7a. Lewis, D. M., Al-Shawaf, L., Conroy-Beam, D., Asao, K., & Buss, D. M. (2017). Evolutionary psychology: A how-to guide. American Psychologist, 72(4), 353-373.
Researchers in the social and behavioral sciences are increasingly using evolutionary insights to test novel hypotheses about human psychology. Because evolutionary perspectives are relatively new to psychology and most researchers do not receive formal training in this endeavor, there remains ambiguity about “best practices” for implementing evolutionary principles. This article provides researchers with a practical guide for using evolutionary perspectives in their research programs and for avoiding common pitfalls in doing so. We outline essential elements of an evolutionarily informed research program at 3 central phases: (a) generating testable hypotheses, (b) testing empirical predictions, and (c) interpreting results. We elaborate key conceptual tools, including task analysis, psychological mecha- nisms, design features, universality, and cost-benefit analysis. Researchers can use these tools to generate hypotheses about universal psychological mechanisms, social and cultural inputs that amplify or attenuate the activation of these mechanisms, and cross-culturally variable behavior that these mechanisms can produce. We hope that this guide inspires theoretically and methodologically rigorous research that more cogently integrates knowledge from the psychological and life sciences.
Researchers in the social and behavioral sciences are increasingly using evolutionary insights to test novel hypotheses about human psychology. Because evolutionary perspectives are relatively new to psychology and most researchers do not receive formal training in this endeavor, there remains ambiguity about “best practices” for implementing evolutionary principles. This article provides researchers with a practical guide for using evolutionary perspectives in their research programs and for avoiding common pitfalls in doing so. We outline essential elements of an evolutionarily informed research program at 3 central phases: (a) generating testable hypotheses, (b) testing empirical predictions, and (c) interpreting results. We elaborate key conceptual tools, including task analysis, psychological mecha- nisms, design features, universality, and cost-benefit analysis. Researchers can use these tools to generate hypotheses about universal psychological mechanisms, social and cultural inputs that amplify or attenuate the activation of these mechanisms, and cross-culturally variable behavior that these mechanisms can produce. We hope that this guide inspires theoretically and methodologically rigorous research that more cogently integrates knowledge from the psychological and life sciences.
“However, this research also provides powerful empirical evidence that these adaptations are capable of “erasing race”—they are capable of producing categorizations that do not discriminate along racial lines.”
ReplyDeleteI found the research of Kurzban et al that the Lewis article describes here interesting. It is mentioning that racism can be seen through the lens of evolutionary psychology and that it permeated itself as a sort of in-group out-group categorization between different hunter/gatherer groups. The authors then postulate that these adaptations could then be reversed and lead to no discrimination across racial lines. But just because psychologists now know why these kinds of behaviors/thoughts exist, they still do not know how these work in the brain. From this, we cannot reverse engineer a system in which these adaptations are changed in order to no longer have the categorization along racial lines.
This also brings in an interesting question regarding innate and learned categories. Much racial bias has been found to come from cultural influence (not just adaptation of categorizing in-groups and out-groups). If the adaptations would then be capable of “erasing race,” would there not be a struggle between the new innate category of no racial categorization and learned racial categorization? Or would the new innate categorization then no longer allow for the learning of the different categories to exist?
"Erasing race" is an exaggeration, but we can learn to increase or decrease the weight of features, such as skin color, accent or ethnicity. See the work following on the work of Tajfel.
DeleteReading about this how-to guide on evolutionary psychology reminds me of a course on positive psychology that I was taking. In the first lecture, as professor Seligman was explaining why “bad is stronger than good” for humans (in the sense that if both a bad thing and a good thing happen, one tends to focus more on the bad thing, for example), he mentioned that it is because we have “an Ice Age mentality”: the brain that we have now has a mentality formed in the Ice Ages, where the weather was almost always bad and depression, anger, and paranoia was prevalent. And now, even though we are no longer living in the Ice Ages, the mentality is still there and thus preventing us from enjoying the more benign world that we are living in right now. And, in order to break the negative and have an optimistic view of the world, there needs to be teaching, nurturance, and support.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do not think there could be a way to test if the “Ice Age mentality” is real and caused by the Ice Ages (except if we could do simulation?). In terms of interpersonal relationship, as attachment theory states, unpredictable or insensitive (caregiving) relationship could cause “anxiety, ambivalence, avoidance”, even complete malfunction “just as well”.
Also, another reason why I do not feel fully committed to the evolutionary perspective of studying cognition is that even though one human is one integrated human and I would argue that the cognitive events that happen in a human are more or less dependent events, yet how much does, say, one female’s ovulation cycle, tell us about her ability to speak the way she speaks? In other words, yes, the ovulation cycle feature survives in evolution, but in order to make an artificial woman pass TT, does it need a simulated ovulation cycle?
Hi there!
DeleteI definitely agree that the “Ice Age Mentality” is an irrational explanation for the negative biases we see in some situations for humans.
I would argue however, that that’s just because positive psychology, methodologically and theoretically speaking, is not well-based in empirical research (I might be a bit biased as someone who lies firmly in the camp of cognitive psychology research). It seems to me like the “Ice Age Mentality” explanation of negativity biases is incredibly unrepresentative of the actual positive and negative biases we see from humans. For example, I can’t think of a single way that the “Ice Age Mentality” might deal with the fact that the norm for thinking about the self and our own characteristics is actually to do so in a positive light. The only populations that don’t show positive biases about the self are people who are clinically depressed, for example. In that sense, the underlying general pessimism of the “Ice Age Mentality” hypothesis doesn’t make any sense and isn’t applicable. I’d argue though, that this very example shows that it IS falsifiable.
I agree that it might be complex to prove where this supposed adaptation comes from historically, but just proving that the adaptation doesn’t actually exist in the way that it’s conceived of is enough to prove that it’s faulty. It doesn’t seem to me like we need to dig any deeper to realize it’s bogus.
1. Yes, "positive psychology" is bogus. (But that's not the biggest thing Seligman has to be ashamed of: he tormented dogs to "discover" what the Thai elephant torturing mahouts had found out for themselves generations ago. Seligman turned to the "positive," but it was too late for his victims, and those he inspired to do likewise. Google "learned helplessness" and "phajaan.")
