My Evolutionary Psychology Black hole!

Note: the names and some of the details have been changed in the following blog. However, it is based on true facts

Sometimes I hear some odd behavior that goes against the grain of the EP paradigm that I follow. But I think the following explanation to this particular situation  satisfies my EP bloodlust.  I have a friend who is 48 years old, Jeff, who fixes autopilots for airplanes. The job is pretty lucrative and I would say he is above average looking.  He recently got a transfer down to Florida with the same salary and no state income taxes.  He just bought a house and confided in me that he would like to start a family. Now on the EC market he is doing good. He has no children. So on the open mating market he would seem to be a pretty good catch. Recently, however, he confided to my best friend that he is thinking of ditching his new life and coming back to his hometown and marry a girl he was seeing before he left, Debbie.  He may not be able to get his old position back because his company only allows transfers every 5 years. But the odd thing is his choice of mate. Debbie,who is 47 and has two kids, one in college and one in high school. As a child bearing prospect she probably isn't a good choice or even a choice at all. Now I could see advantages in Debbie's case--i.e. that Jeff could bring resources to her existing children. But what about Jeff,  Mr. EP man? What does Debbie bring to the table? Besides love? Not a very EP concept!

Then I thought about it a little. Debbie, who I don't know personally, was quite the looker in her day.  Apparently, according to my best friend, she hasn't lost her looks and still is quite the hottie. That got me to thinking that it isn't so important whether a girl can have children or not, but her retaining her EC cues which makes a man think she can have children. Consciously, Jeff knows that Debbie can't have children, but unconsciously he thinks she can. EP never disappoints!

What Makes You Know So Much About EP?

Believe it or not, I didn't even believe in evolution in my early years. Suddenly, I got to questioning religious mores. Why were there so many of them. Then the answer hit me like an eviction notice. They made them up! In 1859 a man named Charles Darwin published a book On the Origins of Species which made all speculation of life's beginning moot. Darwin himself was not big into using Evolutionary theory as speculation for human behavior. It took about 100 years or so for two important books to start the process rolling. EO Wilson's Sociobiology and Richard Dawkins the Selfish Gene i.e. a gene makes a human to replicate itself.

When I started to believe in evolution, a fascinating article appeared in Omni magazine in 1988. It said there were possible links to human evolution and human behavior.  Then I started to see books pop up. Here are some recommendations:

1. The Moral Animal by Robert Wright
2. Any book by David Buss. If you can afford it get his textbook
3. Why Beautiful People Have Daughters
4. Nesse and Williams: Darwinian Medicine

I found out  from someone on the Internet that they even teach courses on EP in undergraduate school! I was a guy before my time!!!

I Don't like that!

EP sometimes gets into trouble when it has a controversial theory. Take for instance rape. In the standard social science model, rape is an act of violence against women by men. Now that is true, but it does not explain why the behavior exists!

Rape is a risky act. In hunter-gather societies the retribution by the the woman's family could be quite  severe. In modern times, you can caught, arrested and spend long periods in jail. Not exactly good for your EC-evolutionary currency

How does EP stand on rape. The best explanation in EP comes from Thornhill, The Natural History of Rape, rape is a strategy usually employed by low status men to try to get their genes in the next generation. Not a very good one perhaps, but how would a low status male- an outcast have any other chance?

A good comeback against tis theory could be Mike Tyson or Kobe Bryant(who had to pay his way out of it). They are high status but are rapists. So your theory is wrong! Well not really. It shows men are little more than reproducing machines! And given the chance to produce a little cheap sperm to get your genes into the next generation is a gamble that could pay off.

How does Evolutionary Psychology prove its theories?

Most naysayers of EP say that where is your proof to your theories.  Proving something that has evolved in at least 100,000 years is difficult, but not impossible. For example, EP postulates that women tend to favorite men with high degrees of resources. How do you proof this assertion? David Buss used a cross-cultural study of 37 cultures around the world to find that if this was a cultural phenomenon, or an evolved mechanism in women. In all 37 cultures, women favored either men with resources or high resource potential. I think with a high degree of certainty we can say this is an evolved mechanism.

Homosexuality

One of the big weaknesses of EP theory is homosexuality. Someone who doesn't spread there genes becomes an evolutionary dead end. Many theorists have made theories as to homosexuals. For example, the good "uncle aunt theory." But when have you seen make gays giving up a night on the town to care for their nephews and nieces?

To me the simplest explanation is the best; gays and lesbians reproduce. Since in our EEA, outragism could be a death knell, gays and lesbians reproduced so as not to be expelled from the group. They made secret trysts to satisfy there true longings. I knew a gay man who was married twice and had two kids!!!

In today's culture there is an exceptance of homosexuality of being something you are born with, not some moral weakness. I don't believe the gene is in many of us but won't die out because it doesn't express itself all the time.

Why are we so depressed.?

When you think about it nothing could more maladaptive than depression. You are sad, sleep all the time and don't like leaving the house. In term of passing on your genes this probably a very bad thing.   If some behavior is so ubiquitous, evolutionary psychologists theorize there must be so adaptive value to it. Evolutionary Psychologists see depression a reaction to a loss of evolution currency. Loss of a job could cause depression by being unable to pay your bills and straining your relationships

Depression is evolutions way of telling you to stop what you are doing. Lay low and rethink how your behavior is not working. There are 3 things evolutionary psychologists feel you can do alleviate depression.

