living in groups benefits primates because it provides extra defences against predators.
It is harder for a predator to catch an animal in a group than an isolated animal because groups have more eyes to detect predators,and because other group memebers can come to the aid of one who is being attacked.
Alliances and Coalitions
But group living poses adaptive problems for primates.With lots of other consepecifics around you,all with the same food preferences,competition becomes more intense.Squabbles for scarce resources become common.
The way we tend to solve this problem is by forming alliances between small numbers.Two or three of us form a coalition to provide mutual support against the other members of the group.
Increasing the Group
Our ancestors continued and extended this primate lifestyle.After the human lineage split from the chimpanzee lineage some six million years ago,the size of human groups began to increase.
The increase in group-size meant that forming alliances became even more important for survival.
For our ancestors,forming alliances and friendships was just as vital as eating the right food.Those who lacked the ability to form alliances and friendships were in as much danger as those who lacked the ability to detect predators.
Reciprocal Altruism
But forming alliances is not an easy task.The main problem is the risk of defection.An alliance is an “I’ll help you if you help me”arrangement.It is all about exchanging favours—which biologists call “reciprocal altruism”.But there is a problem with any such arrangement.
There is always a risk that one of the members of the alliance may take the benefits without paying the costs. “I may accept favours from the other members of the alliance and never return them.”
This is known as the “free-rider”problem and it is the fundamental adaptive problem posed by group living.
The Free-Rider Problem
Those animals that cannot solve the free-rider problme cannot live in groups.To see why,imagine a group of animals that strikes up an alliance in which one of the members is a free-rider.Whenever the free-rider is in danger,or hungry,the other members of the alliance come to his aid.The other members pay a cost for helping the free-rider,by riking their lives for him or by giving him some of their precious food.The free-rider enjoys these benefits,but never pays the costs of returning the favours.
Undetected,the free-rider will obviously be more successufl at surviving and reproducing than the public-spirited suckers.So genes for free-riding will become more frequent in the gene pool.Eventually,everyone will be a free-rider.
But then,no one will be helping anyone else.Alliances will disintegrate and group-living will no longer be possible.S
The Evolution of Cooperation
All animals that live in groups have found ways of solving the free-rider problem.Different species solve the problem in different ways,but there are some fundamental conditions that any solution must meet.These conditions were worked out by an American political scientist called Robert Axelrod in the early 1980s.Axelrod showed that the free-rider problem can only be solved if the following three conditions are satisfied.
1. Organisms encounter the same organisms repeatedly.
2. Organisms can recognise those they have met before and distinguish them from strangers.
3. Organisms can remember how those they have met before have treated them on previous encounters.
“I discovered these three conditions by organizing a tournament in which different computer programs competed against each other.”
Tit-for-Tat
Why are Axelrod’s three conditions necessary for solving the free-rider problem?The answer has to do with punishment and reward.When these three conditions are satisfied,free-riders can be punished and cooperators can be rewarded.Free-riders who have refused to do return favours can be punished by refusing to do any more favours for them.Cooperators can be rewarded by continuing to help them when they need it.
The simple strategy is called “tit-for-tat”.When a group of organisms interact on the basis of tit-for-tat,free-riders no longer have the advantage.Cooperation can evolve and group cohesion can be maintained.
All three conditins for using tit-for-tat were present in our hominid ancestors.In the small,tightly-knit groups of fifty to a hundred people in which they lived,the frist condition was easily satisfied.Day after day,we ineract with the same people.The second condition is satisfied by the evolution of sophisticated face-recognition module.The third condition is met by the evolution of a sophisticated memory of recording social interaction.
For each acquaintance,we keep a mental tally of how much they have done for us and how much we have done for them.If the tally shows that someone has consistently done less for us than we have done for them,then the next time they ask for help,we will be less inclined to give it.We punish free-riding by refusing to cooperate.
Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange
In order to keep a mental tally,we must have some way of woring out the value of the favours that others do for us.These must be some way of comparing this with the value of the favours that we do for others.
