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.
What jumped out at me about this reading is that evolutionary psychology could provide a potential answer to the easy problem. Why do our brains do what they do? Maybe, because cognition is evolutionarily advantageous. Perhaps communication skills developed so we could talk to one another about how to avoid a dangerous predator or handle an outbreak of disease. It could be that the ability to recognize emotion on the face of another human being allowed for better social structures that helped ensure survival. The genetic information of human beings who could communicate well or recognize emotions in others was then perhaps selected for. Would that be sufficient for answering the “why” of cognition?
ReplyDeleteWith that in mind, I am a little bit critical of this article. I think the authors leave a lot of questions unaccounted for and seem to be discussing what we already know concerning biology/evolution from a psychology angle. Maybe I’m missing something, but I feel like these ideas are a little bit general. There are certainly not enough specific mechanisms outlined or understood to answer “how” cognition happens.
Cogsci’s “easy” problem is explaining how and why organisms can do what they can do.
DeleteEvolutionary and genetic evidence, modelling and theory are certainly the way to try to answer the “why” part.
Some of organisms’ “doing capacity” is innate, hence evolved (i.e., genetically coded).
But evolution is “lazy.” It is costly to pre-code behaviors and behavioral capacities genetically (through evolutionary variation-and-selection). Pre-coding is also inflexible and inefficient.
Hence evolution “prefers” to “offload” as much as possible on the environment rather than on pre-coding input/output patterns (such as reflexes, “trigger stimuli,” and “fixed action patterns”).
That means Darwinian evolution tends to rely instead on learning, and on what is predictable or predictably learnable in an organism’s environment, especially in early experience (“critical periods,” imprinting).
This also includes “Baldwinian evolution,” which means pre-coding only a tendency or capacity to quickly learn important species-specific skills.
And of course the capacity to learn is itself of course evolved, hence pre-coded genetically through Darwinian evolution.
[How does ordinary “Darwinian” evolution work?]
But, yes, there is something simplistic about “evolutionary psychology” when it comes to explaining either the “how” or the “why” of cognitive capacities. It can explain reproductive behaviors (sexual preferences and patterns) and species-specific phobias (fear of snakes or heights). But it does not do a good job when it tries to explain how learning capacity itself, or language capacity, evolved. Yet these are the “nuclear weapons” of cognition.
Even more important, evolutionary psychology tries to explain learned behaviors as if they were pre-coded genetically, like sex and spiders.
[How are learning and language game-changers when it comes to explaining the “why” of cognitive capacity?]
[And can evolutionary psychology explain (reverse-engineer) “how” organisms can do what they can do?]
“Adaptation hypotheses, on the other hand, investigate distal causes of a psychological phenomenon in order to yield predictions about its proximate causes— understanding why the mechanism responsible for the psychological phenomenon evolved in the first place (distal) furnishes predictions about how the mechanism operates and what specific inputs trigger its activation (proximate).”
DeleteI found this quotation interesting and noticed some links with what’s already been said in this thread. I took this specific quote to mean that although evolutionary psychology should not be the only place we look to for answers to the hard problem, it can be a viable starting place. It seems intuitively plausible that noticing trends and patterns in evolutionary data may help with the development of robust and well-supported hypotheses and theories. To answer your second question with my thoughts, I do not believe evolutionary psychology can help us reverse-engineer answers to the easy problem alone. But couldn't it help by informing early stages of experimental design?
This article reminded me a bit of the Fodor article criticizing the reliance on brain structures for research. He felt it was reductive and simplistic in some cases, and I feel that evolutionary psychology could be subject to similar criticism. However, just as in the case of that article, I do believe that although neither domain holds all the answers, they can be beneficial parts of the puzzle.
Madelaine, I agree with you. I think also we evolutionary psychology by itself can't be used to reverse-engineering the "how" problem - just like the computational simulation of a brain is not a brain by itself, but it may provide a blueprint for constructing it - but combining both can provide a even fuller blueprint for reverse-engineering the causal mechanism of "how". We can even computationally simulate the evolution, which in fact has already been there, called evolutionary algorithms, although whose implementation so far can only solve some easy biological problems. I don't think there are many attempts to simulate the brain evolutionarily, but I think it is certainly worth trying.
DeleteZilong, I think you make a great point about simulation of the brain and the gain in trying to do so. Although, I think neural nets in AI are the first step taken to simulate the brain. Also, in general the topic of reverse-engineering, while evolutionary psychology contributes to answering the “how”, computational neuroscience may be our key to answering the “why”. This reminded me of the different types of researchers that fall under computational neuroscience. For example, there's neuroscience inclined computer scientists who use computer science to analyze neuro data and then theres computer scientists who model AI inspired by neuroscience (ie. neural networks, deep learning etc.). And then theres the third kind which I think is the coolest and really speaks to reverse-engineering in a way that advances both areas of study simultaneously, and thats the computational neuroscientists at the intersection of the two. These researchers use AI to discover new things in both computer science and neuroscience. Instead of relying on any particular field to reverse-engineer the other, these researchers are advancing both simultaneously and building connections between the two therefore contributing to the easy, and if we continue to find innovative results, potentially the hard problem as well.
DeleteMelissa, regarding "evolutionary psychology contributes to answering the 'how', computational neuroscience may be our key to answering the 'why'", I think it should be the inverse, that evolutionary psychology provides evidence for "why", and computational neuroscience for "how". From my understanding, Evolutionary psychology is trying to solve why we behave in this way, why we do this, why we don't do that, etc., which is not really reverse-engineering. However, computational neuroscience, by trying to model and simulate neural networks / human cognition, is indeed reverse engineering, which could contribute to answering "how we do". Moreover, all these remain in the domain of the "easy problem", and are not possible to provide help for solving the "hard problem", because even though if we successfully reverse-engineered human cognition, all our observations would be evidence of how we function like this, more specifically, we could only observe physical behaviours that are indirect results of feeling. Hence, it could only answer how we do and would be insufficient for how and why we feel.