1. Do you have a dream that is out of your reach? Psychologists have seen that when people give up on an unrealistic dreams their depression lifted

2. Reduce the amount of mass media you use. Television and movies give us unrealistic images of what life should be like. Everyone is beautiful and rich. In our EEA there were rarely so many successful and beautiful people we were bombarded with.

3. In our EEA we were lived small bands of 100-150 people. Anyone in the group has skill provides value to the group. With a tribe of 7 billion, it hard to feel important in your group. Randolph Nesse author of Darwinian Medicine gives an excellent example of this.  Lets say your the best tennis player at your club. You probably aren't the best tennis player in your city, state, country etc. Make more realistic comparisons to people around you.

4. Make more friends or enhance your current relationships. If this isn't possible a support group can be helpful

Evolutionary Psychology: An Inconvenient Truth

Many people hate Evolutionary Psycholgy! Why? EP forces humans look at some painful realities of human existence.  One painful thing EP forces to look at, for example, is that when a woman ages, she is danger of losing her mate through mate desertion. This especially happens when the mate has access to younger more reproductively viable females.

I call this an inconvenient truth. From the title of Al Gore's book on global warming. I actually seen this happen! At work, a woman we will call Donna new that I was into EP and for some reason she confided me. She asked if I thought her husband could be cheating on her. I looked at the facts. She was a woman in the early 40s. Woman at this point are near the end of their child bearing years. Her husband worked as controller in a company. I told her that it was likely. It wasn't the answer she wanted to hear and she didn't talk to me for a few days. Turns out about 6 months later they divorced. Now I don't no the reason for the divorce, but I can probably assume with a high degree of probability that the husband was cheating. EP has many inconvenient truths. The question is that if this paradigm shift is useful? I think the paradigm is useful, but you have to have a strong stomach!

An Interesting Thought

What is the most important quality to have if you are a man to attract women? 

Women according to David Buss are attracted to many things in a man; I generally put them into 4 categories

1. High resources or high resource potential

2. Physical size mostly height

3. Looks

4. Personality characteristics

Of the four, which is most important? 

I got to thinking about Hugh Hefner.  Hugh Hefner is 86 years old. On the surface, he should have a low evolutionary currency or EC. EC being the ability to attract high quality mates. His age is the problem. Though a bigger issue in woman, age lowers EC in both men and women.  Now if you really think about it (I say that a lot), Mr. Hefner would be extremely fortunate to marry an unattractive women in her late 50s. Yet we see he has married a 26 year old! Not any 26 year old either. But one of very high EC. We then look at the 4 things; which is Mr. Hefner the highest in. We can knock out qualities 2 and 3 which leaves us with 1 and 4. Which quality stands out more. Though Mr. Hefner might have terrific personality, I think quality 1 is the one to focus on. Without being wealthy quality 4 is probably moot. If you don't have a way of meeting Crystal Hefner, then your personality doesn't matter. 

An Inconvenient Truth? More on that on my next post!

An Example of Evolutionary Self-Help

I think most of us will agree that procrastination is a bad thing. So how do you overcome this self-defeating habit?

1. Come up with the evolutionary psychology (EP) explanation
2. Come up with a technique that can help you within the EP framework
3. Use and test the EP technique

So procrastination? In the EEA (environment of evolutionary adaptation) it was important to conserve energy and only pursue things that gave immediate satisfaction. Long term goals were put on the back-burner; short-term pursuits are much more enjoyable because they present us with immediate rewards. With starvation right around the corner, the mind tends to favor things that bring immediate satisfaction. Eat your food now rather than save it for a rainy day. So flash forward to today, 2013. Unfortunately, many of life's rewards are long-term in nature.  A good job it is probably good to have if your a man because it could lead to higher reproductive success. But a good job probably requires mostly a higher college education (Bill Gates doubters aside!). But to get a good job we are in it for the long term! Which goes against the EEA strategy of get it now. So how do we cope with today's world realities based on a EEA brain?

The 5 Minute Technique

The 5-minute technique is a well known self-help technique to combat procrastination. Just do something unpleasant in the short term but beneficial in the long term. At the end of 5 minutes decide if you want to 5 more minutes or stop. If you stop, come up with another time where you will do 5 more minutes. Otherwise, try to extend to 10 minutes. Change to 10 minutes and see if your comfortable there. If you are, go up to 15 minutes. I wouldn't go past 15 minutes. I have found that 10 minutes for me is best. 5 minutes are too short and 15 minutes too long.

Why It Works?

Most Evolutionary Psychologists believe most pursuits with 15 minutes of work start to become painful because the rewards aren't immediate enough.

Using Evolutionary Psychology For Self-Help

Introduction 

Evolutionary Psychology is a new paradigm for looking at human behavior. I hope in this blog to use evolutionary psychology to help you! Evolutionary psychology (EP) is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations – that is, the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection.