Evolutionary Psychology

Crime rates dropped unexpectedly and dramatically in the 1990s. Chapter One describes this drop, and evaluates previous explanations for the decline. A theoretical and empirical link between crime and risk taking at the individual level is discussed, as is the methodology of a study to test whether such a link is observed at the aggregate level. Chapter Two describes the results of the study investigating the relationship of crime and risk taking at the aggregate level. Results indicate, for most measures, that a decline in non-criminal risky ...

Empathy shapes the landscape of our social lives. It motivates prosocial and caregiving behaviors, plays a role in inhibiting aggression, and facilitates cooperation between members of a similar social group. Thus, empathy is often conceived as a driving motivation of moral behavior and justice, and as such, everyone would think that it should be cultivated. However, the relationships between empathy, morality, and justice are complex. We begin by explaining what the notion of empathy encompasses and then argue how sensitivity to others' needs has evolved in the context of parental care and group living. Next, we examine the multiple physiological, hormonal, and neural systems supporting empathy and its functions. One troubling but important corollary of this neuro-evolutionary model is that empathy produces social preferences that can conflict with fairness and justice. An understanding of the factors that mold our emotional response and caring motivation for others helps provide organizational principles and ultimately guides decisionmaking in medical ethics.

Combining psychological and anthropological work indicates that sleep, dreaming, and the imagination are involved in regulating mood and updating individual and collective knowledge. Psychologists often implicitly assume that all dreamers share their naturalistic model of dreaming while ethnographers often emphasize the spiritual explanations of dreaming inherent in the worldviews of their hosts. Applying cognitive and evolutionary theories of religion to the ethnography of dreaming and the imagination suggests that these capacities have adaptive value for learning, emotional adjustment, and the flow, revivification, and recalibration of knowledge traditions. A general anthropological approach to sleep, dreaming, and the imagination can surmount oversights that result from disciplinary and subfield foci and emphases.

“Human beings were born onto this earth about one million years ago,” according to Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar.  “In those times, human beings were primitive. The people of today are very different from those primitive personalities - there is a great difference between them. How did this difference occur? Due to constant changes in structure a metamorphosis took place. An evolved psychic structure emerged and a corresponding change occurred in the physical structure to facilitate a proper physical medium for that evolved psychic structure. Human beings started thinking about certain subjects and remained in that state of contemplation for a long period. Human beings could not make their undeveloped nerves and nerve cells serve as the correct medium for their evolved psychic structure, so a change in the nerve cells had to be brought about. And so a change in the nerve cells and nerve fibers occurred. As a result, the human face has also changed. The humans of one million years ago had a very small cranium. These so-called humans had a very small number of nerve cells. Their brains were small and their bodies were relatively big.”  Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar (1921-1990), was a spiritual master and guru in the tradition of Shiva and Krishna, and founded the international socio-spiritual movement Ananda Marga (“the Path of Bliss”).

Perception is a product of evolution. Our perceptual systems, like our limbs and livers, have been shaped by natu-ral selection. The effects of selection on perception can be studied using evolutionary games and genetic algorithms. To this end, we define and classify perceptual strategies and al-low them to compete in evolutionary games in a variety of worlds with a variety of fitness functions. We find that verid-ical perceptions—strategies tuned to the true structure of the world—are routinely dominated by nonveridical strategies tuned to fitness. Veridical perceptions escape extinction only if fitness varies monotonically with truth. Thus, a perceptual strategy favored by selection is best thought of not as a win-dow on truth but as akin to a windows interface of a PC. Just as the color and shape of an icon for a text file do not entail that the text file itself has a color or shape, so also our percep-tions of space-time and objects do not entail (by the Invention of Space-Time ...