Delete2. Ovulation, like digestion, is a vegetative rather than a cognitive function, hence not part of T3.
2.
“Rather, the evolutionary psychological nature construct of a universal human refers to species typical psychological mechanisms, not universal manifest behavior.”
ReplyDeleteThis line makes me wonder about the relation between evolutionary psychology and cognitive science. If we return to the question of cognitive science being reverse engineering cognition/thinking, does evolution provide a real insight? It seems that the top-down evolutionary approach (finding a problem that an animal must solve, then finding a solution to that problem) can direct towards a specific kind of mechanism that would be necessary in order to explain survival and/or advantages in environment for organisms. But this kind of question is more a “why” question than a “how” question.
The bottom-up process is interesting because it links reverse-engineering to some adaptative problem, but at the same time, for the point of view of cognitive science, having solved the reverse engineering problem erases the need for an evolutionary explanation. Again, I think that it mellows a bit the interest of evolutionary psychology for cognitive science, even though it is sure that having evolutionary constraints can saves us time when trying to provide “a” good explanation for cognition (set aside finding “the” good explanation), by “guiding research toward previously unknown (a) cognitive mechanisms that detect cues reliably correlated with genetic relatedness in ancestral environments”. But “guiding” does not equal “finding”, and we have to keep that in mind when we combine cognitive science and evolutionary psychology.
“After observation, scientists conduct a reverse task analysis, asking what psychological adaptation may be responsible for producing that phenomenon and what adaptive problem that mechanism may be designed to solve.”
DeleteI was also wondering about how evolution could provide us with insight about the questions of cognitive science in regard to reverse engineering. I think we are still missing the point by not addressing the “how” questions. By resorting to evolution, we are still not getting any insight as to how the mechanisms of our brains have changed and adapted in order to ensure our survival. Evolutionary observations only allow us to explain why certain behaviors may have emerged and what threats these behaviors could have been developed to solve.
A past discussion in class was about neuro-imaging was providing us information about where and when things happen in the brain. Now, evolutionary psychology may be helping us solve why certain mechanisms are needed in the brain. But we are still missing the “how” of all of this… which is the most important and difficult question.
Yes, evolution can only contribute the "why" part of the "how and why can organisms do what they can do"? (The "Easy Problem.") The trouble is that often evolutionary psychology does not even explain the "why"; instead it offers ad-hoc "just-so" stories.
DeleteMaybe evolutionary psychology, and lazy evolution can also contribute to the "why" of the Hard Problem. Perhaps there's some sort of advantage, or at least coding efficiency in our capacity to feel.
DeleteI know that by using the word "feeling", we're not only talking about emotions, but it seems that the ability to feel is the necessary first step to emotions, and eliciting an emotional response to environments / circumstances (eg feeling jealousy and anger when a sexual partner is unfaithful) might be a particularly efficient way to code for the types of reactions to these external stimuli that give us an advantage toward surviving and reproducing?
While reading the article, I also thought the same things. Evolutionary psychology, similarly to mirror neurons, seems to be a branch of psychology with interesting concepts that even potentially have clinical applications when it comes to heritable neurological disorders, however as you mention it has no real impact on answering the "how" questions in either the easy or hard problem.
DeleteSuccessful cognitive scientists need the “how” question answered because our T3 Robot, Gabe, needs to be one hundred percent cognitively indistinguishable from a human, straight off the press. It may take us multiple "evolutions" of the robot to get it right, however this sense of the word evolution has nothing to do with the biological evolution involved in evolutionary psychology. Perhaps the only importance of evolutionary psychology would be that if we wanted to build a T3 baby, that would then grow up (in cognitive capacities, not vegetative). In this situation we may want to know what the innate cognitive characteristics are for a human, because unlike older humans who can express their feelings verbally, we cannot just ask a baby about their feelings and be able to build a robot based on their “day-to-day” interactions alone.
I also agree with you Erin, that perhaps the psychological by product/incidental effect explanation mentioned would also cover the “why” of the hard problem, however once again, and as Antoine mentioned, the “why” isn’t as important.
Hi Akhila,
DeleteRe: what you said about heritable neurological disorders…
I think it would be quite interesting to understand the evolutionary advantage not of hertiable neurological disorders (like Parkinsons, or Alzheimers) but of hertiable psychological disorders, like schizophrenia. Usually, over many many generations, selection favors higher-fitness genes, but schizophrenia is specifically harmful. How is it possible that something that is harmful for humans has not been selected out? Also, what about the initial environment would have made it so that schizophrenia had any adaptive advantage?
“We need to know both the evolutionary function that a mechanism was designed to solve as well as how the mechanism operates in variable sociocultural contexts. These represent distinct levels of analysis, and both are necessary elements in moving toward a comprehensive understanding of any psychological phenomenon.”
ReplyDeleteWhile reading this article, I got about halfway through before I said to myself “yeah I see why evolutionary psychology research is helpful, but doesn’t it ignore external factors, such as sociological and cultural implications?” Shortly after that thought, the authors addressed the necessity to analyze evolutionary psychological phenomena and conclusions in reference to other sociological and cultural explanations. I think this intersectional perspective is really refreshing, as someone whose major includes both science and liberal arts disciplines.
On the other hand, I don’t think the authors went far enough with this point. They don’t mention how sociological implications need to be considered even in the beginning stages of research, like when developing scientific hypotheses. For example, the article references other research studies that found “women dress more revealingly at ovulation”. While these conclusions are not unfounded, I believe conducting this type of research in the first place is dangerous. Female bodies are scrutinized to a significantly higher degree than male bodies and has led to the sexual objectification of women and rape culture. Researching women’s “provocative” clothing trends during their ovulation cycles deny women agency and unintentionally ground stereotypes in peer-reviewed scientific research. The fact that researchers thought to track women’s clothing trends in the first place is evidence of implicit bias at work. Researchers not only need to take into consideration alternative sociological theories, but they also need to take into account i) the social constructions leading them to conduct research ii) the consequences their conclusions can have on already damaging social constructs.