Leda Cosmides and John Tooby have argued that humans evolved special modules for calculating these things.They propose that these cognitive adaptations are the basis of all human behaviour involving exchange—from trading favours to trading stocks and shares.
The calculations performed by these “social accounting”modules must take into account a whole range of variables when working out the value of a favour.The value of a favour depends both on the cost to the donor and the benefit to the recipient.A favour that costs the donor a lot is worth more than a favour that costs the donor little.A favour that benefits the recipient a lot is worth more than a favour that benefits the recipient a little.The value of favour is the product of the cost to the donor and the benefit to the recipient.
The costs and benefits of any kind of favour are not fixed in advance,but depend on the context.
“—If you hand over your last piece of bread to a friend,this favour costs you a lot if you are on the verge of starvation.But it costs you little if you have just had a big meal.The same favour beniefits your friend a lot if he is on the verge of starvation.
—But doesn’t benefit me very much if I’ve just been to a banquet.”
The social accounting modules must consider all these details.
Modules for Helping Children and Other Relatives
All this talk about social accounting and tit-for-tat suggests that altruism and cooperation can only evolve on a strictly reciprocal basis.If this were true,no animal would ever help another animal unless there was a good chance of receiving an equally valuable favour in return.But this is clearly not the case.
Nature is full of examples of animals that provide help to other animals from whom they cannot expect any repayment.And humans are no exception.
Parenting is the most obvious example of such non-reciprocal altruism.In all species that care for their young,parents provide help that they never expect their offsping to repay.Humans provide more intensive and long-lasting care for their offspring than any other species,and this is entirely non-reciprocal.So there must be another element that enters into the social-cooperation modules besides the social accounting already described.What is it?
Kin Selection
The example of parenting providing a clue to what this element is.When biologists examined the examples of non-reciprocal altruism in the animal kingdom,they noticed that they all had one feature in common.This kind of altruism is directed exclusively towards genetic relatives.In 1964,the British biologist William Hamiton came up with a theory to explain why this was the case.He argued that the fundamental unit of evolution was not the organism but the individual gene.
Close relatives share many genes,so genes which predispose their bearers to help close kin are in effect helping copies of themselves.A gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies.If so,this would appear as individual altruism but it would be brought about by gene selfishness.
Non-reciprocal altruism at the level of the organism,such as the care that parents provide for their children,is the result of “selfishness”at the level of the gene.In 1975,the British biologist Richard Dawkins popularized Hamilton’s ideas in his famous book,The Selfish Gene.
How Related Are You?
Hamilton showed that non-reciprocal altruism could evolve whenever organism had some means of estimating their “degree of relatedness”to other organisms.The degree of relatedness is the chance that a randomly chosen gene in one organism will be shared by another organism as a result of common descent.The British geneticist Sewall Wright had already coined the symbol r in 1922 for this concept which he called the “coefficient of relatedness”.
“I calculated the following values for r.” :
Type of relative/examples/value of r
First-degree relatives/Parents,children,full siblings/50%
Second-degree relatives/Grandparents,grandchildren,half siblings,uncles,aunts,nephews,nieces/25%
Third-degree relatives/First cousins/12.5%
Hamilton’s Rule
Hamilton showed that non-reciprocal altruism can evolve whenever there are mechanisms that ensure that the coefficient of relatedness will tend to exceed the cost-benefit ratio of the altruistic act.This can be written as the following equation.
r>c/b
“c”stands for the cost of the favour to the donor,and“b”stands for the benefit of the favour to the recipient.This is known as “Humilton’s rule”.
The Evolution of Nepotism
What mental mechanisms evolved to help our ancestors follow Hamilton’s rule?Clearly,they must have some mechanism for distinguishing kin from non-kin,and assessing the degree of relatedness—a kin-recognition module.This must have played a vital part in the system of modules governing the provision of favours and help to others.
