Hamilton the galton laboratory, university college, london, w. Exploitation is a fundamental element of the parental strategies of many species of birds. Chapter 11 evolutionary psychology and the challenge of. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations that is, the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection in human evolution. It could be expected that spiteful behavioral patterns will become fixed in evolution in the same way as selfish behavioral patterns because, in sexually reproducing species, the spreading of a biological trait in the population is determined by how much it increases the effectiveness of spreading the allele responsible for this trait compared to the other alleles of the same gene.
A multiplayer prisonersdilemma is a game in which individuals may take 68 journal of economic. Towards an evolutionary psychological categorization of. Presents an overview of general evolutionary theory directly relevant to the topic of sexual aggression beginning with brief discussions of evolutionary psychologys approach to studying individual and gender differences. Selfish gene theory and evolution of altruistic behaviour. Evolutionary explanations of human behaviour routledge. Evolutionary psychology is a branch of psychology which investigates behaviour which has evolved. Evolutionary psychology is founded on several core premises. It is an attempt to discover order, to show that certain events stand in. There are various labels for such work, including evolutionary psychology, human behavioural ecology and human sociobiology. Jul 21, 2016 altruism is real and developed because it confers an evolutionary advantage that is ultimately greater than the benefits of selfishness, an international team of mathematicians claims to have proved. Three styles in the evolutionary analysis of human behavior eric alden smith a theory does not give conciusionsit directs the nature of the research, but each application of the theory demands careful research. Evolutionary psychology is a large and rapidly growing field, and we wont attempt to summarize it here. Selfish and spiteful behaviour through parasites and pathogens.
There is a famous saying that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Wilson took human sociobiology to provide us with an account of human nature 1978. Collectively, we call these areas human evolutionary psychology hep because their shared objective is an evolutionary understanding. The standard social science model can be briefly described as the mind is a blank slate. Evolutionary psychology evolutionary studies sites at. It is built upon the rock of darwins theory of evolution published in 1859. Recent studies in the evolution of cooperation have shifted focus from altruistic to mutualistic cooperation. Evolutionary biologists, game theorists and anthropologists have frequently used the prisonersdilemma game as a research vehicle to explore the polar regions of individual and group selectiontheory and the interesting terrainthatlies between. The difference between selfish and spiteful behavior. Grounds for thinking that the model described in the previous paper can be used to support general biological principles of social evolution are briefly discussed. Just as evolutionary theories in the biological sciences assume that living things adapt generationbygeneration to survive in their environment, in psychology, the evolutionary approach also referred to as evolutionary psychology involves the study of our cognitive processes and behavior with the view that they too have been altered over millions of years to help us to reproduce. Selfish and spiteful behaviour in an evolutionary model.
This article analyzes a simple mathematical model of the tradeoff between uptake and synthesis. Just as the cognitive sciences provide a metatheoretical context and a set of. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, functional products of natural selection or sexual selection. Evolutionary psychology is based on the premise that human behavior is the product of evolutionary powers. Behaviors and capacities are assumed to be adaptive. More than once i have noticed that if two cars arrive. Hamilton and the evolution of sociality behavioral. From an evolutionary perspective, honking is a selfish act. Symptoms are considered to be learned habits arising from the interaction between external events or stressors and an individuals personality. A far more comprehensive exploration of the very items that dr. Theoretical models predict that 1 it is adaptive for an individual to be altruistic to any other individuals that are. But very few of those who advocate the application of scientific method to current problems are willing to go that far. Thus, evolutionary social psychology is logically analo gous to cognitive social psychology. Origins and mechanisms one common dismissive view of evolutionary psychology is that it.
Tradeoffs, individual differences, and misunderstandings about evolutionary psychology article pdf available in american psychologist 659. An evolutionary biologist remarked that the belief that selection generates optimal solutions cannot be defended as an accurate view of the real world gardner, 2010 and the same is equally true of behavioral selection as well. Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable behavior, as opposed to internal events like thinking. Models of mental disorderthe behavioural model mental. The brain is an informationprocessing device, and it produces behaviour in response to external and internal inputs. Selfish and spiteful behaviour in an evolutionary model nasaads. The evolutionary psychology of emotions and behavior.
Pdf a deeper integration of selfish goal theory and modern. Of intraspecific cases it is doubtful if any can be considered confirmation of the present model. Evolutionary psychologists study what people look for in a partner, and how these preferences may have been shaped by evolutionary pressures. Cuckoos, for example, lay their eggs in the nest of other birds, who often unwittingly rear the alien nestlings as their own. Based on observations of other species in their natural environments, the evolutionary psychology of human mating tends to lean toward the idea that females are more selective in their partners than males. Ravens model also deals with the question of why would one let oneself be influenced or why would one resist. Human adoption in evolutionary perspective springerlink. Explaining altruistic behavior in humans santa fe institute. Principles of evolutionary psychology 5 and did not make me sick.
Evolutionary accounts of human behavioural diversity. Nevertheless, i feel this is a valuable collection of essays that deserves to be on the. Evolutionary altruism describes the fitness effects of a behaviour, journal of consciousness studies,7, no. The behavioural model has a scientific basis in learning theory. Evolutionary psychology is consequently portrayed as an explanatory science and the key to unlocking the mystery of where we came from, how we arrived at our current state, and what defines who we are. Science is more than the mere description of events as they occur. While the sssm is a nurture approach, the evolutionary approach is more naturenurture. How can evolutionary psychology successfully explain. This implies a limited restraint on selfish competitive behaviour and possibility of limited selfsacrifices. This change in focus is purported to reveal new explanations for the evolution of prosocial behavior. Cogent evolutionary theories exist for predicting and explaining sex differencesthe most notable being the theory of sexual selection buss, 1995.
If evolutionary psychology turns out to be wellfounded, then the existing superstructure of the social and behavioral sciencesthe standard social science modelwill have to be disman. Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain human motivations and behavior as being the consequence of evolution. Human behavior is caused by human intelligence and free will, even though human behavior includes somatic and psychosomatic influences and effects. As noted above section 1, evolutionary psychology owes a theoretical debt to human sociobiology. Evolutionary psychology evolving theories of behaviour. These payoff functions would, for example, be profit functions. The evolution of spiteful behavior psychology today. Is there empirical, biological, and evolutionary justification that mankind acts with unselfish behavior. And you may well concur with that answer but out there there is an increasing constituency of thinkers claiming quite otherwise. Researchers with an evolutionary perspective have conceptualized the self and selfesteem as evolutionary adaptations. Evolutionary approaches to behaviour experimental psychology. The most probable topics that could present barriers to a full evolutionary account of human behaviour include acceptance of the role that genes play in diversity, the role of the environment in behavioural development and the importance of transmitted information as a partcause, not simply a product, of human evolutionary processes. Analytical models show that spiteful behavior can evolve if the members of the social group compete in a perfect zerosum situation.
Persistent, distressing symptoms are considered maladaptive responses rather than being markers for some underlying disease or illness. On the evolutionary stability of altruistic and spiteful. Planned behavior tpb ajzen, 1985, 1991, decomposed theory of planned behaviour, taylor and todd, 1995, the technology acceptance model tam davis, bogozzi and warshaw, 1989, technology acceptance model 2 tam2 venkatesh and davis 2000 and technology acceptance model 3 tam3 venkatesh and bala 2008. Incidents in which an animal attacks another of the same species, drives it from a territory, or even kills and devours it are commonplace. This interdisciplinary research theme sits at the interface between evolutionary biology, economics, and psychology and incorporates approaches and insights from all three. Two principles are presented, the first concerning the evolution of social behaviour in general and the second the. I have seen congested traffic and aggressive drivers in many cities around the world. Evolutionary psychology assumes that an evolved psychological mechanism and its corresponding neural substrates is an informationprocessing module that was selected during a species evolutionary history because it reliably produced behavior that solved a.
Inevitably there is a kind of evolutionary battle of the sexes, george williams 5 wrote, showing males to be natural born salesmen and females as reluctant consumers. Toward an integrated model of leader traits and behaviors although prior research has established that leadership effectiveness is in. Selfish and spiteful behaviour in an evolutionary model semantic. The explanatory power of inclusive fitness theory and reciprocal altruism hamilton, 1964 trivers, 1971. Evolution and the classification of social behavior. Evolutionary psychology proposes genetic determinism and undercuts morality in establishing society. It is primarily a scientific journal, but articles from scholars in the humanities are also published. Evolutionary psychology provokes so much reflexive opposition because the stakes for many social scientists, behavioral scientists, and humanists are so high. To inject more realism in an evolutionary model of strong reciprocity, henrich and boyd 2001 developed a model in which norms for cooperation and punishment are acquired via payoffbiased transmission imitate the successful and conformist transmission imitate high frequency behavior.
Organizational behavior is the study and application of knowledge about how people, individuals, and groups act in organizations. Key factors include the influx rate from external sources relative to the outflux rate, the rate of internal decay within cells, and the cost of synthesis. If this is correct, then behaviour and lifestyle have a potentially major effect on longevity. Evolutionary psychology focuses on four key questions why is the mind designed the way it is what causal processes created, fashioned, or shaped the human mind into its current form. Three styles in the evolutionary analysis of human behavior.
Hamiltonselfish and spiteful behaviour in an evolutionary model. Affective influences on social cognition and behavior. Different neural mechanisms are specialized for solving problems in humanitys evolutionary past. Ho omicide within the family is a theme of great psychological significance. Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain useful mental and psychological traitssuch as memory, perception, or languageas adaptations, i.