I agree with this point - and have to wonder what metrics researchers use to measure "provocativeness" in clothing and how it differs from "breathable / less" clothing and how they control for socially constructed biases there.
DeleteAt least the trend with pop psychology, seems to be calling on evolutionary psychology to try to force a scientific confirmation of sexist/racist/homophobic/transphobic et cetera cultural and personal biases. This makes me weary of the rigour applied when coming to any conclusions in evolutionary psychology – not just ones that deal with identity politics. As Professor Harnad stated in class – it seems difficult to draw lines between reasonable evolutionary psychology and its more ridiculous theories.
DeleteI agree with both the points made here! I strongly think that researcher's need to take into consideration alternative sociological theories and the social constructs leading them to conduct a specific form/branch of research as well as take into account the social constructions that lead people to behave in specific ways. A lot of times with psychological research the 'evidence' or 'data' leading researchers to draw certain conclusions will be skewed based on who is analyzing the data as well as their psychological preconceptions about who/what they are studying. It is very easy to draw the conclusions that you want to see and structure your research in a way which will produce those results. It is not easy to take into consideration all possible reasons for a given behaviour and what social constructions might have lead to this behaviour and I think a lot of psychological evolutionary theories do not take into account all possibilities.
I also agree with your point Erin that the metrics used to measure how 'provocative' womens' clothing may not be appropriate. Perhaps they were measuring it on 'less' clothing = 'provocative' clothing. However, oftentimes women can feel very uncomfortable when they're in ovulation (cramps, hot, etc.) so maybe there is a correlation between ovulation periods and wearing less clothing but to say that this means they are dressing more 'provocatively' is to draw the wrong conclusions. By using 'provocative' instead it changes the possible outcomes/conclusions that you could draw from this type of data.
I absolutely agree with what you are all saying & I had this thought while I was reading!
DeleteThe article explicitly states "the idea of a universal human nature is erroneously interpreted as implying that specific behaviors must be universal. Evolutionary reasoning does not propose this. Rather, the evolutionary psychological construct of a universal human nature refers to species typical psychological mechanisms, not universal manifest behavior"
And I just found myself reading this article more skeptically because it seems like they disregarded this point with some of the evidence they tried to incorporate.
In regards to concerns about the sociological implications of such research, I felt similarly about the section on racism and evolution. While it is maybe true that racism arose as a byproduct of adaptation, I can’t help but think of how providing a scientific explanation of racism can lead to removal of individual accountability. If one feels that racial prejudice has been built in to their psyche through evolution (be it through adaptation or as a byproduct), one may feel it is justified. I know the scientists were not trying to instill this conception, but evolutionary theory has such a dangerous history of being used to justify racism that I think scientists must be very careful with how they research. Scientists must consider how their findings could be interpreted and used, as such findings can have devastating impacts.
Delete"The must-solve category reflects those problems that, if not solved, would have single-handedly resulted in the organism failing to survive and reproduce. This category includes the most immediately obvious problems such as locating and securing nutritious, nontoxic food to eat; avoiding predators; avoiding lethal infectious diseases; and finding, attracting, and successfully reproducing with a fertile mate."
ReplyDeleteIn relation to the first paper we read for last week, “To Cognize is to Categorize: Cognition is Categorization”, part of the abstract reads:
"All of our categories consist in ways we behave differently toward different kinds of things—things we do or don’t eat, mate-with, or flee-from, or the things that we describe, through our language, as prime numbers, affordances, absolute discriminables, or truths. That is all that cognition is for, and about."
It seems that, like Professor Harnad, Lewis et al. (2017) are describing “doing the right thing with the right kind of thing.” The difference is the perspective each of these papers take. As indicated in the title of the paper, Professor Harnad argues that cognition is categorization. As sensorimotor systems, we interact with things in the world based on the sensorimotor contact affords. We also pick out members of categories through sensorimotor interactions by connecting symbols to categories which our internal systems refer to. This allows us to do the right thing with the right kind of thing. If we were to reverse engineer cognitive capacities in the form of T3, we would need to reverse engineer the ability to categorize. This is a testable hypothesis which may provide a causal explanation. Lewis et al. (2017), however, seem to be arguing that “categorization is necessary for survival and reproduction”. This is one of their ways of identifying an “adaptive problem”. On the one hand, it is true that if you pick the wrong mushroom, there are consequences for eating it; or that if an animal cannot distinguish predators from non-predators, they will find themselves in harm’s way. On the other hand, I’m not entirely convinced that knowing whether or not T3 will survive and reproduce is useful for reverse engineering cognitive capacities (i.e., the ability to categorize). If the consequences are obvious for doing the wrong thing, isn’t it simpler to have the goal of getting T3 to do the right thing through trial and error?
Having T3 do the right thing through trial and error doesn't preclude categorization. Through trial and error, T3 can learn categories. In fact, I’m sure it’s necessary that T3 must be able to generalize /abstract in order to survive and reproduce. T3 would certainly die if it couldn’t remember what types of things it could eat – either it would starve by trying to eat – say, tables, chairs, books, etc, (such a small proportion of the objects we encounter every day are actually edible) – and even recognizing individual objects and types as discrete, whole, separate objects is categorization - or it would very soon die of toxin poisoning.
DeleteSo T3 must have the ability to categorize.
“ On the other hand, I’m not entirely convinced that knowing whether or not T3 will survive and reproduce is useful for reverse engineering cognitive capacities (i.e., the ability to categorize).”
The ability of the human mind to categorize is a necessity for survival and reproduction. So knowing whether or not T3 will survive and has the ability to reproduce, seems like a preliminary test it would have to pass – like the rest of us, its cognitive abilities must be such that it can survive and reproduce.
I very much agree with Erin's reply: I think the ability to categorize is essential in reverse-engineering the cognitive aspect of human's behaviour. If we consider that the goal of reverse-engineering is to create a system that can do everything we do, as well as we do, and for a lifetime, then that system must surely be able not only to abstract and categorize, but also to survive and reproduce. In my opinion, if the system is able to discriminate things, but not able to survive long-term, then we have not successfully reproduced a cognizer.