The scientific worldview is based on laws, which are supposed to be certain, objective, and independent of time and context. The narrative worldview found in literature, myth and religion, is based on stories, which relate the events experienced by a subject in a particular context with an uncertain outcome. This paper argues that the concept of "agent", supported by the theories of evolution, cybernetics and complex adaptive systems, allows us to reconcile scientific and narrative perspectives. An agent follows a course of action through its environment with aim of maximizing its fitness. Navigation along that course combines the strategies of regulation, exploitation and exploration, but needs to cope with often-unforeseen diversions. These can be positive (affordances, opportunities), negative (disturbances, dangers) or neutral (surprises). The resulting sequence of encounters and actions can be conceptualized as an adventure. Thus, the agent appears to play the role of the hero in a tale of challenge and mystery that is very similar to the "monomyth", the basic storyline that underlies all myths and fairy tales according to . This narrative dynamics is driven forward in particular by the alternation between prospect (the ability to foresee diversions) and mystery (the possibility of achieving an as yet absent prospect), two aspects of the environment that are particularly attractive to agents. This dynamics generalizes the scientific notion of a deterministic trajectory by introducing a variable "horizon of knowability": the agent is never fully certain of its further course, but can anticipate depending on its degree of prospect.

Disparate cultural practices suggest that small foot size may contribute to female attractiveness. Two hypotheses potentially explain such a pattern. Sexual dimorphism in foot size may lead observers to view small feet as feminine and large feet as masculine. Alternately, because small female feet index both youth and nulliparity, evolution may have favored a male preference for this attribute in order to maximize returns on male reproductive investment. Whereas the observational hypothesis predicts symmetrical polarizing preferences, with small feet being preferred in women and large feet being preferred in men, the evolutionary hypothesis predicts asymmetrical preferences, with the average phenotype being preferred in men. Using line drawings that varied only in regard to relative foot size, we examined judgments of attractiveness in nine cultures. Small foot size was generally preferred for females, while average foot size was preferred for males. These results provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that humans possess an evolved preference for small feet in females.

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-entific research documents, whether they are pub-lished or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et a ̀ la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. The evolution of misbelief

For more than 5000 years, people have cultivated flowers although there is no known reward for this costly behavior. In three different studies we show that flowers are a powerful positive emotion “inducer”. In Study 1, flowers, upon presentation to women, always elicited the Duchenne or true smile. Women who received flowers reported more positive moods 3 days later. In Study 2, a flower given to men or women in an elevator elicited more positive social behavior than other stimuli. In Study 3, flowers presented to elderly participants (55+ age) elicited positive mood reports and improved episodic memory. Flowers have immediate and long-term effects on emotional reactions, mood, social behaviors and even memory for both males and females. There is little existing theory in any discipline that explains these findings. We suggest that cultivated flowers are rewarding because they have evolved to rapidly induce positive emotion in humans, just as other plants have evolved to induce var...

This essay provides a critical reflection on two distinctive theses proposed by Peregrin in his book Normative Species. First, it challenges his hypothesis that implicit normative attitudes ground the ultimate anthropological difference-one that fundamentally separated humans from other animals, and made possible other distinctively human accomplishments. Second, it questions his naturalistic view that normative claims do not express any truth-apt contents that science could not express.

This article presents a novel theoretical perspective on the role of cognitive biases within the autism and schizophrenia spectrum by integrating the evolutionary and computational approaches. Against the background of neurodiversity, cognitive biases are presented as primary adaptive strategies, while the compensation of their shortcomings is a potential cognitive advantage. The article delineates how certain subtypes of autism represent a unique cognitive strategy to manage cognitive biases at the expense of rapid and frugal heuristics. In contrast, certain subtypes of schizophrenia emerge as distinctive cognitive strategies devised to navigate social interactions, albeit with a propensity for overdetecting intentional behaviors. In conclusion, the paper emphasizes that while extreme manifestations might appear non-functional, they are merely endpoints of a broader, primarily functional spectrum of cognitive strategies. The central argument hinges on the premise that cognitive biases in both autism and schizophrenia spectrums serve as compensatory mechanisms tailored for specific ecological niches.

The production of androgens (mostly testosterone) during the early fetal stage is essential for the differentiation of the male brain. Some authors have suggested a relationship between androgen exposure during the prenatal period and schizophrenia. These two separate relationships suggest that digit length ratios are associated with schizophrenia in males. The study was performed in a university hospital between October 2012 and May 2013. One hundred and three male patients diagnosed with schizophrenia according to DSM-IV using SCID-I, and 100 matched healthy males, were admitted to the study. Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS), Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) and Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) were used to assess schizophrenia symptoms. The second digit (2D) and fourth digit (4D) asymmetry index (AI), and the right- and left-hand 2D:4D ratios were calculated. All parametric data in the groups were compared using an independent t-test. ...