DeleteI feel as if part of the value of learning and language in explaining the "why" of cognitive capacity comes from the ability to communicate via language, which allows us to learn categories without needing direct exposure to something. Allowing for categorization by hearsay likely protects us from a lot of "danger" at least in an evolutionary sense. Further, I think learning is valuable for the question of "why" because it also invokes the evolutionary argument. If part of the "why" for cognitive capacity is evolutionary (to have reproductive success and survival), learning aids in serving that purpose, and language supports that as well. If evolution (as mentioned above) is a good way to answer why we do what we do, then I think it is part of why learning and language help the explanation of "why" in relation to cognitive capacity.
ReplyDeleteYou are right that evolution is also behind everything we learn, because the capacity to learn is an evolved, genetic capacity. But be careful not to assume that evolution "anticipated" all our actual or possible learned categories. It just provided the means to learn them.
DeleteThere is no doubt that the capacity to learn (and eventually the capacity to learn and use language) has had enormous adaptive value.
The mistake in evolutionary psychology, in theorizing about behavior and cognition, is to treat behaviors and thoughts that are the product of learning as if they were instead the direct products of evolution itself -- like sexual behavior or fear of snakes and spiders -- rather than products of learning and language.
Because evolutionary explanation can sometimes only be speculation -- "just-so stories" -- especially when it comes to behavioral patterns, it is often tempting to try to tell the kind of just-so story that works for sex/spider explanation but is ludicrous as an explanation of learned and cultural behavioral patterns, thoughts and dispositions.
Why?
Sex and spiders are genetically pre-coded, and just-so evolutionary explanations work because they are universally experienced parts of our evolutionary past? But learned and cultural behaviour patterns vary - not everyone experiences the same things in the same way, so the speculation that comes with a lot of evolutionary explanation makes it ludicrous?
DeleteWhile reading this text, I started thinking about how some human characteristics are set in stone/species-typical and others experience broad variations. For example, human vision is species-typical because it has an optimal way of being and will usually operate the same way (unless there is a rare mutation). Gender, however, does not have an “optimal” way of being expressed, as proven by the tremendous variations in gender identity and expression that can be observed throughout different cultures and eras. Keeping in mind that vision evolved in a specific way for the survival of our species, would it be correct to infer that the diversity we observe in gender expression and identity is the product of natural selection and, therefore, is advantageous to our survival? I am not knowledgeable enough on the topic and don’t want to make the wrong claims, but I wonder if evolutionary psychology can help understand the variations in gender expression and identity that we experience. Given how evolutionary psychology has often reinforced gender stereotypes and been studied by men, it would be interesting to have different perspectives (feminist, queer, etc.) applied to it.
ReplyDeleteThis reply highlighted what I've noticed too which is that certain heritable features seem more consistent than others due to their advantageousness. Considering there is still variations between people in behavior and identity, I then wonder if it is within the scope of cognitive science to produce consciousness in various contexts. What I mean by this is is there a prototype for the individual who's consciousness is meant to be replicated, or is the goal just to be indistinguishably human? If it is the latter, how will decisions be made pertaining to gender, sexuality, age, education level, and nationality of the robot? I understand that this is outside of the scope of this article and may not be best placed in this skywriting thread, but I wonder if cognitive science is considering these factors? It seems that if we were to successfully reverse-engineer consciousness we would need to understand that there is still much variation among people, and how (and why!) this variation occurs.
DeleteMadelaine, I think this is a really interesting thought! I have wondered this in previous weeks- if T2/T3 machines are meant to be indistinguishable from a human, wouldn’t they need to have some variation, and cultural influences, as humans do? I think the point you made about nationality, sexuality, age, and other facts is very interesting. According to this article, the social, cultural and environmental inputs the mechanism processes will determine what the outputs are. This can lead to differences between cultures. In regards to T2/T3, I wonder if inputs like this would be put into the machine and this could give it some sort of culture, or background?
DeleteEither way, I think what you said is very true. I think we would need to know a bit more about how variations occurred in order to having a machine be truly Turing-passing in that it can represent the differences that exist between individual humans.
I feel like this distinction gets at the problem of spiders/sex (which are easy to argue through an evolutionary lens) and cultural/behavioral patterns. It is easy for evolutionary psychology to argue that the kinds of capacities that we have for things like being scared of spiders or having sex are a result of their evolutionary perks. When it comes to things like having good taste in music, or being gender nonconforming, or other more complex (high-order) traits we could have, the evolutionary argument gets a bit messy, I think. It would be easier to say that we are very flexible creatures, with a complex symbols-system-learning-mechanism, and that it is our very flexibility/weirdness that allows for the continuation of humans. Our flexibility, the empty capacity not-yet-filled-out with content, then, would be the reason we have particular traits (like liking music or having a funky relationship to gender), and this would maybe (?) lead in turn to our evolutionary success. But I'm really not so convinced about the instrumentality of evolution. It's interesting to think about that all of our traits are there for a reason, but I think there's a lot of randomness/frivolity at hand as well !!
DeleteCamille, I am curious as I have never heard this before. Is there substantial evidence to back up this claim? "as proven by the tremendous variations in gender identity and expression that can be observed throughout different cultures and eras."