Delete"The bottom-up approach shares many characteristics with the top-down approach, including identifying an adaptive problem and specifying a hypothesized adaptation. However, it includes one additional step: It begins with observing a phenomenon—psychological, physiological, or behavioral. Observations come from many sources. Some are readily familiar, such as bipedalism or the formation of status hierarchies"
ReplyDeleteThis comment on the bottom-up vs. top down approach of creating a hypothesis reminded me of some of the forward vs. reverse engineering comments around building an understanding of the brain. The similarities of looking at the end result we are looking to explain and creating a hypothesis backward from the result we wish to explain have clear similarities. In this case, the author is suggesting this as a broader technique in science as could be applied to evolutionary psychology but it's clear that the concept here goes far beyond traditional science and should be considered more as a means of achieving a result across subjects and fields. As someone with a background in science, this seemed fairly evident to me but applying this mindset to more abstract concepts and subject outside of traditional science has clear benefits.
There seems to be a consensus in the skywritings that evolutionary psychology has the potential to offer some look into the "why" of the “easy problem” -- in other words, why we do what we do. And even in that case, many of the studies grazing the “easy problem” are not sufficient enough to do so (they are just-so stories, as Prof. Harnad says). The potential in this relatively new field, however, is promising in its relation to several goals of cognitive science.
ReplyDeleteEvolutionary psychology, if successful, could also possibly offer us insight into the “hard problem” -- about how and why we feel what we feel (this, I know is controversial, considering our classes strictly “easy problem” framework thus far). I suggest that “hard problem” insights stem from theories of distal and proximal stimuli. I will use the example from last Tuesday’s class, about a child’s sweet tooth. The distal stimulus was the long ago survival benefit of being a child who actively pursues the rare sweet fruit in the environment -- such a preference would lead to greater energy consumption, and thus energy availability to run and hide from threatening predators. Today, with the increase in sweet, salty, and fatty foods, this once useful desire for high-calorie nourishment is leading us prey to obesity and diabetes rather than saving us from predators. Here, we can attempt to explain, perhaps, why eating these foods “feels so good.” Pleasure, an inevitable weasel word of the “hard problem,” has its origins in practical calorie consumption action. Perhaps why we feel what we feel today is greatly a result of why we once did what we did.
I think you make a very interesting point here. However, I do think there must be something more to why we derive such 'pleasure' from eating these foods which are high in sugar, salt, and fat. The distal stimulus of using sweet sugary foods as a method or survival/escape from predators cannot be the reason for the proximal stimulus of why we want to eat sugary foods today. This is because the proximal stimuli goes beyond practical calories consumption and people will consume more than their needed amount of calories per day. Further, people will consume *more* than what would be needed to benefit them in running away from a predator - sometimes much more that it would actually become a deficit in terms of being able to run away or run away fast from a predator. Therefore, I think we have to include an extra explanation as to why we feel what we feel today.
DeleteI also find this is argument interesting. However I don't quite agree with the conclusion that evolutionary psychology could offer us insight into the 'hard problem'" -- the problem of how and why we feel.
DeleteIt sounds plausible that why sugar tastes so good to most of us -- the proximal reason why we *like* (a magic word as a feeling) sugar today -- dates back to the fact that our ancestors who *loved* and consumed more sugar outsurvived those who did not. That's the distal cause. However, based on this reasoning, then it obviously leads to the question of why they -- our sweet-toothed ancestors -- loved sugar. There must have been a biological and cognitive mechanism behind it which contributed to their distinct preferences towards sweetness rather than other tastes, e.g. bitterness or sourness, etc. I suppose this is exactly the same "hard problem" as what we are facing now. In other words, if and only if we can explain why some of our ancestors loved sugar or fat more than anything else, we will finally be able to explain how and why we feel so happy when we are basically killing ourselves with high-calories.
Hi everyone,
DeleteI kind of agree with you Gili that I do think evolutionary psych can elucidate some things about the hard problem. In this specific case of the ancestral sweet-tooths, I'm a little confused about why the biological/physiological mechanisms aren't enough to explain why we like sugar? How is that part of the hard problem?
Hi all,
DeleteEvolutionary psychology can undoubtedly provide insights into why and how it is we feel *certain* things, but it cannot account for why and how it is we can feel *all* of the things that we can feel. We can tell the story of children with sweet-tooths, articulating that they had an evolutionary advantage compared to those around them: children who consumed more sweet things could escape from predators more easily than others could because the sugar they consumed gave them more energy to run away.
Indeed we could probably tell a great number of stories like this to describe the why and how of many cognitive phenomena. But, until we can provide an account of *all* of cognition, the hard problem remains: we need to understand the adaptive advantage of all cognitive traits.
I disagree that EP can provide insights into ‘how’ we feel. Like Junlin, I’m skeptical whether it can even give us insight into ‘why’ we feel. I don’t doubt that we evolved the taste for sugar from our ancestors who outlived the ‘sugar-haters’ and passed on their genes to subsequent generations. However, this doesn’t explain why feeling has to be involved at all. Couldn’t a zombie in a world devoid of feeling have a mechanism in place that attracts it to sugar? But we aren’t zombies, it feels like something to us to taste the sweetness of an apple or the bitterness of a lemon. I don’t think EP can explain why and how this is the case.
DeleteHi all,
DeleteI agree with Paul, I don’t believe that EP can give much insight on the Hard Problem. EP gives us only mechanistical clues and how and why we do certain things, but then again EP does not account for all the reasons we do things that we do since a lot of it is learned. I also, don’t think that we will ever be able to find an answer to the Hard Problem. People have tried for centuries to understand why we feel the things that we feel, and it seems to me like we’re going in circles.
I was surprised to read how many of my classmates think that evolutionary psychology can help us explain the “why” question of the easy problem of cognitive science, i.e. why is it that we do what we do. For me, evolutionary psychology is non-sense. I can’t even conceive how it is considered a science while being by no means empirical.
ReplyDeleteA few things don’t seem ‘scientific’ about the way evolutionary psychologists formulate hypothesis about cognition, and that applies to the top-down as well as the bottom-up approaches.
