Evolutionary Psychology

The concept of general intelligence as measured by standard IQ tests has always been a difficult fit for evolutionary psychology. This paper argues that intelligence is a set of domain general abilities which was not designed to solve any specific problem
from the human evolutionary past. Rather, general intelligence equips humans to make mental models of the environment and to develop action plans based on these models. It is thus ideally suited to solve evolutionarily ancient problems of survival and
reproduction, but also to solve novel problems and to create ideologies (e.g., Marxism) that guide and rationalize behavior. In the human Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA), these action plans evolved as means of achieving affective states, such as assuaging hunger, achieving social status, or other evolved goal states. Moreover, it is argued that the most important mechanism underlying general intelligence, the executive processes of working memory, is not tied to regularities in the EEA.

Este es realmente un libro fascinante una vez que se han leído las primeras páginas y entendido el esquema del código de colores, nos presenta, en increíble detalle un modelo de desarrollo espiral que nos ayuda a ver al mundo de una forma completamente diferente. Beck y Cowan se refieren a estos patrones de pensamiento como vMemes. El concepto de vMeme fue acuñado haciendo un paralelo con los Genes. Los genes del ser humano están estrechamente vinculados con su DNA, de igual forma podemos hablar que en los grupos humanos existen vMemes los cuales a su vez definen un DNA social. Lo que nos divide en la sociedad, no son nuestros genes, sino nuestros vMemes. Nos parecemos diferentes debido a nuestros genes; Pensamos y actuamos diferente debido a nuestros vMemes. Se puede pensar en los vMemes como amplios paradigmas orientadores, un esquema a través del cual interpretamos el mundo. Estos vMemes se dividen en ocho niveles, con la posibilidad de que unos más avanzados estén emergiendo en este preciso momento. A su vez, cada nivel tiene fases de entrada, clímax y declive.

Understanding Consciousness, second edition provides a unique survey and evaluation of consciousness studies, along with an original analysis of consciousness that combines scientific findings, philosophy and common sense.

Building on the widely praised first edition of the book, this new edition adds fresh research, and deepens the original analysis in a way that reflects some of the fundamental changes in the understanding of consciousness that have taken place over the last ten years.

The book is divided into three parts; Part I surveys current theories of consciousness, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses. Part II reconstructs an understanding of consciousness from first principles, starting with its phenomenology, and leading to a closer examination of how conscious experience relates to the world described by physics and information processing in the brain. Finally, Part III deals with fundamental issues such as what consciousness is and does, and how it fits into the evolving universe. As the structure of the book moves from a basic overview of the field to a successively deeper analysis, it can be used both for those new to the subject and for more established researchers.

Understanding Consciousness tells a story with a beginning, middle and end in a way that integrates the philosophy of consciousness with the science. Overall, the book provides a unique perspective on how to address the problems of consciousness and as such will be of great interest to psychologists, philosophers, neuroscientists and other professionals concerned with mind/body relationships, and all who are interested in this subject.

As hundreds of so-called "psychotherapies" have been foisted onto the public, all claiming to treat "mental illness," newer understandings of how the human brain actually works and the processes which drive the formations of mentation that we refer to as "the mind," demand a reassessment of what exactly we are referring to by the term "mental illness" and what kinds of intervention would be feasible in both the prevention of and recovery from cognitive and behavioral disorder. A fundamental process in the formation of an individual's mentation is the associations of experience. These associations not only account for constructive behavior, but can also lead to deleterious or negative behavior, suggesting that some associations are negative and therefore the negative behavior can be remolded through contrasting positive associations; however, to understand what this really means and how it works, we must start at the beginning and define what exactly is this negative behavior that we refer to by the term "mental illness." One of the most important axioms of life so simply but profoundly phrased by Oscar Wilde, is that "the truth is rarely pure and NEVER simple" (emphasis mine). Nothing can ever be explained by simple sound bites – oversimplification is just another word for misrepresentation – so to understand, we must truly engage the subject, and to engage the subject, we must first and foremost clearly define what it is that we are seeking to understand. In this case, it demands that we understand what exactly is mental illness.