DeleteReally interesting points everyone! I think on the question of the instrumentality of evolution, I agree with Sofia. The claim that all our characteristics are there for a reason doesn’t seem to make sense, considering that through time, groups who have faced the most marginalization haven’t just been “selected out”. Obviously, evolution happens over millennia, and it is difficult to get accurate data on the treatment of people that far back. However, we do know that for the past two millennia, people who are not heterosexual, for example, have been (and still are) persecuted — not only is this oppression clearly not advantageous for their survival, but the evolutionary argument would also put great importance on their having a smaller number of biological children than heterosexual individuals, given the instrumentality of reproduction for evolution. We can also extend this to people who face infertility. We know that infertility is increasing quite rapidly; how can this be explained by the evolutionary argument?
DeleteDespite this, there doesn’t seem to be evidence that the most marginalized groups (or people who cannot reproduce) are in the process of being “selected out” by evolution. We don’t have enough millennia left to “prove” this, but I am certain that the diversity of humanity is a strength. In fact, if given the opportunity to look into the future, we would probably not find lesser diversity of identities, despite this being, in evolutionary terms, often non-advantageous for reproduction. (Maybe (hopefully), traits that cause this kind of intolerance are what would be selected out instead…)
Laurier, I can try to quickly give a few examples among the many. This doesn’t have much to do with evolutionary psychology directly, but I think it’s important in showing that a lot of what we see and experience in the world is a product of learning and society.
DeleteFirst, gender expression variations are easy to see, because gender expression is the way you express your gender identity in daily life, and entirely depends on your socialization. The gestures, behaviours, clothing, and other aspects of our external appearance are the expressions of our gender identity, and these are influenced by what society tells us is acceptable — ex: “women wear pink”, “men don’t wear makeup”. This will obviously differ with cultures, depending on the way gender is seen in those cultures — in Western cultures, for example, we’re socialized to think that “only women wear makeup”, but there are cultures nowadays where men wear makeup as well, and we know that all the way back to ancient times, men wore makeup and engaged in other behaviours that they saw as demonstrating their masculinity.
In terms of gender identity, once again, because it has been clearly established for some time now that gender is not a biological fact (sex) but a construct of society, needless to say, gender identity varies in time and space depending on cultures and norms. For instance, the Indigenous Two-Spirit identity demonstrates a view of identity that is completely independent from the western binary view of gender and sexuality, similar to Mahu identity in some native Hawaiian cultures. In very socially conservative societies where there are punishments attached to deviations from “normal” gender expression, then inevitably, gender expression in these societies will conform to binary views of “men do this” and “women do that”. In a utopian society where gender identity is not viewed in binary terms, and gender expression becomes only “expression”, no doubt will we see many variations along the gender identity spectrum.
History and present-day life thus provide substantial evidence to these variations!
All the arguments brought up here are very interesting! I do wonder whether higher-order traits, or those that are more complex and less directly tied to our immediate survival are so varied because they are an emerging trait that should, with time, become more directly tied to our cultural needs. For example, at one point in time, simpler social systems, such as friend groups or small tribes may not have been evolved and ingrained within us, as we were too worried about simpler needs such as feeding oneself, mating, and individual survival. Perhaps now that these needs are solved, we have come to incorporate more complex systems for sociability into our inherent brain programming. Once these mechanisms are built into our genetics, we have room to evolve more complex aspects of ourselves such as gender expression, personality, etc. Perhaps these traits are hard to describe through evolutionary psychology because they have not yet been selected for, or because they do not drive natural selection in the current circumstances of our social society. In the past couple thousand years (gender expression and sexuality has been developing much longer in history than we often think) perhaps all the variation and flexibility we see between people is the result of natural genetic mutation and behavioral drift that occurs in other traits.
DeleteI’m agreeing with the discussion brought by Camille and Madelaine above about the variations within species. I think in the end this question makes the distinction between collective phenomenon and to its individualized level. Evolution, on the other hand, does not care too much about the individuals that involved in its journey, because gene is selfish, and for a gene to be passed on for generations this process itself is a collective phenomenon. Therefore, I think the evolutionary perspective of psychology can only explain limited number of behavior and cognitive functions in human being, and on the level of “easy problem” (the why problem in cognitive science).
DeleteThis article reminded me of another Buss paper that I read in SOCI 588: Evolutionary psychology: A new paradigm for psychological science. This one was written in 1995, which was many years before this one, so it was interesting to compare my notes from that class to this article (I recommend reading it if anyone is confused about evolutionary psychology as a field).
ReplyDeleteAt first, I was confused as to how this topic related to our previous discussions, but I think I’m beginning to understand how evolutionary psychology theories can help us reverse engineer cognition.The bottom-up approach, which is essentially just the top-down approach with observation, can be applied to cognitive mechanisms. We can take a cognitive mechanism that is observed, then theorize about what adaptive problem this cognitive mechanism evolved to solve. Since evolution is lazy, we may not have actually evolved the mechanism itself, but we may have evolved the capacity to develop that mechanism based on the surrounding environment. Therefore, we can try to reverse engineer that capacity to develop the cognitive mechanism in a brain instead of directly trying to create a machine that already does that cognitive mechanism.
Hey Melody,
DeleteInteresting how I thought that evolutionary psychology CANNOT be useful for the same reason you believe it to be useful (that we can “theorize about what adaptive problem a certain cognitive capacity evolved to solve”).
I don’t think evolutionary psychology theories can help us reverse-engineer the causal mechanisms of our doing-capacity. Prof Harnad mentions above that evolutionary psychology tries to explain the why part of the easy problem which is: Why can organisms do what they can do? What is evolutionary explanation of our doing-capacities?
The most important doing-capacity (in my opinion) is the capacity to learn. For example, we are not born with (most) categories, but rather born with the capacity to learn categories. But how does evolutionary psychology account for such learning capacity?
So first off, (I really need to get this off my chest because these kinds of explanations infuriate me) the article has different examples of where they use evolutional psychology to get what they call “middle-level theories” such as explaining the differences in reproduction behavior in males and females through the middle theory of “minimum parental investment”. But their middle theory can be easily refuted by stating that males’ preference for sexual variety could NOT have been adaptive when we were still hunter-gatherers (which was an ancestral human condition), living in smaller tribes. Infidelity in small groups wouldn’t have been such an adaptive strategy. Even hunter-gatherer societies that are found in modern times like the Inuit don’t typically show this behavior.
(Anyways) and more IMPORTANTLY, how does such reasoning of increased [survival, reproduction, fitness] explain why we have the pre-wired & evolved cognitive ability to learn?
I would argue that evolutionary reasoning for learning capacity can’t explain learning behavior because once we have learning capacity, (which we do), we overcome the concept of EEA, environment of evolutionary adaptedness, which “refers to the set of selective pressures responsible for shaping a given adaption”.
Our learning capacity accounts for the diverse “selective pressures” in the environment. Our learning capacity is a product of “lazy" evolution because having the [capacity to learn] is more flexible than [having the ability of what is to be learned] genetically coded. We humans evolved so that we have this immense ability to “learn” and adapt to unstable environments by having this flexibility hard-coded into our genes rather than the adaptive behaviors that would only pertain to a specific environment (EEA). (Caroline explains this REALLY well in her skywriting for 6B).
Yea, so all in all, the hypotheses evolutionary psychology provide can’t account for this extremely flexible learning cognitive capacity we have to adapt to our environments. Consequently, I think it can’t really help us reverse-engineer the casual mechanisms of our doing-capacity. Answering “because it served an adaptive purpose” to the questions of how we can learn and why we have this ability to learn is just too simplistic.
As Prof Harnad mentions above, evolutionary psychology treats our behaviors and thoughts as direct products of evolution. However, our behaviors and thoughts are rather products of learning and language rather than direct products of evolution itself.
Lastly, having said all that, I still believe that evolutionary psychology can provide insight to cogsci because it draws a picture on the EEA (what was in environment of our ancestors).
Evolutionary psychology is particularly interesting as it attempts to answer the ‘why’ question more frequently and scientifically than other disciplines. Nonetheless, in general it tends to abuse of its power, claiming everything as of genetic evolution, when certain things occur through learning. One assumes of a species specific innate fears such as “spiders”, “snakes” or “heights” in order to identify them as threatening. If this were true then where certain categories would just exist of themselves, and are just poping up when needed. However, these behaviours have risen through contextual learning, for survival, through sensorimotor system interaction with the environment. An important innate category we discussed is colour discrimination, this property amongst other of our visual system allowed us to discuss categories that do not need to sensorimotor interaction. Ancestors, who are rapidly able to identify threats such as snakes, are at an evolutionary advantage. Generally, that would be those with a genetic mutation for an evolved visual system, and learning capacity and through environmental pressures would be able to reproduce and pass on the beneficial genes. Therefore, while certain categories are considered to be “innate” today, they could be in fact considered as “evolved categories”, and are rapidly learned in the environment, through teaching… While evolutionary psychology provides a good account for certain cognitive capacities we have today, it doesn’t explain the capacity of learning, or language in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI do not fully understand the argument that evolution is ‘lazy’. Does it mean that as it is effortful to code for behavioural capacities genetically, evolution relies on learning occurring in one’s environment, coding for the capacity to learn rapidly?
Hey Lola,
DeleteTo address your last question, this is how I think about the “evolution is lazy idea”, maybe it will help:) When we say evolution is “lazy”, it makes it sound like evolution has intention or forethought, like it is evaluating different options and going with what is easier, which can be confusing. Really what this means is, the simpler a solution is, the more likely it is to have randomly developed. The fewer random mutations would have been needed to occur to facilitate a solution, the more likely it is that they would have actually happened. Basically, saying evolution is lazy is just saying is it more likely that simpler solution would have come about.
In the context of learning, this means it is more likely that an organism would develop one general capacity that would allow it to be more adapted to multiple aspects of it’s environment, than that it would develop multiple, separate capacities through different pathways. As an analogy, imagine there is a game where you roll a die 10 times, and you win either if you roll one 4, or if you rolled a seven 2s. If someone told me they had just won the game, I would guess that it was by rolling one 4, because this simpler solution is more likely to have occurred by chance.
I know I haven’t addressed your concern that the capacity for learning itself has not been explained, but hopefully that helps you understand why we think this capacity is what we should be trying to explain (why it is the mechanism hypothesized to be genetically encoded).
I think a good way to answer your question is to ask ourself what is the problem that evolution tackles? The text outlines it clearly" The genes of the individuals who solved that problem had greater replicative success than the genes of those who did not solve that problem." To be able to increase your chances at replicative success you not only need to solve problems that arise, but you also need to do it efficiently. Evolution is a slow and inefficient process. Genes are very fragile and if you introduce too much change you increase the risk for undesired mutation(Chaotic change) that will fail at the problem described above (i.e. the genetic code you want to pass down dies).
DeleteThis is a problem for us (and any other living organism) because our environment is ever changing, and we need to change with it to survive. So, instead of having a very flexible genetic code (that would lead to our downfall), we have very flexible mechanisms that are hard-wired in our genetic code (the ability to learn!).
What I think we mean by evolution being lazy, is that evolution is a slow and taxing phenomena that only will create change in our genes over multiple generations. A much more effective mechanism is cognition; since cognition is not passed down through genes, it does not risk creating unwanted mutation that will kill off the specie. Therefore it can be much more adaptive.
Now, if the mechanism of cognition is effective at dealing with the problems that we face (i.e. learn how to climb a tree to get bananas), there is no reason for it to be hardwired in our genes (it would just take unnecessary space, and increase the chance of undesired mutations). So yes our ability to learn is hard-wired in our genes since it can tackle environmental problems in a much more productive manner, but specific behavioral mechanism such as knowing the difference between an apple and an orange (C.P.) are learned. -Elyass A.
While this paper was a interesting overview of evolutionary psychology, I felt some hesitation to accept the authors’ criteria for testing evo-psyc hypotheses. They state that "testing an adaptation hypothesis simply entails testing for evidence of these psychological features” (page 11). In other words, to test a hypothesis about how a certain adaptation came about to solve a certain problem, one need only look for proof of the psychological features linked to that adaptation. Where this is tripping me up is that it seems like it's taking proof of the product of a mechanism to be proof of the mechanism itself - taking an answer to a “what” question to be proof of answer to a “why” question. When this method is testing a top down hypothesis is seems more valid: if I have a purely theory-driven hypothesis that a certain feature *should* exist to help solve a certain problem, and then I go out into the world and do in fact observe this feature where I would expect to, my theory of why this feature should exist likely has some validity. It seems like most of the time, though, evolution-psyc is more bottom-up in it’s hypothesis generation. It looks at how we know organisms behave and then tries to come up with the best adaption-based explanation for this behaviour. But in this case, evidence of the psychological features that informed the hypothesis generation surely can’t be taken as evidence of the validity of this hypothesis. That feels like saying, “when I look out my widow the sky is green. I think this is because someone has put a green filter over my window. And look, the sky through my window does in fact look green so this explanation must be true.”
ReplyDeleteI’m probably misunderstanding some relevant nuances that would make this section on testing evo-psyc hypothesis more compelling, so any thoughts on where my misunderstanding is coming from would be appreciated!
Hi Caroline! I'm also not positive I'm not missing some nuance as well, but I took the statement on page 11 to mean that in order to generate a hypothesis, all that is needed is the evidence for the psychological features. But once the hypothesis is developed, testing it may require more rigorous methods. I found this quote helpful for explaining it: "This testing can proceed through standard methods of investigation in psychology, including laboratory experiments, questionnaires, cross-cultural comparisons, observational techniques, and physiological measures(Buss, 2015).(p. 11)".
DeleteI also share your hesitancy to accept that the presence of some feature is grounds for theory development, but was compelled by the mention of meta-analysis as an important component of evolutionary psychology.
In my opinion, evolutionary psychology can be a helpful tool in solving many unanswered questions. But we must wait for strongly supported and compelling evidence to avoid misleading or incorrect theories because the way these theories are generated may rely on some degree of interpretation. However, I do believe that there are ways to test these evolutionary hypotheses empirically that can be convincing.
Caroline, it seems that evolutionary psychology tries to connect itself with biology as much as possible to increase credibility. For example, when they talk about parental investment strategies, which could be conceptualized as partly psychological, they bring up how it is also grounded in biological sex differences. Page 363 reads "Women shoulder the greater minimum obligatory investment in offspring (e.g., gestation, childbirth, and nursing; Trivers, 1972) and thereby incur greater costs from injudicious mating decisions".
DeleteThis makes their point more valid as it is not purely psychological, they tie the behavior to biology to give the construct more empirical validity.
To your points on the validity and credibility of evolutionary psychology, I'd like to add that while I feel similarly about the field (namely questioning how legitimate and useful a field of study it is), I find most sciences lack a certain something when we try to separate them into discrete disciplines. Without at least some connection to biology, most psychology would seem to lack credibility. This is why Cognitive Science as an interdisciplinary field is so interesting: it connects at least 5-10 different fields, and each provides a valuable perspective. Put together, these different perspectives can provide a more complete picture of cognition than any of these fields can in a vacuum.
DeleteAs you pointed out Laurier, without appealing to the biological mechanisms underpinning psychology, psychology is not really an empirical science. Personally, I believe that both empirically demonstrable and more subjective psychology both have valuable perspectives to provide. In the case of evolutionary psychology, evolution works on a genetic, biological level. By creating a taxonomy of concepts within the field, not only can evolutionary psychologists make connections with biological concepts, but they can model their theories with a computer, a discrete, state-based machine. In any case, while it is somewhat self-serving, by placing their observations in a discrete taxonomy, evolutionary psychologists sacrificed the continuous, fluid nature of evolution in order to gain certain scientific credibility. And I concede that I may be missing some nuance here as well, so please do call me out if this is wrong.
Something that stood out to me in this article was at the bottom of page 8, in which they describe the process of evolutionary task analysis. Here, they state three different stages of processing when trying to determine an adaptation to an adaptive problem- the ‘input’ stage (involving detecting environmental info), the ‘internal computation’ stage (algorithmically processing that info) and the ‘output’ stage (thoughts, emotions, psychological responses and behaviours the mechanism produces). This reminds me quite a bit of the process of computation, and the process that Turing machines operate on (i.e. computation). This makes me wonder about how the process of evolution would fit into computation and Turing machines. If this process is correct, then would it mean that a Turing machine would eventually be capable of evolving if given specific inputs? Or does this just mean that evolution is similar to computation in some way?
ReplyDeleteEvelyn, I was thinking along the same lines as I read! Although they seem intuitive once you read about them, there are so many behavioral examples from this text that I had never considered to have an evolutionary root. The one that stood out to me was our innate disgust for filth, sick people, and pathogen carriers like rats. The experience when encountering one of these stimuli is so visceral and immediate, this trait had to be selected for very strongly for such reactions. While reading I was likewise wondering about the application evolutionary psychology may have in reverse engineering our own cognition in machines. I am wondering if there is any insight on the extent to which we already program evolutionary abilities into our machines. If they are able to recombine abilities, traits, or preferences, will they in turn become better adapted to their shared social environment with humans? Should we be encoding these sorts of mechanisms into machines to understand ourselves better, or do we risk encountering dangerous traits such as violence when we do not have total control of our machine’s changing capacities? Could evolution-capable machines grow a similar aversion to us as we have for the sick?