Suppose the chance of being repaid were low or nil?Then the social-cooperation modules might consult the kin-recognition modules to see whether the potential beneficiary was a relative or not.If they were,then help could be provided without any expectation that it would be returned.
Alliances and cooperation would therefore have been more likely to develop between close relatives than between unrelated individuals.In other words,evolutionary psychology predicts that humans should have instinctual tendencies towards nepotism.
The Truth About Cinderella
In the 198os,two Canadian psychologists,Martin Daly and Moargo Wilson,set out to test this Darwinian prediction.In one study,they conpared the childcare provided by natural parents and by step-parents.Step-parents are in a very unusual situation from an evolutionary point of view.They are caring for a child tho they know is not their own.Even though they may care for the child conscientiously,evolutionary theory predicts that the childcare modules will not be activate in the same way was in biological parents.But is this true?
Looking for a way to compare the parental love shown by biologcila parents and step-parents,Daly and Wilson reasoned that,since love inhibits violence,those with greater love would show,on average,lower levles of violence.
Child abuse by step-parents is rare.But we predict that child abuse by biological parents will be even rarer.
When Daly and Wilson looked at statistics of child abuse in North America,they found a striking confirmation of the Darwinian prediction.In the USA,they found that a child living with one or more substiute parents was about 100 times as likely to be fatally abused as a child living with natural parents only.A similar pattern was observed in Canada,where statistics showed that, for children of two or younger,the risk of being killed by a step-parent was about 70 times that from a natural parent.These data provide strong support for the existence of childcare modules in humans that help parents to recognize their own children and to channel parental investment preferentially towards them.
Allocating Resources to Offspring
Another problem that parents face,besides that of distinguishing their own children from those of others,is the problem of resource allocation.Parents have limited time,energy and food,and they must decided how much of these precious resources to give to each of their children,and how much to use for their own survival.
Parents who allocate minimal resources to their children will survive for longer than more generous parents.But the children of the stingy parents will have less chance of surviving,and so less chance of passing on the parents’ genes.So it pays parents to be generous to their children.
On the other hand,parents who are so generous that they compromise their own survival risk dying and having no more offspring.There is a trade-off,then between parental generousity,which raise the survival chances of actual offspring,and parents withholding,which raises the survival chances of future offspring.
The Resource-Allocation Module
We should expect natural selection to have designed special mental machinery for calculating the optimal amount of resources to allocate to each child at any given moment.This resource-allocation module will have to take into account a number of decisive factors.
The age of the children.The health of the children.Sick children need more care unless they are so sick that it’s better to let them die.Older children are more capable of fending for themselves,and so need fewer resources to be provided by their parents.And hwo many more children you can reasonably expect to have in the future.
Parent-Offspring Conflict
The problem of allocating resources to children is made mre complicated by the fact that the children themselves may disagree with their parents about how much they should be given.Children may want more than their parents are prepared to give.The evolutionary basis for this was set out by the American biologist Robert Trivers in 1974,in a famous paper on “Parent-Offspring Conflict”.
Trivers argued that the crux of the matter lies with the fact that a child is twice as related to itself as it is to its siblings.Everyone is 100% generically related to himself, but only 50% related to his brothers and sisters.
So,even though you care about your brothers and sisters,you care about yourself even more.From the parents’ point of view, though,things are somewhat different.Parents have the same degree of relatedness to all their children,and so value them all equally.This is the source of parent-offspring conflict.
How Much For Me?
To illustrate the problem,imagine a mother who wants to divide a cake between her two children.The children are equally realted to her,so, other things being equal,she should cut the cake in half.But now think of it from the point of view of each child.Each child has a genetic stake in the welfare of the other child.
Each child is 100% related to itself,but only 50% related to its sibling,so(other things being equal)each child should want twice as much cake for iteself as for its sibling.If the child chould divide the cake up,it should give a third to the sibling,and keep two thirds for itself.
Weaning
This simplified example illustrates the general principle behind the evolutionary theory of parent-offspring confilct.The conficts arise because children always want slightly more than what their parents think is their “fair share”.Take weaning,for example. No child wants to breast-feed forever.
There comes a time when the benefit that a child derives from the mother’s milk is less than half the benefit that a younger sibling would gain from the same milk.
The Benefit of Weaning
So a pint does come when it is in the child’s genetic interest to seek alternative sources of nourishment,and let a younger sibling have the mother’s milk to itself.The problem is that this point in time is always later than the point at which the mother comes to the same conclusion.The mother wants to wean the child when the benefit it gains from breastfeeding is less than the benefit that a younger sibling would gian.
So the mother always wants to wean the child before the child wants to wean itself.
Mind-reading Modules
We have seen that the various modules for social exchange evolved to help our primate ancestors solve the free-rider problem.This enabled them to form the stable alliances that hold together the social groups in which all higher primates live.But the increasing size of these groups posed a problem in itself—a problem which was solved by learning how to “mind-read”.
Of course,we don’t read other people’s minds by direct telepathy.This is not what evolutionary psychologists mean by “mind-reading”.Mind-reading involves guessing what people are thinking on the basis of observing their actions and their words.
Group Size and Social Intelligence
The size of the groups in which our ancestors lived increased dramatically during the course of hominid evolution.Around six million years ago,when our ancestors resembled modern chimpanzees,the average group size was about 50.By three million years ago,our “australopithecine”ancestors were living in groups of about 70.A million years later,our “habline”(tool-making) ancestors were living in groups of about 80.The first true humans(Homo sapiens sapiens),who emerged around 150,000 years ago,probably lived in groups of around 150.
As groups got bigger,the problems posed by group living got more complex.Not only did our ancestors need bigger memories to keep track of the fast-changing pattern of alliances in the group,but they also needed more sophisticated social reasoning capacities to maintain a delicate balance between their conflicting loyalties.
In order to play the political games vital to survival in a larger group of primates,we have to become amateur psychologists.
Enter Machiavelli
This idea is known as the “Machiavellian intelligence”hypothesis,after Niccolo Machiavelli,the infamous Italian political theorist.Machiavelli’s book The Prince outlines some of the dirty tricks that successful politicians use obtain and maintain power.The Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis starts from the idea that these dirty tricks are not just the preserve of politicians.
“We all use them in our everyday life,as we help our friends and attempt to outsmart out enemies,make (and break)promises, and tell lies. ”
Even this“everyday politics”requires a fairly sophisticated understanding of human psychology—in particular,a special mental module for “reading other people’s minds”.
Theory of Mind
This “mind-reading modules”is usually referred to by evolutionary psychologists as the “Theory of Mind”module.This is because it seems to operate on the basis of a theory of how the human mind words.The theory that the module uses is, apparently,the very same theory that we find in “folk psychology”and in cognitive science—the “belief/desire”theory which states that actions are caused by mental processes like beliefs and desires.
Folk Psychology
In other words,folk psychology is not just a cultural invention.It is an innate part of the human mind.Adults do not teach children to understand human behaviour in terms of beliefs and desires.Rather,children instinctively develop the ability to do this,because they are genetically programmed to do so.
The Theory of Mind module develops during the first years of life,and is usually complet by the age of four-and-a-half.At that age,children can pass “false-belief tests”.
The Sally-Ann Test
A classic fale-belief test is the so-called “Sally-Ann”test.A psychologist introduces a child to two dolls called Sally and Ann.Then the child watches while Sally puts some sweets dunder a cushion and leaves the room.While Saly is out of the room, Ann takes the sweets from under the cushion and puts them in her pocket.When Sally comes back into the room,the psychologist questions the child.
“Where does Sally think the sweets are?” “In Ann’s pocket!”
Before the age of four-and-a-half,this is what children usually say.Lacking a fully-developed Theory of Mind,they cannot comprehend the notion that other people can hold beliefs that are different from their own.They assume that everyone believes what they believe.