The enigmatic appeal of submission in sexual masochism is a phenomenon that calls for an explanation: What makes receiving pain during sex so appealing? This appeal can be explained conceptually, phenomenologically, and biochemically as the motivation to reach the highly pleasurable psycho-physical altered state called 'subspace'. Although the term subspace is used in the context of sex, parallels can be drawn between subspace and another phenomenon: a psycho-physical altered state that can occur during natural and undisturbed birth. I hypothesize that the ability (or even the desire) to reach pain-related altered states in sexual masochism has roots in a crucial evolutionary advantage that comes into play during childbirth, consistent with recent findings that sexual masochists are generally psychologically healthy. Moreover, I contend that from an evolutionary perspective, sexual masochism may even confer adaptive advantages, consistent with evolutionary explanations for the tendency toward submission in conjunction with pain in the context of female reproductive responses such as mating and childbirth.

This book argues that thinking is bounded by neither the brain nor the skin of an organism. Cognitive systems function through integration of neural and bodily functions with the functions of representational vehicles. The integrationist position offers a fresh contribution to the emerging embodied and embedded approach to the study of mind.

Why are people interested in money? Specifically, what could be the biological basis for the extraordinary incentive and reinforcing power of money, which seems to be unique to the human species? We identify two ways in which a commodity which is of no biological significance in itself can become a strong motivator. The first is if it is used as a tool, and by a metaphorical extension this is often applied to money: it is used instrumentally, in order to obtain biologically relevant incentives. Second, substances can be strong motivators because they imitate the action of natural incentives but do not produce the fitness gains for which those incentives are instinctively sought. The classic examples of this process are psychoactive drugs, but we argue that the drug concept can also be extended metaphorically to provide an account of money motivation. From a review of theoretical and empirical literature about money, we conclude that (i) there are a number of phenomena that cannot be accounted for by a pure Tool Theory of money motivation; (ii) supplementing Tool Theory with a Drug Theory enables the anomalous phenomena to be explained; and (iii) the human instincts that, according to a Drug Theory, money parasitizes include trading (derived from reciprocal altruism) and object play.

The article I will present below is the newest and most advanced study proving the commonality of Turkish and Sumerian in terms of words, morphology and grammar. Written by a Russian author Kurmaev in 2019. Norm Kisamov translated it from Russian to English and then sent to me. "Between 1914-1915, the German Sumerologist Fritz Hommel compared 200 Turkish-Sumerian words that matched in meaning and phonetics, and wrote an article for a book called "Sumerian is Turkish". However, the article was not published because of the intervening World War I, perhaps because of the racism that started later. A manuscript copy of the article still exists" (1). Noah Kramer, in his publication "Sumerians, Their History, Culture and Character", discussed the Sumerian-Turkish relationship extensively in 1963 (2). Vecihe Hatiboğlu, Osman Nedim Tuna and Olcas Sülaymanov wrote works on the same subject (3). Osman Nedim Tuna published 165 common Sumerian Turkish words (4). Then he increased the number of words. Suleymanov showed 60 common Turkish-Sumerian words only on the subjects of "man, nature and faith" (5). Muazzez İlmiye Çığ, in her book "Sümerler Türklerin Bir Koludur", discussed this relationship extensively and gave many examples of words (1). The most comprehensive Sumerian-Turkish common words list that I have read so far is Polat Kaya's mini dictionary published in English (6). At the end of the article, I will also give many examples from that list.

“Özgünlük” ve “yeni”nin sürekli övüldüğü bir çağda, detaylarda ne kadar ayrışsak da, temelde birbirimize çok benziyoruz. Sadece birbirimize benzemekle kalmıyoruz; bizden önceki nesillerden de o kadar farklı değiliz. Teknolojinin ve modernitenin getirdiği tüm yeni imkânlara rağmen birçok alışkanlığımızdan vazgeçemiyoruz. Benzer durumlarda benzer tepkiler gösteriyor, âdeta ezbere yaşıyoruz. Ve bunu değişmediğimizin pek de farkında olmadan yapıyoruz.

Gözlemlemenin, sorgulamanın, tutarlı fikirler geliştirmenin sancılı sürecine katlanmaktansa reklamvari sloganlarla özgünlüğü yakalayabileceğimizi sanıyoruz. Ve sonunda her tembel öğrenci gibi sınıfta kaldığımızda hocayı suçluyoruz.

İşte Ezbere Yaşayanlar, bir türlü vazgeçemediğimiz alışkanlıklarımızın tarihî arka planıyla birlikte antropolojik, sosyolojik ve psikolojik kökenlerini irdeliyor.