DeleteThat's a really interesting point Evelyn! It makes me wonder if the evolutionary process could be considered (very abstractly) somewhat like supervised learning. In evolution, specific genes will persist throughout time if they are advantageous for members of a species' survival and reproduction. Could we compare this to supervised learning where the input is a specific gene and the feedback is given by whether the organism survived/reproduced or not?
DeleteLucie, I really like your comparison of supervised learning to the evolutionary process. I think it would work to make your comparison and it might explain the reason for certain evolutionary traits if a computation could reverse engineer the adaptation process. However, with supervised learning, there is the limitation of only predicting evolutionary processes that have already occurred because supervised learning must learn from already existing data. I wonder if an unsupervised learning program would work better to include future adaptations as they occur. It would still compare evolution to a computation, but it would also be an open or malleable algorithm.
DeleteEvolutionary traits are often thought of as advantageous, where a trait develops and persists in a population because it provides protection or fitness to avoid death. As discussed in the article, both high frequency but low-impact problems (mosquitos) and low-frequency, high impact adaptive problems (murderers). Extending this to evolutionary psychology, evolution can be used to explain mechanisms of human behavior like courtship tendencies or social practices. This article reminded me of another class I am taking on decision making, and we talked about how impulsive choice making (impulsivity) is a trait that is discussed in psychology as being maladaptive, where it can lead to poor decision making, risk for addiction, impairment in learning, and so on. Yet, despite this maladaptively, impulsivity persists today. Which raises the question of if there are situations where impulsivity was/is advantageous. I think this example highlights how psychological research can be misguided by preconceived ideas of what is “advantageous” or not. Impulsivity is characterized as bad, but not a lot of research considers how it can be an advantage and why we still retain this trait today.
ReplyDeleteI found your connection quite interesting, Leah. I also agree that what is considered advantageous can be misguided or incorrect in certain situations. Additionally, I think that what is considered advantageous can quickly change with the societal and global situation. For example, ADHD is considered a maladaptive disorder (which is similar to your impulsivity example) for todays society, but there are circumstances in which the function of an ADHD brain can produce output faster, or that is more creative or unique than a ‘typical’ brain. Following from this, I believe it depends on ‘the eyes of the beholder’ who determines whether a trait is advantageous or not, and in such cases, it is difficult to arrive at a concordant conclusion for the evolutionary adaptiveness of developments that may have both positive and negative traits associated with it.
DeleteI would like to continue expanding on both your thoughts. Indeed, evolutionary psychology argues that the abilities that beings have from birth, without having to learn what and how to achieve them, are inborn. Hence, they are genetically encoded, generally as a result of an evolutionary benefit imparted on their predecessors. However, evolution is "lazy." Rather than precoding a learnable behavioural pattern genetically, it is more dependable, economical, and adaptable to create a capacity for learning all these patterns. I think that the paper doesn’t necessarily provide the origins and adaptive advantage of cognitive capacities because, I would argue, most of the things we know and most of the way that we are is not due to our genetics or our inborn features. Rather, it is due to our environment and the epigenetic side of things. Taking your examples, I think one isn’t born impulsive. Instead, I think that prior trauma or needs might make one person more impulsive than another. In another context, many organisms learn to “do the right thing with the right kind of thing.” Maybe, in their environment being impulsive is adaptive so they need to learn to evolve this way.
DeleteLeah, I would like to expand on your comment about us labeling traits as "advantageous" or not. I have thought of this in relation to the Big 5 personality traits. They are traits that are stable over a lifetime and preceded by temperament, indicating that they are certainly biologically grounded.
DeletePeople who are introverted often want to be more extroverted. People who are disagreeable often want to be more agreeable. People who are high in neuroticism often want to be low and so on. This is the tendency you were talking about to label things as "advantageous", when in reality, given that these traits are on a continuum, are stable, and all exist today, indicates that they all seem to be viable. This leads me to think that we have evolved to operate in certain niches. For example, an introvert may see extroversion as more advantageous, however, the introvert is more fit for having a solitary job such as accounting whereas an extrovert would not thrive in a solitary environment. There is likely a niche for every type of personality profile in the world today, which is partly why they are still around. If one trait was truly less advantageous then another, you would think it would disappear after a while.
Leah, I think you bring up a very good point — why is a trait considered maladaptive or not advantageous still in our genetic code? You’re right in saying that there is very much a negative connotation associated with impulsivity with regards to decision making, but there must have been a reason for the trait to be so prevalent if it is still around today. If evolution works in the way we think it is supposed to, this trait should have been weeded out ages ago. Laurier brings up something that I have been thinking about a lot, especially in this course: many things are on a continuum. No one is 100% an introvert or 100% agreeable, even if they can be close to the extremes of the continuum.
DeleteA lot of the papers we read (and not just for this class) tend to argue very strongly for an idea. Some acknowledge the criticisms of the theories brought up, but most criticisms or objections are refuted. I think that taking a more holistic approach and accepting that many theories can be partially correct at the same time would be beneficial. This paper discusses how some scientists use evolutionary psychology in their research in order to unify social and behavioral sciences with other life sciences. Theoretically, I believe that this is a good idea, or at least a good stepping stone, but in order for us to truly blend the sciences, I think we should be taking a more nuanced approach. For impulsivity to still be around, there must be other, less black-and-white definitions and interpretations of “advantageous.”
While reading this thread, I do have to say that I strongly agree that using evolutionary psychology is definitely a great step in the right direction in helping us understand the “why” being can do the thing they do (part of the easy problem). I definitely opens a window to better understanding certain behaviour and traits in humans that can be explained through evolution. I really agree with the last point made by Emma where she mentions that in taking a more holistic approach would be rather beneficial. In the case of the impulsive decision making in the thread, I would argue that having such impulsivity can also be rather seen as someone being quick to a decision rather than being impulsive. While the thought process to the decision making might not seem as thorough, it may be that this trait remained because it might have been useful for certain situations.
DeleteHowever, as previously mentions by Melissa, I also believe that such cognitive capacities are indeed influenced and can be greatly affected by the environment one is raised it and situation lived by each individual. Each situation that one may live through will elicit for you to behave a certain way in order to cope/deal/survive through the situation in question. In that case, such traits seen as “maladaptive” could actually be argued to actually be adaptive to the situation lived through for that individual. Therefore, I believe that by having a bit of both theories it could be explained that certain genetic disposition + certain satiations = elicit specific traits in an individual.
An interesting connection between this text and our very first reading can be made with the following excerpt : When the potential solutions to a given adaptative problem are numerous and their relative merits complex, evolutionary end states may be too difficult to indentify intuitively. In such computationally complex situations, simulations and modelling can be invaluable tools.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was really interesting that the authors highlighted the relevance of using computational simulations to find which design features of a psychological mechanism are best equippped to solve a given adaptive problem. It also made me realize that there are probably many complex psychological mechanisms that we are unaware of because of how difficult they are to indentify. This has many implications for our discussion on turing machines. I think that any shortcomings in a turing machine (say, if it doesn't pass the turing test) might point us in the direction of certain design features that we have yet to identify. In light of this, the feedback loops between evolutionary psychology research and computational simulations of human behaviour will probably lead to really interesting discoveries in both fields.
I agree that this is a very interesting point. It also relate to something that was mentioned at the beginning of this article: the fact that, ironically, humans "possess evolved cognitive mechanisms that impede an accurate understanding of the logic of evolutionary theory". This (apart from being a super interesting observation) means that to properly understand evolution, we need to use computational models as a proxy for our mind (which can only grasp a limited amount of complexity).
DeleteOf course, this does not mean that evolution is computational, and anybody can intuitively understand that! Therefore, this could be an interesting analogy to explain the fact that even thought we need to use computational simulation to understand our own mind, it doesn't mean that the mind is computational.
The part of the article that talks about adaptive problems raises questions on the extent to which these problems have driven the evolution of adaptations, and which types of problems contribute to this evolution the most. It’s postulated that the magnitude of the problem on survival and the frequency of the problem is what helps us assign a degree of importance to it. This makes me wonder if the answer to the “why” problem could be related to the fact that feeling helps us solve problems as it helps us detect/discern the severity of situations? And this helps us to respond appropriately and adapt to our environment?
ReplyDeleteWhat a great insight!
DeleteAssigning something a degree of importance involves comparison between the associated feelings of two problems and if the correct value judgment is a difference between life and death, then this definitely could explain at least partly the “why” problem of consciousness.
It is interesting to see how evolutionary psychology tries to poke a hole in explaining the easy problem -- why we do what we do -- by tracing everything back to sex/fear, or survival of the fittest. However, it could be a problem that evolution is trying to fit everything in this box -- everything can be explained without falsifiability -- a "just-so" story in a way comparable to Freud's psychoanalysis. Indeed, I would not deny it provides some insights to certain behaviors in the easy problem -- but it still leaves room for some other behaviors such as using language.
ReplyDeleteAnother problem of evolutionary psychology, as mentioned by professor Harnad, is the fact that it treats every behavior that is the result of learning as a direct product of evolution (sex/fear). In the context of the specific trait such as altruistic behavior, evolutionary explanation works by referring to reciprocity and survival; Yet, in the context of language, evolution fails to explain the reason why it develops by directly using sex/fear explanation. In fact, our learning capacity is a trait that can be explained by evolution -- the lazy evolution develops the learning capacity that allows us to learn different languages. However, the reason why humans have language still remains a mystery and cannot be directly explained by evolution. Then, can we understand the reason why we developed language? Or, does it matter if we don't?
Xingti, I find your last point really interesting - that humans have spoken language at all... because many animals do have ways to communicate with eachother, but not to the same extent or with the same nuance as us humans believe ourselves to be able to. However, while I do believe that language gives us a huge evolutionary advantage, the part that I am curious about is also, why us? What part of our environment/sex/fear pushed us to be able to develop this ability? Or perhaps it was not a "direct product of evolution", as Professor Harnad outlined as an issue with evolutionary psychology, but instead a by-product of another evolutionary development, possibly similar to music and pattern recognition.
DeleteXingti, I do tend to agree that a questionable number of theories can fit under the evolutionary psychology umbrella, perhaps calling into question its status as a rigorous science. However, I think this article attempted to explain away these doubts, clarifying that evolutionary can not just be the description of theories. Theories may be constructed, but only to serve as inspiration for research that may confirm it. I by no means think evolutionary psychology can describe every “why” question surrounding the development of language, but I disagree that it “fails to explain [any] reason why language develops”. There are certain evolutionary explanations for language development, such as the sharing of cultural survival knowledge. It would certainly help one’s fitness to be told thorough directions to a good source of food when resources are rare. Additionally, descriptions of one’s predators can inform one of what to be wary of before the threat is actually encountered, increasing fitness by avoidance of predation. You may counter that many of these problems can be solved without language, but you cannot deny that reducing ambiguity through formal language would certainly improve the speed of knowledge transference. Any individual with language ability would outperform and out survive those who lacked it. Nevertheless, although evolutionary psychology may provide some suggestions to “why” language developed, it cannot reveal “how” it developed, which is a crucial part of understanding the easy question of consciousness.
DeleteI am a bit confused by ‘proximal’ and ‘distal’ causes. If I understand correctly, distal causes are the explanations for why, evolutionarily, we find certain stimuli more appealing or repulsive than others. So, distal causes are linked to the original environment, which caused the gene to appear in the first place. Proximal causes, on the other hand, are the explanations for why we currently, psychologically, find certain things more appealing than others, and that is linked to the current environment. For example, the distal cause for why sweet food is appealing is because it provides energy, which was essential in the original environment. The proximal cause would be that it tastes good and can be seen as a reward (I’m not sure about that, which is why I’m finding it confusing).
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned in the reading, evolutionary and sociocultural hypotheses can clash if their proximal causes contradict each other. Is that what happens when these two fields try to explain learning and language capacities in humans?
Shandra, you seem to have a pretty good grasp of proximal and distal causes when I look at your skywriting, so this is an attempt to get at your confusion. I wouldn't say genes "appeared" in the context of distal causes and evolution; evolution occurs through natural selection, a mechanism that selects among random mutations in the gene pool. The distal causes are part of this evolutionary history, factors in the environment leading to the human species acquiring an appeal to sweet food rather than repulsion. e.g) sweet things have calories, and energy source was scarce during evolution.
DeleteProximal causes can simply be the existence of something sweet in the environment, your level of hunger, your physiological state of lacking energy, or you eat the chocolate because you as an individual like sweet things, because it tastes good. In a psychology lab, researchers may manipulate variables like color to make chocolate more or less appealing to the test participant, and the manipulation would also be a proximal cause. Sociocultural factors could also influence an individual's food preference.
If the reward part is confusing, in my opinion you can forget about the word "reward". The individual does not have to consciously form a statement like 'this is rewarding for my brain and give me calories'.
From my understanding, evolutionary psychology is the idea or framework of studying human behavior by learning how these behaviors were evolved. The central idea of evolutionary psychology is by asking Darwinian questions based on the natural selection theory to study the basic aspect of human behavior and why this behavior pattern would have evolved in the first place. Evolutionary psychology holds the view that the physical configuration of our brain is the product of natural selection, implying that human cognitive processes within our brain are part of the selection process, and the genes assigned to that physical configuration were selected because they allow for survival. After reading this article, I feel like instead of trying to approach the ‘hard problem’ scientifically, the evolutionary psychology approach introduced in this article focuses more on providing an angle that could combine both the biological and environmental aspects when answering the why question. Furthermore, standing on the natural selection viewpoint, we could ask questions covering every fundamental aspect of human behavior. In the framework of evolutionary psychology, we are trying to answer why we feel the way we do in a certain situation, which is an adaptive mechanism that could trace back to certain selection pressure. The way I understand that evolution is ‘lazy’ is that we were all molded into the shape we are not for a conscious design reason but for a reason dictated by the organisms’ ability to survive and reproduce, and if an adaptation or mutation weren’t beneficial, then the organisms would disappear: It the instinct to survive and reproduce shapes human behavior.
ReplyDeleteI think the inclusion of the paper on ancestral roots of racial prejudice ties quite closely to the reading on Perceptual Categorization. The researchers suggest that racial prejudice stems from ancestral groupings due to lack of exposure to those of other races. They proposed that “prejudices [arose] as nonfunctional outputs of adaptations designed to track coalition or group membership” and that “out-groups would have been statistically associated with greater threat than in-groups”. This means that out-group / in-group categorization is learned and is reinforced based on the risks associated with the lack of these categories (ancestrally!).
ReplyDeleteJust as was previously discussed during Categorical Perception, this suggests categories can be modified and “unlearned” if people learn to distinguish others based on another set of learned features.
I am interested in learning how researchers manage external validity in regards to cognitive behavioural studies. For example, all environments are not equal for species. In light of evolutionary biology, the environment of the animal is highly influential on certain behaviours. If we are to translate behaviours to cognitive processes in order to make assumptions about the brain and cognition as a whole, it would be hard to control for environment. Environment in a naturalistic study would be more valid and perhaps the common traits can then be attributed to the behaviours and in turn the cognitive processes behind them. Then, you would have a linkage between the effects of environment on cognitive processes. In a very simplistic and hypothetical example, imagine penguin hunting behaviour. Reluctance in Adelie penguins has been observed when going into the water. They jostle each other until one falls in and then they wait to see if there are any predators to go after that first penguin. However, imagine if on the other side of Antarctica the presence of penguin predators was very low. The penguins may not demonstrate this behaviour then as it is not necessary for survival. Thus, this example of social learning would not be present in one population and we would be unable to attribute the behaviour to a cognitive capacity. Essentially, my point is there are external factors that determine the initiation of a behaviour, and if that behaviour is not present, how do we know whether it is purely learned or innate but dormant?
ReplyDeleteLewis et., al’s paper in evolutionary psychology thoroughly described the steps they suggest for researcher when bringing evolutionary perspective to psychology and behavioral science research. Specifically, they mentioned “certain cognitive mechanisms that impede an accurate understanding of the logic of the evolutionary theory” (p.353), which brought me to think about psychiatric disorders with a genetic cause that has maladaptive behavior but yet evolved. Although psychiatry researchers have being look for an answer for this question for years, it suggests that one of the reasons (and controversially speaking) might be there’re two sides of the disease, i.e., evidence showed that certain psychiatric disorder is associated with certain talents (creativity, being persistent, etc.). Therefore, from the collective perspective, the psychiatric genes might contribute to the diversity of the human gene pool and thus advantageous for species’ survival.
ReplyDelete