For formulating hypothesis, you either observe a behavior (bottom-up) or infer the environmental ancestral conditions that would have produce that behavior (top-down) and then go on speculating about the specific psychological machinery that would have preserve that adaptive behavior over generations.
It works in the case of physiological phenomena. As mentioned in the text, the down-regulation of hormones when the “benefits of this hormone are exceeded by its immune-compromising costs” constitutes an adaptive advantage for an organism and increases its chances of survival. Having a burst of stress hormones when fighting animals in the woods used to be beneficial to our ancestors. As of now, down-regulation of this excess of stress-hormone is responsible for long-term negative outcomes such as chronic stress and depression that are by no means useful in our sedentary environment.
As of psychological phenomenon, it seems like we are trying to apply some knowledge about the machinery of the body, i.e. some physiological cause and effect mechanism, to explain human cognition. The example of hormonal down-regulation is purely computational, as is a thermostat. The concentration of a hormone is too high, the body stop producing receptors for that hormone, a new equilibrium is reached and that’s advantageous. But we have seen that human cognition is not pure computation.
As of T3 capacities, evolutionary psychology is no more useful then armchairs speculations. It is not empirical per say. Considering some T3 capacities like understanding as our end state, what can evolutionary psychology teach us? That ancestral environment made it useful for our ancestors to understand each other? That doesn’t surprise anyone; you don’t need a nice story about how Paleolithic humans needed to interact with each other in order to come up with that conclusion. But that doesn’t answer the question of what it is to understand a certain language... How do we do that? Linguistic capacities, categorizing and understanding are all T3 cognitive phenomena beyond the scope of explanation of evolutionary psychology.
DeleteI agree that it is difficult to consider it a "true" scientific discipline, since we can't collect empirical evidence regarding cognitive and psychological phenomena in our ancestors to even support these hypotheses about the evolution. It is just a lot of reasoning, but I don't think the fact that there is not DIRECT empirical evidence should deter us from inquiring & theorizing. Everything does boil down to evolution, so I think that it's okay to look at some phenomena through an evolutionary lens but only to a certain degree.
Re: Chloe Savignac
DeleteHello Chloe! Thank you for your insightful thoughts. I also felt confused by how evolutionary psychology contributes to answering the easy problem. Many aspects of this theory are purely based on speculation, as it seems very difficult to prove causal relationships between environment, adaptive behaviour, and psychological modularity. Hypotheses are arbitrary and difficult (or even impossible) to empirically test.
Anna does have a point in saying that inquiring and theorizing does not require direct empirical evidence; however, since we know very little about the environment in which early Homo sapiens evolved, speculation rarely develops into scientific conclusions backed by evidence. Therefore, it seems that Lewis et al.'s claim, "behavioral differences across cultures, genders, and individuals may be systematically predicted a priori based on a consideration of evolutionary psychological principles", is unrealistically ambitious.
Further, as you mentioned, there are many distinctly human qualities, like language and altruism, that evolutionary psychology cannot explain This is the one question that evolutionary psychology should be able to answer: how and why do humans have these abilities while other species do not?
Hi Chloe!
DeleteI totally understand why you think that evolutionary psychology is nonsense. In the end, all the stories that they come up with seems to be just-so stories. They tend to stick out because usually they do tell a good story but, most of the time it looks like there is no real way of testing for the hypotheses of these stories since we cannot go back and observe/manipulate what has happened in the past. However, that is not always the case, we can test them. For sure, human cognition is not pure computation, but we have talked about how computation can actually be helpful in testing dynamical systems like rockets. In the same sense, we can test the hypotheses of evolutionary psychology using computation. For example, you can simulate a population of living organisms which have the ability to be altruistic (by changing their “gene”) in an environment with limited resources. And you let this simulation run for a while, to see if there would be a change (you start with 50% altruistic 50% non-altruistic) in the ratio of the altruistic gene vs the non-altruistic gene. Here is a video where they dive into this by playing around with different parameters: how beneficial is being altruistic, how does my survival chance change etc. : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFEgohhfxOA. (this one is interesting as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNMkADpvO4w&t=727s)
I think that this is still not a “perfect” way to test/ conclude what has happened in the past. One of the problems that come to mind is there are many environmental effects other than being altruistic, like effect of other species, environmental threats… Another problem might be related to fact that you get to determine ratio of, for instance, gain you get from being altruistic, which means that you could have set it to any possible value in a range. This is though, again as a part of computation, a strength of computation. It is possible to run the simulation for different values and interpret the consequences.
Again, these interpretations of the results of computations might look like just-so stories in the end, and the simulated environment is far from being the real thing. However, we already accepted that computation is an approximation, and a good enough approximation may help us causally explain some of “why questions”. In the end, even from any type science we don’t expect to get “certainty”, we want good enough answers. So, I think using evolutionary psychology can become a good enough answer if it is appropriately combined with computation. (even though I think that it is not there yet, maybe we need better ways to simulate distal environment?)
Hi Cloe,
DeleteI really like your arguments; they are strong, and I agree with you. I also find that your example comparing the hormones with a thermostat is a good illustration to prove that it is in fact computation. Before taking this class, I was certain that feelings are only related to hormones and this biological phenomenon was enough to explain feelings. However, I do believe now that it is only computation and the Hard Problem is still unsolved.
“For this reason, it is an error to equate verification or falsification of a particular prediction with the verification or falsification of the hypothesis that motivated it. Ultimately, the merit of a hypothesis or middle-level theory should be determined based on the cumulative body of evidence.”
ReplyDeleteHere, the paper suggests a way of examining the validity of the evolutionary hypothesis. I understand how that works for the specific top-down hypotheses that are grounded in middle-level hypotheses. For example, in a specific theory of kin-relatedness, I agree that researchers can conduct an experiment that controls and varies for the different levels of cohabitation and MPA to observe the changes in sibling recognition. The result in the changes can be analyzed to tell (at least some part) the validity just like any other empirical scientific method. However, I do not understand how that result could specifically contribute to the qualification of the middle-level theory. First, if the hypotheses are proven right, there is still a huge gap for this to prove the middle-level theory of kin selection. Kin selection could serve as an explanation for the specific hypothesis, but not necessarily. Probably another middle-level explanation of the social bonding of kin could explain the phenomenon as well. It is undetermined that this evidence could attribute to which middle-level theory.