Bizim gibi olmayanlara neden tahammül edemiyor, yabancıdan ve farklıdan neden korkuyoruz? İnsanları niçin konuşma tarzına göre yargılıyor, argo kullananlara ya da aksanlı konuşanlara niçin yukarıdan bakıyoruz? Şu rasyonalite çağında neden hediye alıyoruz ve birbirimize bir şeyler ısmarlıyoruz? Niçin dedikodu yapmaktan vazgeçemiyoruz? Son elli yılda birçok hak edindikleri halde kadınlar neden erkeklerden farklı meslekler tercih etmekte ısrar ediyor? Bunca bilimsel gelişmeye rağmen neden hâlâ fala ve büyüye inanıyoruz?

Yukarıdaki sorulara cevap ararken anekdot denizinde boğulmadan diyardan diyara koşup çağdan çağa savrulacağız. Taş Çağı’ndan modern zamanlara, Kalahari Çölü’nden Trobriand Adaları’na, Güney Sudan’dan Alp Dağları’na, Çin’den Aztek diyarlarına keyifli bir yolculuğa çıkmaya, Evliya Çelebi’den Torquemada’ya, James Cook’tan Şamhat’a, Kraliçe Njinga’dan İmparatoriçe İrene’ye, konuşan şempanzelerden Akıllı At Hans’a, yamyamlardan hadımlara birçok ilginç karakterle tanışmaya hazır mısınız?
Ezbere Yaşayanlar’da iki yüz bin yıllık insanlık mirasının ortaya koyduğu birbirinden değişik toplum ve kültüre yönelerek davranışlarımızı şekillendiren ana etmenleri inceleyecek; kültürle biyoloji, geçmişle gelecek, gelenekle yenilik arasındaki çekişmeyi merkeze alarak, şartların alışkanlıklarımızı ne noktaya kadar değiştirebildiğini tetkik edecek ve doğamıza ne kadar hükmedebildiğimizi göreceğiz.

There is hardly a professional development seminar nowadays in which you won’t come across leadership styles in one way or another. Leadership is not something that is merely associated with politics, but permeates all areas of our lives, ranging from school and work to spiritual guidance and parenting.

In its most simplified version leadership styles are reduced to one-dimension that could simply be labelled “loose” vs “tight” (cf. Gelfand 2011) in culture studies, or liberal vs conservative in politics (cf. Tuschman 2013)

Le principali tematiche che oggi dominano il dibattito psicologico e neuroscientifico sulle emozioni hanno in realtà una storia che troppo spesso è stata dimenticata o semplicemente strumentalizzata ma che, adeguatamente conosciuta, può offrire elementi utili a fare chiarezza anche sugli aspetti più problematici e controversi delle teorie contemporanee. Dalla seconda metà del XIX secolo, infatti, Charles Darwin, William James, John Dewey e George H. Mead delinearono un ideale campo da gioco in cui entrano in scena oggi tutte le opzioni possibili riguardo alle indagini sull'universalità o meno delle emozioni, sulla loro natura discreta o continua, sulla loro dimensione corporea e sulla loro funzione sociale e comunicativa. Lungi dal voler promuovere l'idea che il dibattito sulle emozioni non sia altro che una glossa in nota a Darwin o che dal tempo dei pragmatisti ad oggi non sia cambiato nulla, tale volume intende proporre un'antologia di testi che, riconoscendo ai nomi qui trattati il ruolo di padrini delle principali posizioni teoriche, introduca il lettore nell'ampio e vivo dibattito che caratterizzò la nascita dello studio sperimentale delle emozioni.

The effect of sensory input on hormones is essential to any explanation of mammalian behavior, including aspects of physical attraction. The chemical signals we send have direct and developmental effects on hormone levels in other people. Since we don t know either if, or how, visual cues might have direct and developmental effects on hormone levels in other people, the biological basis for the development of visually perceived human physical attraction is currently somewhat questionable. In contrast, the biological basis for the development of physical attraction based on chemical signals is well detailed.

We discuss preliminary results from two experiments and put forth the notion that the development of sensory systems might be more geared towards discerning differences rather than for spotting similarities. We present the possibility that the necessity to spot differences might have evolved to ensure the survival of the organism, which suggests numerous other experiments to assess the response of participants to various stimuli. We consider our present state of affairs, wherein the need is to thrive and not merely survive, which requires us to spot similarities around us. We provide some suggestions on how this attribute can be developed, which includes mathematical education. We conclude with an alternate measure for intelligence, termed the Involvement Quotient (also, IQ), which gauges the level of involvement of the sense organs to whatever is happening around the individual.

Human communication can be characterized in terms of game theory as competing motivations in a social game in which one person desires “winning” in terms of obtaining compliance. Another theory, signal-detection theory posits that decision making takes place on a continuum of uncertainty in which many decision are made with complete certainty while others have higher levels of ambiguity and stress. The purpose of this case study is to explore the analysis of conflict escalation by a police detective with experience in domestic violence cases viewed a videotaped session depicting marital conflict in which a wife comes home after a long day at work only to criticize her partner for violating expectations of a good meal. The police detective was asked to stop the video at any time and to write down the verbal and nonverbal (NV) signals that people put out to indicate that conflict is escalating and that they may lash out. These signals are sometimes referred to as costly signals, a concept from evolutionary biology. A content analysis was done of verbal and nonverbal cues as well as the timing of the signals in terms of how often they were noticed. The case study presents a summary of the verbal (e.g., sarcasm) and nonverbal codes (e.g., contempt, breathing) that the detective noticed. Since the detective has expertise with conflict escalation, we argue that this case study sets up a standard of comparison for future research with peoples with various degrees of abuse in their abuse ranging from those who have suffered a great deal of verbal and physical abuse to those who have very little experience with coercive conflict tactics. Results are discussed in terms of game and signal detection theories from an evolutionary perspective.

Indirect reciprocity is an important mechanism for promoting cooperation among self-interested agents. Simplified, it means you help me, therefore somebody else will help you (in contrast to direct reciprocity: you help me, therefore I will help you). Indirect reciprocity can be achieved via reputation and norms. Strategies, such as the so-called leading eight, relying on these principles can maintain high levels of cooperation and remain stable against invasion, even in the presence of errors. However, this is only the case if the reputation of an agent is modeled as a shared public opinion. If agents have private opinions and hence can disagree if somebody is good or bad, even rare errors can cause cooperation to break apart. We show that most strategies can overcome the private assessment problem by applying pleasing. A pleasing agent acts in accordance with others' expectations of their behavior (i.e. pleasing them) instead of being guided by their own, private assessment. As such, a pleasing agent can achieve better reputations than previously considered strategies when there is disagreement in the population. Pleasing is effective even if only the opinions of few other individuals are considered and when it bears additional costs. Finally, through a more exhaustive analysis of the parameters' space than previous studies, we show that some of the leading eight still function under private assessment, i.e. that cooperation rates are well above an objective baseline. Yet, pleasing strategies supersede formerly described ones and enhance cooperation.

The objective of the current research was to find out whether the tendency of individuals to manifest an individualistic behaviour is based on natural, i.e. genetic factors, or on culturally learned behavioural models. The subjects of the study were students in economic sciences after their graduation, the research being a follow-up of a previous research conducted on Romanian students right after their enrolment, using the Trompenaars' and Hampden-Turner's matrix centred on seven cultural dimensions, expressed as couples of opposing attitudinal dispositions. The results of the current research seem to validate the hypothesis according to which individualism, defined as the tendency to be self-oriented is rather culturally construed and learned than genetically determined.

Term paper for Evolution and the Mind class, taught by Dr. Pieter Lemmens, which I co-authored with Frederik Walter and two other students who wish to remain anonymous. We are a philosopher, a linguist, a neurophysiologist and a scholar of artificial intelligence, and we look at the notion of "the gap" from these different perspectives, that is, the question of what is it that truly sets humans apart from other species and makes them unique -- or if there even is such a thing.
Although we all contributed ideas in roughly equal proportions, most of the writing was done by Walter.

Compared to the original version, apart from anonymizing two co-authors at their request, I edited the layout considerably, as well as reformatting the references and rewriting a small number of sentences to make them flow slightly better.

ERRATUM: Alfred Russell Wallace's name is misspelled in the bibliography.

If you find any other ERRATA, please let me know!

... a typical naive set of assumptions about "group oriented" cultures it that the participants within them are basically altruistic, self-effacing, self-sacrificing and sociable. A society of such individuals should exhibit the very best of human civilization working in equitable, democratic communities. By contrast, those from individualistic cultures should be cold, grasping, selfish, egotistical and almost incapable of the cooperation demanded by a civil society. Indeed, a society of individualists, by this stereotype would be a dog eat dog affair, dedicated to conflict, riven with disloyalty and betrayal, forever failing to build a stable and humanistic community.