Theory of Mind and Autism
After the age of four-and-a-half,children respond very differently to the Sally-Ann test.When asked where Sally thinks the sweets are,they now replay, “Under the cushion”.
They know the sweets are in Ann’s pockets,but they now have a fully-developed Theory of Mind,so they understand that beliefs that differ from their own.Then also understand that these beliefs can be false.Autism occurs when children fail to develop a properly functioning Theory of Mind module.
According to the British psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen,autistic people are “mindblind”.
Lying and Tactical Deception
Without a theory of Mind,it would be very difficult to play the political games necessary for living in human society.For one thing,it would be impossible to lie.
In order to lie,you must first understand that other people can hold different beliefs from yours.And those beliefs can be false.
Only then can you attempt to manipulate another person into holding a false belief.This is why children under the age of three cannot lie convincingly.
Language Modules
All animals that regularly interact with other memebers of their own species face the problem of communicating with each other.Different species solve this problem in different ways,but many use sounds because,unlike visual signals,sounds can be perceived at night and over long distances.All primates use their vocal cords to produce different kinds of signals to convey different kinds of information.Humans,however,have evolved the most sophisticated communication system in the animal kingdom—language.
Vervet monkey gives alarm calls to warn other vervets about snakes.Bees dance to tell other bees where the flowers are.
The Language Acquisition Device
Special mental machinery is required in order to learn and use a human language.We have already seen how Chomsky’s work in the 1950s and 60s showed that it would be impossible for children to learn a language as quickly as they do unless they were pre-programmed to do so.In other words,all children must be born with a special-purpose language-learning program,or Language Acquisition Device.
The Language Acquisition Deviec is unique to humans.
Some primatologists argue tha tchimpanzees also have the capacity to acquire language.But most linguists reject this view.Is that all he can say-ask for a banana?
Despite valliant attempts to teach them to use English and sign language,chimpanzees have never succeeded in learning more than a few dozen words and producing a few very simple sentences.Human children,on the other hand,learn thousands of words and master the most complex rules of grammer by the age of five.
The Evolution of language
No one knows when our ancestors acquired the ccapacity to use language,but it must have been before they moved out of Africa,some 100,000 years ago.After that time,different human groups became separated from each other for thousands of years.If the language modules evolved after the emigration from Africa,it would mean that exactly the same mental machinery had evolved independently in all the different human groups.This is extremely unlikely.
Anatomical studies suggest that the capacity to use language evolved between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago.It was then that the position of the larynx changed to its current position,which is much lower down than the larynx of other primates.The lower larynx of humans enables them to produce a muc wider range of sounds.The lower tracheal opening is also responsible for the human capacity for choking.Our ability to speak was only purchased at the price of an increased risk of asphyxiating on our food.
Why did our ancestors evolve such a sophisticated communication system?One theory is that it enabled them to hunt more effectively.According to this view,the primary function of language was to exchange information about the physical and ecologcial environment.In 1993,the British anthropologist,Robin Dunbar,challenged this theory.Dunbar suggested that the primary function of language was to exchange information about the social environment.
Reciprocal Altruism Again
Dunbar’s agument was based on the observation that,some time between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago,our ancestors began to live in much larger groups than before.Dunbar estimated that group size increased to about 150 individuals.We have already seen how primate groups are held together by networks of alliances formed by reciprocal altruism.
But for reciprocal alruism to work,you need informaiton about who you can trust and who you can’t.You need to be able to distinguish the cheats from the cooperators.
Chimps gain this information by direct personal interaction,especially grooming.They spend large amounts of time removing fleas and dirt from each other’s backs,and this mutual grooming is the social cement that holds their alliances together.Achimp in trouble is far more likely to receive help from a grooming partner than any other chimp.
Since reciprocal altruism depends on having direct interactions with others,there are limits to the size of the group that can be held together by this mechanism.There is a limit to the number of people you can meet and interact with on a regular enough basis to get information about how likely they are to cooperate.