On the other hand, if the specific hypothesis is proven false, then it does not necessarily falsify the theory as well. Maybe it is just the specific theory of sibling recognition that is false. Maybe scientists haven’t find the right interpretation and hypothesis from the middle-level theory.
It is not clear to be how the evidence of specific-level theory could serve to validate the middle-level ones and what are the criteria of a cumulative body of evidence in terms of quantity and quality to sufficiently prove or falsify a theory?
I agree with you that the results of a single experiment is not sufficient to prove or falsify a hypothesis or middle level theory. However, from what I understood, it seems like the quote you used in your paragraph is saying the same thing as you.
DeleteIt seems that they are saying that one experiment that verifies or falsifies a specific prediction based on a hypothesis is not sufficient to verify or falsify the hypothesis in question. As you have said, if a prediction is verified there is still a huge gap to "prove" the middle-level theory in question, similarly, you also said if a prediction is proven false, it does not falsify the theory either. This is why the authors stated that in order to verify or falsify a hypothesis or middle-level theory, one should look to the cumulative body of evidence, meaning the amalgam of all the experiments looking at that specific theory or hypothesis. With this, one verified or falsified prediction in an experiment would not be tantamount to the verification or falsification of the theory or hypothesis that it is based on.
It seems to me that the authors are being really lenient in terms of proposing and supporting evolutionary theories but are endorsing very strict conditions in order to refute them. For instance, to propose an evolutionary hypothesis, they said “a researcher should ask this indispensable question: What psychological machinery and behavioral outputs would help solve this adaptive problem?”. However, it would be very easy to explain almost anything in terms of solving hypothetical adaptive problems if one is creative enough.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, if I were to conduct a study looking at children’s emotion recognition and observe that sad children have an increased ability for recognizing sad faces (mood-congruency) compared to happy children, I can postulate its adaptive utility as allowing the children to grain more information causes and consequences from that mood from perceiving an older person with more experience expressing that emotion (this was actually suggested in a research paper). On the other hand, if I were instead to observe that sad children have a reduced ability for recognizing sad faces (mood-congruency) compared to happy children, then I can postulate its adaptive utility as a method to increase the child’s mood by making him more sensitive to happier emotions so he can seek those people out.
Now if we start talking about something like cognition that can be applied to many different things, such as problem solving. Well then the possibilities are endless.
This point also jumped at me. To me, the authors seem to be far too ready to understand psychological phenomena through evolutionary lens. We do not know when specific cognitive abilities evolved (except writing which can be timed through archeological work, but even then remains somewhat vague), and therefore imagining what life was like at the time and what cause them to evolve seems ludicrous to me.
DeleteThe field of evolutionary psychology seems (to me at least) to not be as empirical as other sciences. I am under the impression that we are trying to apply scientific methods to an area that cannot be empirically researched. We take something that was initially developed to study tangible, observable, physical evolutions and try to apply to cognition which is inherently intangible. We try to explain why specific abilities evolved when we do not even understand how they currently happen.
Not only does it not make sense to me, but I also believe our energy would be better spent elsewhere.
From my understanding, evolutionary psychology explains how evolution has shaped the mind and behaviour. Its goal is not to solve the hard problem of cognition which is why/how we feel what we feel, but rather to solve the easy problem of how/why we do what we do. However, it's possible that the work of evolutionary psychology can become useful later and so it is still valuable.
ReplyDelete"Even a very rare adaptive problem faced by a very small subset of the population can lead to the evolution of an adaptation possessed by all members of the species."
From this, I understand that the level of impact of a problem is the driving force behind whether a biological adaptation is made. This easily provides insight into the easy problem. As for the hard problem, perhaps it provides insight into the why part of the hard problem. In the article, murder is given as an example of something that is high impact but low frequency. When someone is murdered there are different groups of people that feel different ways. Evolutionary psychology can explain why we feel the way we do for the group of individuals who feel pleasure easily because it can be directly linked to a biological explanation. Evolutionary psychology can also easily explain why another group will feel extreme sadness, also with biological explanation, and with findings from studies on how we act in groups. So, maybe the why part of the hard problem is possible to benefit from evolutionary psychology, but the how part is a little bit more tricky.
I agree that evolutionary psychology via middle-level theories can give us some valuable insight into 'why' we feel what we feel in specific instances; e.g., one member of a group responding to the murder of another member vs non-member or our adaptation of a sweet tooth. However, the existence of multiple distinct evolutionary hypotheses tackling separate evolved psychological mechanisms or tackling the same mechanism but through different predictions and lenses, overlooks the essence of the hard problem: why we feel and why we know that we feel in the first place. While applying evolutionary psychology via these middle-level theories may make the hard problem seem more solvable in our psyche, it is evident the 'why' aspect of the hard question (and particularly 'how') is still untapped.
DeleteI don't see how evolutionary psychology will ever give us insights into the why of the hard problem, which is why is it that we feel. Evolutionary psychology gives us some insights about why certain behaviors may have evolved like they did so the "why" of the easy problem but still no insight on how it is that we do what we do. Even for the why of the easy problem I think we should be careful on not assigning too much importance on it because it doesn't take into account present environmental, sociological, cultural factors that affect the way we behave. It would be dangerous to assign our behaviors to evolution and thus not take responsabilility for some of our actions.
DeleteIn class, there was many discussions about distal cause and whether there is a distal cause much like the one we used with the children liking sugar example. It would seem to me that there had to be one for the use of language. However, the theory that you suggested about pantomime seems to make sense. To begin with using non abstract gestures to indicate ‘to eat’ would be beneficial in the family setting to create a simplified way of communicating. I could see how that would be advantageous and create a distal cause. If one family had trouble communicating effectively, they could potentially put themselves in harm’s way. However, the jump between abstract gestures (which would come before imitation gestures) and propositions is a jump that has yet to be made. What makes this jump even more interesting is why animals have yet to make that jump with all the abilities and intelligence they possess. Could there be something cognitive that we are doing that the animals are not? Or does the animals lack of language point towards a lack of necessity to do so? If that were the case, I wonder what the pressure was from evolution to lead us to develop such a useful or possibly destructive trait…
ReplyDelete“Like all scientific research, evolutionary psychological research may be theory-driven or observation-driven. A theory-driven “top-down” approach often entails identifying ancestral conditions that would have impacted individuals’ survival or reproduction, and then describing psychological mechanisms capable, in principle, of solving the problems posed by those conditions. This contrasts with a “bottom up” approach, in which a researcher begins by observing a phenomenon, and then generates testable hypotheses about the psychological mechanisms that could be responsible for producing the observed phenomenon (Buss, 1995).”
ReplyDeleteI found this especially interesting, especially when examining language capacity through this lens. Why did we evolve to be able to learn and produce language? What “ancestral conditions” made this capacity indispensable? We explored this more in week 9 (sorry for the late skywriting!) when discussing UG, but I think it’s super cool to look at it more deeply from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology. All of the hypotheses surrounding the origins of language explored in Sapiens (bow-wow, pooh-pooh, ding-dong, etc.) follow a more bottom-up approach, as they offer an explanation for an observed cognitive phenomenon.
On another note, evolutionary psychology may be able to give us the “why” of many cognitive processes (why we evolved language capacity, categorization capacity, memory processes, etc.), but it can’t tell us *how* we are able to do these things. Looking at brain evolution from our most common ancestors could highlight which brain structures may be involved in more complex cognitive processes, but if mirror neurons and brain imaging have taught us anything, it’s that “when and where” does not offer insight into “how and why”.
"Compared to women, men express a greater desire for a variety of sex partners, let less time elapse before seeking sexual intercourse, lower their standards dramatically when pursuing short-term mating, have more sexual fantasies and more fantasies involving a variety of sex partners, experience more sexual regret over missed sexual opportunities, have a larger number of extramarital affairs, and visit prostitutes more often"
ReplyDeleteIf this is based off questionnaires, I'm not sure I buy the validity of this. People can answer as they may, but they're influences by societal expectations even if they try to answer as honestly as possible. I remember reading a study of this in first year comparing what people said versus what people actually did, and it found the stereotypical ideas didn't hold up. Men tended to not be as sexually promiscuous as thought to be, and women not as sexually guarded as this rationale would have one believe.
Also, just tack on to this skywriting:
Delete"The fact that there are often competing evolutionary hypotheses means that there is no single hypothesis that can be regarded as 'the' evolutionary hypothesis"
Does this mean there is underdetermination of psychological phenomena or does this mean there are multiple hypotheses of adaptations whose design features contribute to the current psychological phenomena in different ways?
This question also allowed me to make a connection between underdetermination and evolution I hadn't seen before. When two unrelated animals in different times evolve similar body plans to fill niches, that is a form of underdetermination: different ways to solve the same problem, for example, eating seeds. Could this also be seen as evolutionary weak equivalence (even though that only applies to computationalism)? The input of needing to survive causes the output of adapting by filling a similar niche in different time periods. The animals arrive to their adaptations in different ways (this is the parallel to different machines having different algorithms), but they reach the same end result of being able to eat the same food due to similar body plans.
Gabriel, I found your 2nd response interesting. In my interpretation of this excerpt, I disagree that Lewis et al is trying to assert that there is underdetermination of psychological phenomena generally. Rather, they suggest that a single adaptive problem could be possibly solved by more than one 'correct' adaptation or distinct psychological mechanisms. Responding to the latter part of your 1st question, I am more in agreement with your assertion since Lewis et al do suggest that theoretically, a couple amongst all competing evolutionary hypotheses about an adaptation could answer 'how' it evolved to solve a specific adaptive problem. Since each evolutionary hypotheses is based on its own predictions, it would result in this specific adaptation in 'different ways'.
DeleteRegarding the connection that you make between underdetermination and evolution, I agree that the example that you provide (two unrelated animals in different times - with different environmental evolve similar body plans to fill niches and end up eating the same seeds) does align with how we define underdetermination. However, I am not sure how the concept of weak equivalence could be applied. Assuming it can be applied outside of computationalism, I question whether it is possible for the inputs between species from different times that sparked the emergence of the same adaptation or adaptive behavior to be equivalent. In my opinion, 'needing to survive' as input and the assumption that the same environmental pressures span across time seems too general and unrealistic.
Re: Critique of of evolutionary argument on sexual preferences
DeleteIn a similar vein, Buss also conducted a study on male and female mate preference in attempt to test evolutionary hypotheses. While the results confirmed the hypothesis of men preferring younger women and women preferring older men, the rest of the results showed little alignment with evolutionary beliefs of mate preference. Similarity of background was a better predictor of marriage than evolutionary variables, and intelligence and kindness were the most important for both genders. The representativeness and cultural awareness of the study was critiqued. And even the confirmed findings of women preferring older men stating it evolutionarily traces back to females looking for a mate that provides for them was also criticized in that it disregards the general gap in income between men and women. Therefore, critics connected this trend in results to constructed societal pressures rather than evolution. Basically, it is difficult to disentangle sociocultural constructs from these evolutionary arguments. And, even if a study is “empirically” confirmed, it should still be taken with a grain of salt.
Good discussion. Yes, underdetermination is much like Weak Equivalence (Input/Output Equivalence). This does not just apply to computation, nor just to theory-underdetermination. It happens in evolution, although the equivalence is not Turing-Equivalence (total I/O equivalence) but more approximate. It's also (weakly) related to some versions of "functionalism" in philosophy.
DeleteThe relevant aphorism (veganized to eliminate the horrible, unthinking cruelty of the usual version) is: "There's more than one way to skin a kiwi-fruit."