In humans, socio-environmental cues play an important role in determining adaptive psychophysiological states and behaviours. In sport and exercise, cues to cohesive groups and close, supportive relationships are ubiquitous, possibly because of their effects on neurobiological mechanisms underlying physical performance. Clinical research has shown that the presence of supportive others can lead to reductions in perceptions of pain, while research from sport and exercise science has shown that pain and physical fatigue occupy ranges on a single spectrum of physical discomfort, which works to regulate outputs during strenuous physical exertion. Given the similar neurobiological underpinnings of pain and fatigue, the involvement of both in the self-regulation of strenuous physical outputs, and the effects of social support on perceptions of pain and neurophysiological stress responses more generally, we hypothesised that perceptions of social support affect outputs during strenuous physical exercise by altering activity in self-regulatory mechanisms involved in perceptions of pain and fatigue. We used a between-subjects experimental design to test this hypothesis, varying participants' social support and measuring physical outputs and perceptions of physical discomfort and exertion during a series of maximum-effort cycling bouts. Analyses showed that participants in the social support condition produced greater initial outputs and steeper declines over time, compared to controls. This effect was moderated by participant neuroticism; an important predictor of how individuals react to social support. We discuss these findings in terms of proposed causal mechanisms linking supportive, cohesive social environments with self-regulation and physical performance.

Feeding neophobia represents a cautious behavior towards unknown food. Although men and women show behavioral differences, relating feeding neophobia data on neophobic response are controversial. In this study, in order to investigating gender differences, 266 individuals were tested on a two food choosing task between a familiar and an unfamiliar food items, and also were required to fill in a food neophobia scale. Results indicate that women are more neophobic than men confirming previous research data on feeding behavior. This might be related to females' role to selecting and preparing food in the family context.

The longstanding philosophical discussions about the human reason and the rationality in anthropology have paradoxically revealed the ubiquity of irrationality in the human life. Findings in evolutionary psychology and cognitive science are making it increasingly evident that the human mind has not been evolved for rational thinking in traditional sense. The haphazard evolution of the human mind as a ‘kludge’ can explain why the dichotomy of rationality/irrationality is not a genuine matter in epistemology. Consulting recent studies on the human mind and communication, this paper argues that the actual criterion of epistemological justification is cognitive relevance rather than rationality. In this respect, even the cross-culturally recurrent patterns of ‘irrational’ beliefs in supernatural agents can be naturally generated and distributed by the relevance-driven cognition and communication. Ideas and hypotheses to which this paper consistently refers are mainly those of the cognitive science of religion including the epidemiology of representations, the HADD, and the MCI-concepts.

In "Against Literary Darwinism," Jonathan Kramnick attacks a straw man version of literary Darwinism. His conceptual framework implies that biology is restricted to a few modular cognitive processes, like those for the autonomic nervous system, and that everything else in human experience derives from "culture" and "history." That false dichotomy displays a shallow understanding of biocultural theory, and indeed Kramnick's essay is generally under-informed and out of date.

Following the death of 17-year-old Leelah Alcorn, a transgender teen who committed suicide after forced “conversion therapy,” President Barack Obama called for a nationwide ban on psychotherapy aimed at changing sexual orientation or gender identity. The administration argued that because conversion therapy causes substantial psychological harm to minors, it is neither medically nor ethically appropriate. We fully agree with the President and believe that this is a step in the right direction. Of course, in addition to being unsafe as well as ethically unsound, current conversion therapy approaches aren’t actually effective at doing what they claim to do – changing sexual orientation. But we also worry that this may be a short-term legislative solution to what is really a conceptual problem. The question we ought to be asking is “what will happen if and when scientists do end up developing safe and effective technologies that can alter sexual orientation?”

Quali sono le implicazioni dell’evoluzionismo per l’etica? Il volume esplora la relazione tra l’evoluzionismo e la riflessione filosofica sull’etica, ricostruendo e facendo il punto su un dibattito tutt’ora in corso. In particolare, l’evoluzionismo viene preso in considerazione nelle varie declinazioni che esso ha attraversato, ossia a partire dalla formulazione originaria di Darwin, a quella della Sintesi moderna, fino ai suoi sviluppi più recenti. Ciò che si intende mostrare è che, sebbene rendere conto dell’etica in termini evolutivi sia spesso risultata un’operazione controversa, indagare la natura dell’etica a partire dalle sue basi biologiche, comprendere la sua origine e la sua evoluzione è un passo fondamentale per elaborare nuove e più proficue prospettive etiche e filosofiche.