In Case You Missed It…
This is the latest post in my Quotes Collection series. Check out the full collection here.
Evolutionary psychology begins with a simple idea: The human mind is part of the natural world and, like the rest of the body, was shaped by evolution.
But as simple as this idea is, following it to its logical conclusion transforms our understanding of human nature, helping answer some of our most fundamental questions about why we think, feel, and behave as we do. Why do we find some faces beautiful and others less so? Why do we fall in love? Why do we get jealous? Why do we care so profoundly for our children that we’d give up our lives to protect them? And why do some of our deepest impulses seem tailor-made to lead us astray?
The quotations below capture some of the most important insights to emerge from the evolutionary approach to the mind, while also puncturing some of the most persistent misconceptions about what evolutionary psychology claims.
Early Ideas
In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.
-Charles Darwin
It takes… a mind debauched by learning to carry the process of making the natural seem strange, so far as to ask for the why of any instinctive human act. To the metaphysician alone can such questions occur as: Why do we smile, when pleased, and not scowl? Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as we talk to a single friend? Why does a particular maiden turn our wits so upside down? The common man can only say, “Of course we smile, of course our heart palpitates at the sight of the crowd, of course we love the maiden, that beautiful soul clad in that perfect form, so palpably and flagrantly made for all eternity to be loved!”
And so, probably, does each animal feel about the particular things it tends to do in presence of particular objects… To the lion it is the lioness which is made to be loved; to the bear, the she-bear.
-William James
Our cognitive and perceptual categories, fixed prior to individual experience, are adapted to the external world for exactly the same reasons as the hoof of the horse is already adapted to the ground of the steppe before the horse is born and the fin of the fish is adapted to the water before the fish hatches.
-Konrad Lorenz
The Gene’s-Eye View
Samuel Butler’s famous aphorism, that the chicken is only an egg’s way of making another egg, has been modernized: the organism is only DNA’s way of making more DNA.
-E. O. Wilson
We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes… A monkey is a machine that preserves genes up trees; a fish is a machine that preserves genes in the water.
-Richard Dawkins
Functional Reasoning
Is it not reasonable to anticipate that our understanding of the human mind would be aided greatly by knowing the purpose for which it was designed?
-George C. Williams
In rummaging through an antique store, we may find a contraption that is inscrutable until we figure out what it was designed to do. When we realize that it is an olive-pitter, we suddenly understand that the metal ring is designed to hold the olive, and the lever lowers an X-shaped blade through one end, pushing the pit out through the other end. The shapes and arrangements of the springs, hinges, blades, levers, and rings all make sense in a satisfying rush of insight. We even understand why canned olives have an X-shaped incision at one end.
-Steven Pinker
[Pinker’s olive-pitter analogy captures the basic logic of functional reasoning. Here’s how I described its application to human psychology in my book The Ape That Understood the Universe.]
In the same way, when we understand what the mind is designed to do – namely to pass on the genes giving rise to it - various aspects of mind and behavior suddenly make sense in an equally satisfying rush of insight. Why are more men than women interested in having multiple sex partners? Maybe it’s because the best strategy for passing on one’s genes differs for men and women: A man who has, say, five sexual partners in a year could potentially have five bouncing babies; a woman who has five sexual partners in a year would have no more babies than she would if she’d only had one partner. Why are we attracted to people with healthy skin, symmetrical faces, and youthful appearance? Maybe it’s because these traits go hand-in-hand with health and fertility, and therefore people with these preferences leave more descendants than those with a fetish for infertile, unhealthy mates. Why are people possessive of their mates and lovers? Maybe it’s because jealousy motivates people to prevent their mates from straying, thereby increasing the chances of having and raising children with them - and for men, because it also decreases the chances of ending up unknowingly raising someone else’s child. Why do people care more for their own children than the next-door neighbors’ children? Maybe it’s because our own children carry more of our genes than the next-door neighbors’ do... Why are we repulsed by the prospect of mating with close kin? Maybe it’s because the offspring of incestuous liaisons are more likely to have genetic defects, and thus any gene discouraging incestuous mating has a very good chance of persisting.
-Steve Stewart-Williams
Evolutionary Function vs. Psychological Motivation
None of this means that people literally strive to replicate their genes. If that’s how the mind worked, men would line up outside sperm banks and women would pay to have their eggs harvested and given away to infertile couples. It means only that inherited systems for learning, thinking, and feeling have a design that would have led, on average, to enhanced survival and reproduction in the environment in which our ancestors evolved.
-Steven Pinker
Evolutionary Mismatch
Our modern skulls house a Stone Age mind.
-John Tooby and Leda Cosmides
We live in cities and suburbs and watch TV and drink beer, all the while being pushed and pulled by feelings designed to propagate our genes in a small hunter-gatherer population.
-Robert Wright
We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.
-E. O. Wilson
The Naturalistic Fallacy
Just because natural selection created us doesn’t mean we have to slavishly follow its peculiar agenda. (If anything, we might be tempted to spite it for all the ridiculous baggage it’s saddled us with.)
-Robert Wright
By Darwinian standards I am a horrible mistake… But I am happy to be voluntarily childless, ignoring the solemn imperative to spread my genes. And if my genes don’t like it, they can go jump in the lake.
-Steven Pinker
Mating and Attraction
Beauty is in the adaptations of the beholder.
-Donald Symons
Telling men not to become aroused by signs of youth and health is like telling them not to experience sugar on their tongues as sweet.
-David Buss
Men lay claim to particular women as songbirds lay claim to territories, as lions lay claim to a kill, or as people of both sexes lay claim to valuables.
-Margo Wilson and Martin Daly
Responding to Common Criticisms
Critics assert that evolutionary psychologists are wrong in believing behavior is genetically determined, that every aspect of the organism is an adaptation, and that discovering what is informs what [should] be. Evolutionary psychologists reply that they never made any of these claims, and document places where they claim precisely the reverse. The critics then reply that evolutionary psychologists are wrong in believing behavior is genetically determined, that every aspect of the organism is an adaptation, and that discovering what is informs what should be.
-Rob Kurzban
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Further Reading
For an overview of evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory, check out my book The Ape That Understood the Universe. You can read the first chapter here for free.
For a deep dive into the evolution of human sex differences, check out my book A Billion Years of Sex Differences. You can read the first chapter for free here.
From the Archive
12 Things Everyone Should Know About Evolutionary Psychology
This is the latest post in my “12 Things Everyone Should Know” series. You can access the full collection here.