To me, in this reading on of the most important points made is about creating nuanced hypotheses about contextual cues. Considering a mechanisms reaction in specific contexts and considering the pros and cons of those is imperative for any mechanism to be functioning. While this is discussed in the context of a top down approach, it almost seems to incorporate a little bit of bottom up logic as it works up from the functioning in specific contexts to analyse the relevance of the mechanism as a whole. Observation driven (bottom up) looks at what problem the mechanism was attempting to solve with the phenomenon observed. By considering whether the mechanisms reactions in a context reflect a phenomenon accurately, you are asking whether the mechanism is the correct one to describe how the phenomenon cam about to solve a given problem.
ReplyDeleteThis is suggested as a way to create accurate hypotheses about social, cultural and other environmental variables which may cause the mechanisms activation. Something that comes to thought here is the issue of causation vs correlation. Or even the issue of what comes first. How can we be sure if a mechanism is indeed responsible for the evolution of an adaptive phenomenon to solve an issue? While the mechanism may seem to apply correctly (with more pros than cons) to a myriad of situations, there are most likely other mechanisms at work. For example, if two problems are linked, solving one through mechanism a may have solved the other, while we try to think of a mechanism b to account for that change. This is why rigorous testing of the psychological phenomena and the validity of their adaptive hypothesis in research is necessary.
I like the distinction that evolutionary psychology theory by itself not a psychology theory, but rather a framework from which mid-level hypotheses can be generated and then tested. The paper also thoroughly parses out the potential driving forces (survival/beneficial, threat/opportunity etc.) behind the evolution of various behaviors. It also distinguishes between sociocultural and adaptation hypotheses. It does however seem like adaptation hypotheses are based on possible distal causes (than actual ones) based on assumptions of the prior environment sharing similarity with the current environment. Thus, at best they seem to only lead up to hypotheses and never theories. Given the lack of past evidence, they might also be plagued with issues of underdeterminism (as pointed out in a few other comments too). It really begs the question of how impactful evolutionary studies can be to understanding human cognition.
ReplyDelete“Evolutionary theory provides a framework for understanding the distal causal processes responsible for creating functionally organized organic mechanisms, such as those of the human brain and mind.”
ReplyDeleteEvolutionary psychologists are not able to determine how humans cognize (feel). At best, they are able to elucidate insights into why we cognize. However, as stated by Harnad, much of EP research is highly speculative. EP focuses on distal mechanisms without regard for the proximate causes. The paper lacks emphasis on the importance of cross-disciplinary work to answer the easy problem; Lewis et al. only swiftly breezes over it. Tying together both distal and proximate causal mechanisms will enable us to better explain the ‘why’.
“Evolutionary theory provides a framework for understanding the distal causal processes responsible for creating functionally organized organic mechanisms, such as those of the human brain and mind” (354) (own emphasis added).
ReplyDeleteThe study of evolutionary psychology is purpose built to understand the problems faced by early hominids and discuss (hypothesize) what cognitive processes were used by these hominids to solve those problems – allowing them to survive and procreate more often than those who could not. As a result, we can often test in modern day humans for the remnants of psychological processes that could have been used to solve the adaptive problems (problems which affected survival and procreation for hominids). What I find most interesting in this is that usually, evolution is centered on the physical adaptations made by our ancestors which allowed them to solve the problems of their day and survive. Upright bipedalism, larger skulls, and molars and canines are all cited as those big moments in human evolution which contributed to our success. The introduction of the evolutionary psychological paradigm, however, shifts the focus away from the obvious physical adaptations, and towards one that also values adaptive psychological processes for their evolutionary value. This methodology emphasizes a reverse engineering process, looking at the problems faced, and hypothesizing and testing for the existence of the (psychological) adaptations that were made. The evolutionary psychology methodology demonstrates the way we can understand our psychological processes as a functional tool for adaptation to our surroundings.
"Compared to women, men express a greater desire for a variety of sex partners, let less time elapse before seeking sexual intercourse, lower their standards dramatically when pursuing short-term mating, have more sexual fantasies and more fantasies involving a variety of sex partners, experience more sexual regret over missed sexual opportunities, have a larger number of extramarital affairs, and visit prostitutes more often"
ReplyDeleteIt has become hard for me not to be biased against evolutionary psychology because sweeping generalizations like these which promote sexist sex/gender stereotypes are just plain offensive. Men deserve more credit than to be thought of as mere instinctual creatures. There is vast diversity in terms of the kinds of sexual, romantic, and social relationships that men engage in, and the same applies to the theories about women being more selective. I am highly suspicious of conclusions which oversimplify human behaviours and intentions. The extent to which evolutionary psych continuously reproduces outdated stereotypes is tiresome. An entirely reductionist approach that can’t seem to account for common variations to their supposed norm is tedious. These caricatures lead to gendered profiling – a narrow lens through which to read people that neglects how each person is a thousand different things besides just one sex or the other. Taking this approach seems to mistakenly believe that one can classify a person without even knowing them, or may imagine these categories to be a guide that can predict how things are going to unfold, merely by knowing a person’s ‘type’. These simple categories just don’t fit because no one’s reality is reducible to his or her sex/gender.
It is important to look at related empirical studies that also challenge the validity of typical evolutionary claims regarding sex/gender, since studies which take into account broader sociocultural contexts leads to very different conclusions. For instance, it is significant to look not only at differences but also what sex/genders have in common, such as valuing kindness and intelligence. Basing adaptation hypotheses primarily on distal causes rather than proximal ones is flawed in its assumption that previous environments were sufficiently similar to existing ones so as to make all these comparisons.
When evaluating the reliability of findings we seem to teach over and over again, the fact that several foundational studies in evolutionary psych have yet to be replicated, and not for lack of time.
DeleteAside from sex/gender, I understand evolutionary psych to be seeking to answer the “why” questions of what lead to different human capacities, such as language and categorization. For instance, the text talks about sibling detection. It identifies environmental influences/conditions and the possible function of these abilities. However, even if they were successful in these pursuits, that does not get to the more difficult question we keep coming back to: what does it feel like to be a creature that can interpret various cues to identify our relatives?
Last but not least, it is worth questioning whether the methods used in foundational evolutionary research was ever ethical, as the number of animals that had to suffer for our curiosity is unimaginable.