Status Updates From Evolutionary Psychology 101...

In the modern state of academia, evolutionary psychology has led to many successes, including achieving popularity among students and the media. However, resistance to this field within the halls of modern academia is palpable—a fact that makes the future of evolutionary psychology necessarily unclear

... “The California Cryobank, the largest sperm bank in the country, owed a third of its business to single women in 2005, shipping them 9,600 vials of sperm, each good for one insemination.”..., “Short donors don’t exist; because most women seek out tall ones, most banks don’t accept men under 5-foot-9.” ... One could argue that the mothers who are choosing sperm in this way are engaging in eugenicist practices

... the resistance from the left tends to be much more palpable in the realm of evolutionary psychology. This is not because people on the left don’t “believe in evolution.” Rather, social liberalism is often connected with a negative reaction to the idea of innate behavioral qualities, and evolutionary psychology often gets lumped into a group of perspectives that are painted as “genetically deterministic.”

Evolutionary psychology (is) . . . subject to a level of implacable hostility which seems far out of proportion to anything even sober reason or common politeness might sanction. (Dawkins, 2005, p. 975)

applied evolutionary psychologists have helped shed light on such issues of the nature of music and art, politics, urban planning, child development and education, medicine, nutrition, exercise, and mental health. To this point, only the tip of the iceberg has been revealed regarding how powerful evolutionary psychology will be in helping us better understand the human condition

In a provocative comment on modern ecological conditions that mismatch ancestral conditions, Figueredo, Brumbach, Jones, Sefcek, Vasquez, and Jacobs (2008) suggest that cities provide a niche for individuals who have a heritable tendency toward psychopathy, or the tendency to exploit others and utilize others for their own purposes without caring about the feelings or outcomes of others.

In a recent theoretical development in evolutionary psychology, Bingham and Souza (2009) argue that remote killing abilities actually led to many aspects of our unique humanity, including large-scale cooperation, egalitarianism, and an emphasis on intelligence and effective social abilities.

Not only do our closest-living relatives [chimpanzees]commit murder by forming coalitions of males who will implement a sneak attack to find, kill, and eat a young chimp from a neighboring community, but Wrangham also documented all-male coalitions of chimpanzees planning full-scale, war-like battles, leading to multiple deaths and the acquisition of territory and resources on behalf of the aggressive troop.

Typically, when we see such sexual dimorphism, we can guess that the larger sex includes a behavioral repertoire of physical fighting for access to members of the other sex. Why do bull elk fight with one another at all? Because the victors obtain access to females. Why would a male lion possibly pick a fight with a dominant, harem-holding other male (I sure wouldn’t!)? Again, access to females.

Let’s start with a series of questions. What is love? Why do people fall in love? Why do people fall out of love? Why does divorce exist? Why does monogamy exist in some cultures but not others? Are humans truly monogamous? ...

Female/Female Competition... In addition to using clothing and make-up to make themselves appear more attractive, females use various rival-derogation tactics in the process of trying to secure mates. Two primary ways that women derogate other women include (a) bringing down the reputation of other women or (b) derogating the physical appearance of other women (Fisher et al., 2009).

How does writing good poetry help you survive?...A fascinating theory that addresses the issue of the evolution of human creativity was put forth by Geoffrey Miller (2000). ... such complex human behaviors evolved not for survival-based purposes, but for courtship-related purposes. Being a great dancer doesn’t help with fending off predators, but it may well attract members of the opposite sex (think Gangnam style!)

A significant contextual factor that pertains to ratings of attractiveness is whether a woman is near the peak of her ovulatory cycle—with ovulating women showing a suite of reactions and judgments that differ from nonovulating women. These findings are included in more detail in the next chapter, related to the evolutionary psychology of sex

Females also show a plurality of mating strategies. While a general tendency of females is to pursue long-term mating opportunities there are some contexts in which women are somewhat likely to transition to a short-term mating mode. One such context seems to be having grown up in harsh and unpredictable conditions. With such an upbringing, females are more likely to pursue a fast life history strategy...

In relatively small and stable ancestral groups, cheating was easily detected and was likely severely punished. In this context, cheating could take the form of stealing from others, not doing one’s share of the work, and so forth. Some of the strongest research in evolutionary psychology has shown that a basic aspect of our psychology is the ability to detect cheaters in such social contexts (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992)

When female parental investment in a species is high, females tend to be the relatively discriminating (choosy) sex. When one sex is relatively choosy in mate selection, the other sex is more likely to engage in display activities—activities that ultimately have the effect of attracting mates. In human males, many such display activities are physically involved and often include direct competition with other males...

Parent/Offspring Conflict... while parents and offspring share an enormous amount in the way of shared genetic interests (each offspring shares 50% of his or her genes with Mom and 50% with Dad), the interests are not fully aligned. This is simply because while an offspring is 50% related to each parent, that offspring is 100% related to him- or herself. And each parent is 100% related to himself or herself.

In prewesternized human societies, we [...] see alloparenting. Parenting is not a one-woman job. And it’s only rarely a male job. It takes a village to raise a child, and in prewesternized societies (and likely in the EEA of humans), this village includes mostly or exclusively females—a large proportion of whom are blood relatives with the child (who, thus, have a “genetic interest” in the success of the child).

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Want to understand human psychology? Think about Trivers’ great insight into the importance of parental investment in shaping the nature of any species—and think about how this fact has shaped who we are. There is no understating how significant this concept is in helping us understand who we are.

Robin fledglings develop from embryo to juvenile with full flight in a matter of weeks. This feat requires an extraordinarily fast metabolism. They have to eat a lot—and they can’t exactly feed themselves. In this context, parental help beyond egg fertilization is essential. In line with Trivers’ theory, robins (like many species of birds) are relatively monogamous.

So what of Homo sapiens? ...