Gossip
Dunbar argued that language evolved to provide our ancestors with another way to get the valuable social information about who you can trust.Instead of discovering whether someone is a cheat the hard way—by being cheated—our ancestors were able to find this out by talking to other people.In Dunbar’s view,the first function of language was gossip.This might explain why humans are so fascinated by gossip about other people’s behaviour.
Indirect Reciprocity
By facilitating the exchange of social information,language enabled humans to reap the rewards of living in larger groups. Reciprocal enalbed humans to reap the rewards of living in larger groups.Reciprocal altruism could hold these larger groups together because it no longer needed to be direct.
Direct reciprocity is when you give something to someone in the hope that they will return the favour later on. “I’ll scratch you back if you scratch mine.”Indirect reciprocity is when you give something to someone in the hope that someone elase will return the favour.It works because of a crucial thing-reputation.And this will cause others to be generous to you.
The importance of Reputation
If other poeople see or hear about your acts of generosity,and if other people tend to be generous to those with a good reputation,then it pays you to be generous.Even if the recipient of a favour never returns the favour directly,it will get you a good reputation.And this will ccause others to be generous to you.On the other hand,if you are not generous,you will acquire a reputation for stinginess.And others will punish you for this by being stingy to you.I won’t scratch your back if you don’t scratch others.
Mate-Selection Modules
Most of the adaptive problems that we have discussed so far—avoiding predators,eating the right food,forming alliances,reading other people’s minds and communicating with other people—relate to the fundamental problem of survival. But while an organism’s survival is vitally important from the genes’ point of view,there is something even more important.
The most important thing of all is reproduction.This ensures that the genes are passed on to the next generation.An organism is just the genes’ way of making more copies of themselves.
From the gene’s point of view,the survival of the organism is merely a means to this end.If an organism lives for a hundred years,but has no offspring,this is no use to be the genes.
The Mating Game
Some species reproduce by diving into two parts,each of which becomes a separate individual.In these “asexual”species,there is no need to find a mate,since you can reproduce without one.Most species,however,reproduce sexually.This involves finding a mate and swapping genes with them.Biologists still disagree about why sex evolved.Most argue that sexual reproduction confers some advantage to the individual organism,but there is no consensus about what this advantage is.
Humans are a sexually-reproducing species.In order for us to reproduce,we must fist find a mate.
Finding a mate is not an easy task.First,you must choose a suitable candidate from among the many possible mates available.Second,you must persuade at least one of them to choose you.
We should expect natural selection to have designed special mental mechanisms that enabled our ancestors to solve the problems specific to choosing and obtaining a suitable mate.Selecting a suitable mate is very important because mates provide two things on which the survival of your offspring depends:genes and parental care.The survival chances of offspring depend on the quality of these two resources.We will now look ate each of them in more detail.
The Genes are in the Selection
The first way in which yourmate affects the survival chances of your offspring is by providing—or falling to provide—good genes.In a sexually-reproducing species,offspring inherit 50%of their genes from each parent.If you mate with someone who has bad genes(“bad”in the sense that they lower your chances of surving and reproducing),your offspring will probably inherit some of these bad genes.That will lower their chances of surviving and reproducing.
That will raise their chances of surviving and reproducing,and so raise the chances of your genes getting passed on to future generations.
The Importance of Looking Good
How did our ancestors solve the problem of selecting mates with good genes and avoiding those with bad genes?Obviously,we weren’t born with DNA testing-kits,so we evolved more indirect measures.Sensitivity to small differences in physical appearance is one such measure.Physical appearances provide important clues to the quality of one’s genes.
Body Symmetry
For example,the more symmetrical your body is,the better on average your genes are.This is because less robust genes are more likely to get knocked off course by environmental setbacks such as physical injuries and parasites.
If the left and right sides of the body are very similar,then the more likely it is that the genes are quite robust.
Anyone who was sensitive to small differences in bodily symmetry,and who preferred to mate with more symmetrical people, would tend to have children with better genes.So we would expect natural selection to have designed a mate-seleciton module that was geared to detect and prefer more symmerical mates.
What’s the Evidence for Symmetry?
Is there any evidence to show that humans do,in fact,prefer more symmetrical mates?There is.The psychologist Steve Gangestad and the biologist Randy Thornhill measured various features,from foot breadth and hand breath to ear length and ear breadth,and combined these measurements to produce an overall index of bodily symmetry for each person in their study.
“We then asked volunteers to evaluate these same people for attractiveness,and compared the results.We found that these was a close correlation between the attractiveness-rating and the degree of symmetry.”
More symmetry people were seen as more attractive.
The Biology of Beauty
Many people today think that standards of beauty are entirely cultural artefacts.But in the past few decades,evidence has increasingly emerged to show that there are many aesthetic preferences that are both universal and innate.Preferences for more symmetrical people,for example,are universal.
Another universal preference is the male preference for the classic “Hourglass”figure.
The psychologist Devendra Singh has found that while cultures vary in their view of he ideal weight for women,the ideal waist-hip ratio is always the same—people everywhere rate a waist-hip ratio of 0.7 as the most attractive.This is the classic “hourglass figure”.
The Fertility Factor
Why has natural selection endowed men with a preference for the hourglass figure?Because the waist-hip ratio is a good indicator of fertility.Women with a 0.7 waist-hip ratio tend to be more fertile than those who have a higher or lower waist-hip ratio. This is a clear example of the way that natural selection has sculpted.
Ancestral men who preferred women with this figure tended to mate with more fertile women,and so had more children.Our preference were passed on to our offspring.
Just as natural selection endowed us with appetites to make us seek out the most nutritious food, so it endowed us with a sense of beauty to make us seek out mates with high-quality genes.
Selecting a Mate for Parental Care
The other way in which your mate affects the survival chances of your offspring is by providing—or failing to provide—parental care.Not all sexually-reproducing species care for their young.In some species,the offspring are left to fend for themselves as soon as they are born.Of the species that do care for their young,most leave the task entirely to the mother.
With humans,it is much more common for fathers to take an active role in providing protection and resources for their children.
In the jargon of evolutionary biology,the human species shows an unusually high level of “male parental investment”.
Human Pair Bonds
Human children,then,are typically cared for not just by a single mother,but by a mother and father together.
Unlike other primates,human parents from stable “pair-bonds”—long-lasting monogamous relationships—to care for their children.And we have been doing this for millions of years.
Parental Care and Human Brain Size
This probably played an important part in the massive increase in brain size that took place during the past few million years of human evolution.Big brains are expensive organs that take time to develop.
During this time,the infant cannot take care of itself and must be looked after by others.Humans have bigger brains,relateve to the size of their bodies,than any other animal.Human infants thus take longer to become independent than the offspring of any other species.
The time and energy required to care for a growing human infant cannot be provided by a single parent acting alone.
Will You Make a Good Parent?
When choosing a mate,therefore,our ancestors had to consider not just the quality of the mate’s genes,but also the mate’s capacity and willingness to invest time and energy in helping to bring up the children.
This poses a different problem.Physical appearances do not provide any clues to a person’s capacity and willingness to invest in parenting.
If you want to get information about whether someone will make a good parent or not,you have to pay attention to their behaviour,not their physical appearance.
What behavioural clues indicate that someone will make a good parent?Parenting is a cooperative venture,a particular kind of alliance,so the same criteria that allow us to decide who will be a good ally in general can be used to determine if someone will make a good parent for one’s own children.
Anything that indicates kindness,patience,generosity and trustworthiness will be a useful clue to parenting ability.So natural selection should have favoured the incorporation of these criteria in the mate-selection module.
And there is evidence that this is indeed the case.All over the world,people of both sexes say that these are the characteristics they most desire in a long-term partner.
Sex Difference in Mate Preferences
The minds of men and women are largely identical,because most of the adaptive problems faced by our ancestors were the same for men and women.The problem of avoiding predators was largely the same for both sexes,as was the problem of eating the right food,the problem of forming alliances,and the problem of mind-reading.
So we should expect the modules concerned with these tasks to be largely identical in both sexes.Fine.But when it comes to choosing a partner—what then?What about the mate-selection modules?Do men and women differ in their mate preferences? Many of the problems involved in choosing a long-term mate were identical for both sexes.
We both want parteners who can contribute good genes and parental care of their offspring.But these are other problems involved in choosing a mate that differ for men and women.
These different problems required different solutions,and so we should expect the mate-selection modules of men and women to reflect these differences.
Dads and Cads
Choosing a mate poses different problems for men and women because the same reproductive strategies are not available to both sexes.Both sexes can look for a long-term partner and establish a pair-bond with them to rear children together.Biologists refer to this as a “long-term mating strategy”,and it is the same for both men and women.The alternative is the “short-term mating strategy”.This option is also available to both sexes,but not in the same way.
“For us,the short-term mating strategy involves having sex with a woman and then abandoning her to look after the baby. Clearly,this is not a viable option for us,because it is women,not men,who get pregnant. ”
This difference between men and women posed an adative problem for ancestral women.They had to be able to tell the difference between a man who was pursuing a long-term mating strategy and a man who was pursuing a short-term mating strategy.Women who could not tell the difference ran the risk of becoming single mothers,which lowered their child’s chances of survival.Natural selection endowed women with various mental mechanisms to help them avoid this fate.One such mechanism lies behind the delaying tactics of women.Women tend to be more cautious then man about having sex.
“We’re more willing to delay the moment to have sex with someone we like.” “During this waiting period,she may try to extract material resources from me as proof of my commitment to her.”
In ancestral environments,this was a way of making sure that the man was interested in a long-term relationship and was not simply looking for a one-night stand.
Battle of the Sexes—or Evolutionary Arms Race?
However,if ancestral women had never agreed to have sex without looking for signs of commitment from the man,then natural selection would have eliminated those men who could not show signs of commitment.
“We would never have been able to have sex—so our genes would have quickly died out.Perhaps some of us would have become good at tricking women into having sex by feigning commitment and then deserting.But then natural selection would have favoured those us who were good at detecting liars—and the liars would have been eliminated.”
The Myth of the Monogamous Female
Since the male tendency to pursue casual sex has clearly not died out,this must be because ancestral women were not completely monogamous either.T
个人思考：自我伤害行为是源于对个人早期经验的投射、宣泄或转移的一种形式化手段，是负性能量的释放，如果现实生活中没有正性能量的摄入，那么当事人就不得不选择负性能量的释放，否则心理平衡称就无法和谐的适应社会生活。但有时候，即使当事人知道心理问题及心理疾病的潜意识原因，依旧无法走出内心负性能量场。认知心理学所强调的ABC理论如果略去弗洛伊德的移情，真的能够相信人有完善自我的信心和动力吗？就像人们说的：人类是急功近利，目光短浅的动物，犹如有些人明知吸烟有害健康还是会侥幸为之，有些人明知KFC影响人体免疫代谢依旧拖家带口吃得津津有味。。。纵观历史现实比比皆是。
我们在食物倾向性上的选择也同样让我们看到基因的遗传写入与人类理智心智的PK较量：由于原始社会环境下食物匮乏，造就了我们对高热量食物的食欲；腐败变质食物带来的疾病使我们对这些食物没有胃口；然而，面对已经改变的社会环境，得到高热量食物已经变得越来越容易、低廉，但是我们的DNA进化速度却来不及适应变化迅猛的科技社会，随之而来的是全民代谢性疾病蔓延，终身疾病时代的到来。即使现今的文化人都知道这一切的始作俑者，然而又有几个人能拒绝这些垃圾美食对人类DNA的诱惑？我们的情绪大脑果然无法打败口腹之欲吗？
真像科学家
LZ辛苦~