Finally, it can be concluded that people seem clearly to act as the vehicle which contains the genes, which pass successfully to the next generations through reproduction. The brains adaptive mechanisms were shaped by natural selection. The standard explanatory strategy followed by evolutionary psychologists has been dubbed reverse engineering pinker, 1997. Behaviour and evolution department of biology ntnu. Evolutionary psychology stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. An evolutionary analysis of the relationship between spite. They are, first, how specific evolutionary hypotheses are derived from broader evolutionary principles, and second, the limitations of the assumption that human behaviour is adaptive in an evolutionary sense. The authors approach the subject of human altruism and the biological advantages of multilevel group selection visavis human egoism, hedonism, antifunctionalism, and individual functionalism from an interdisciplinary, but primarily evolutionary, approach. Evolutionary psychology is well suited to providing an account of human nature. Selfish and spiteful behaviour in an evolutionary model hamilton, w. The third section outlines three major directions for linking evolutionary biology and personality psychology. Evolutionary psychology is a new way of thinking about human behaviour my students will be relieved to hear that rats dont get much of a look in during this lecture. Where genders are unequal, gender preferences are wide, but closely equal, preferences narrow down. Within the field of social evolution, hamiltonian spite is a term for behaviours occurring among conspecifics that have a cost for the actor and a negative impact upon the recipient.
Understanding behaviorism is a classic textbook that explains the basis of behavior analysis and its application to human problems in a scholarly but accessible manner now in its third edition, the text has been substantially updated to include the latest developments over the last decade in behaviour analysis, evolutionary theory, and cultural evolution theory. Thoughts about human nature, human suffering, and psychotherapy in an evolutionary framework. Reflections on behavior analysis and evolutionary biology. That is, it interprets peopleorganization relationships in terms of the whole person, the whole group, the whole organization, and the whole social system. For example, both views emphasize that the critical novel step in the evolutionary sequence is a behavioral shift, i. Evolutionary explanations of human behaviour is an introductory level book covering evolutionary psychology, this new and controversial field. Evolutionary psychology can be applied to any topic that is studied by psychologists. In normal engineering humans attempt to design solutions to problems. In addition, selfish theory helps us to have a better explanation of the types of altruistic behaviour.
The evolutionary model would predict people to resist influence attempts because these. The evolutionary psychology of emotions and behavior martie g. The sssm assumes that experience influences our behavior more than anything, and therefore experience demonstrates the nurture side of the naturenurture debate. Redirected from selfish and spiteful behaviour in an evolutionary model female wattled jacanas often carry out infanticide.
The evolutionary psychology of emotions and behavior irrational emotions a human being is a bundle of useless passions. Nest parasitism is an efficient reproductive strategy for cuckoos, who do not have to worry about building a nest, incubating their eggs, or feeding their nestlings. An evolutionary model of imitation and innovation 2. An organism is the focus of many selecting contingencies over its individual and evolutionary history and the. Evolutionary approaches to behaviour research in this theme asks when, how and why selection shapes the psychology and behaviour of living organisms.
Evolutionary theories of speciestypical adaptations, such as kinselection theory and the theory of reciprocal altruism, also provide powerful tools. Along with the claims that the brain explains the mind and activity in one bit of brain or another corresponds to love, joy, conscience, the self. There is no way for a scien tist to leap directly from genetic or evolutionary theory to conclusions about human behavior. Perhaps even more important than the explanation of altruism itself was the general validation given to selfish gene models. Within the field of social evolution, hamiltonian spite is a term for behaviours occurring among. We argue that the common classification scheme for social behavior used to distinguish between altruistic and mutualistic cooperation is flawed because. Altruism has more of an evolutionary advantage than. Which conditions support the evolution of such harmful behaviour expressed as spiteful or selfish behaviour.
Although each view predicts a different evolutionary outcome, they largely converge in underlying processes. The challenge of adaptive explanation ep is adaptationist and proud of it. For both these parties, human behaviour seems to resist evolutionary interpretation because of the way in which human culture permeates every. Evolution by natural selection is the only known causal process by which complex speciestypical functional mechanisms can be created, at some fundamental level of description. They may be described as examples of biological selfishness. For wilson human nature is the collection of universal human behavioral. According to hamilton, behavior which harms others without benefit to the self may well be called spiteful. Evolutionary approach in psychology psychologist world.
Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. Needs for independence, for power, for self esteem, may mitigate against influence, and may indeed lead to reactance raven, 1992. The evolution of harmful behaviour selfish and spiteful behaviour is the subject of a classic paper by hamilton 1970. Agentbased modeling of artificial societies offers a platform to test humaninterpretable, causal explanations of human behavior that. They propound that evolutionary pressures led to the emergence of the self. Special cases of the model are used to show a that selection in the social situations. Wilson this provocative, important book outlines an evolutionary theory of altruism, examining past theoretical problemsin particular, how to distinguish altruism and selfish or hedonistic motives. It is similar in this respect to ethology, which has always used ideas from evolutionary biology. If selfish genes are to be of any value in explaining the evolution of social behavior, they simply must be able to explain the cases where the behavior is not phenotypically selfish. Critiquing the evolutionary perspective evolutionary psychologists take a behavior and work backward to explain it in terms of natural selection. It contains the definitive contemporary statement on higherlevel selection and the evolutionary origin of cooperation.