This open access book explores the role of imagination in animal ethics and its constitutive links to empathy/sympathy and anthropomorphism. The book argues for the constitutive role of imagination in ethical deliberation, but acknowledges that there exist important limits to its use. However, “limit” is here understood not merely negatively as restriction and insufficiency, but rather positively as “condition of possibility,” so what the book explores and analyses are the conditions for a positive and fruitful use of the imagination in ethics. The book uses as a “frame” the questions and issues raised in J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals to explore some central and salient themes.

Available in open access at: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-88028-5

Much research has been conducted to document and sometimes to provide proximate explanations (e.g., Confucianism vs. Western philosophy) for East-West cultural differences. The ultimate evolutionary mechanisms underlying these cross-cultural differences have not been addressed. We propose in this review that East-West cultural differences (e.g., independent versus interdependent self construal; autonomy versus harmony in values; hierarchical versus egalitarian relationships) result from social learning and individual learning as primary means to adapt to the local environment. Historical and contemporary evidence from multiple sources is reviewed that indicates smaller extents of environmental variability in East Asia including China than in Europe and North America, favoring social learning in the East and individual learning in the West. Corresponding to these different adaptive strategies, East-West differences stem from learning styles that differ between copying and rote memorization, on the one hand, and critical thinking and innovative problem solving, on the other hand. These primary cultural differences are correlated with such personality attributes as conformity, compliance, and independence that serve to facilitate social or individual learning. This and other cross-cultural and educational psychological research is reviewed as evidence to support our evolutionary explanation of why Eastern and Western cultures differ in the ways in which they do.

Engineers have long studied the origins of design features that make machines prone to failure, but biologists have only recently begun investigating why organisms have traits that make them susceptible to disease. This article compares explanations for vulnerability to failure in machines with explanations for traits that make bodies vulnerable to disease. Some global explanations are relevant for both: design deficiencies, corrupted plans, assembly variations, incorrect operating environment, and trade-offs. These similarities suggest that a common framework for failure analysis could be valuable. However, a closer look at each of the 10 global categories reveals fundamental differences: machines are built to match an ideal blueprint, while species have no perfect genome or form. Design trade-offs in machines involve balancing multiple factors such as performance, robustness, and costs, while biological trade-offs maximize only gene transmission, often at the expense of health and lifespan. Detailed consideration of these and other differences reveals how the metaphor of body as a designed machine fosters tacit creationism that misrepresents the nature of organically complex systems.

This paper explores the source of the inherent uniqueness of first-person perspectives (FPPs), the subjective lens through which individuals experience the world. While much research has focused on universal aspects of consciousness, the distinctiveness of individual experience remains underexplored. It is proposed that FPPs are not merely emergent properties of the brain but may be fundamentally tied to the structure of reality itself. By examining biological, quantum, and ontological frameworks, it is argued that only an ontological basis-specifically, the unique coordinates of the spacetime continuum-can guarantee the absolute uniqueness of FPPs. Biological and quantum processes, while contributing to statistical uniqueness, cannot ensure irreplicability. The paper synthesizes ideas from neuroscience, quantum mechanics, and philosophy to present a cohesive framework, suggesting that consciousness and FPPs may emerge from the fabric of spacetime. This speculative yet structured approach aims to provide new avenues for understanding the origins of individuality in conscious experience and to inspire interdisciplinary research into the nature of consciousness.

Many anthropologists and economists contend that humans are characterized by strong, universal, other-regarding equality preferences with deep evolutionary roots. Certain contemporary forager groups are indeed characterized by endemic foodsharing and proscriptions against resource monopolization. Some view these "egalitarian" practices as the consequence of an intrinsic desire for fairness. The present study tests this using a one-player "give-or-take" experiment that better emulates the realities of forager sharing ecologies than previous giving experiments. We asked 117 Hadza participants in private to redistribute food resources between themselves and another camp member in response to both advantageous and disadvantageous endowments. Although few participants were wholly self-interested, most did not seek equitable distributions. Instead, most participants tolerated inequality when it benefited them but were intolerant of inequality when it benefited others. Even when given advantageous endowments, only a minority (40.9%) chose to give, while a substantial fraction (30%) exacerbated inequality by taking more. Moreover, when given disadvantageous endowments, many participants took more than was necessary to achieve equality. The modal decision across tasks was to take everything. We also observed sex and age differences, with men and younger individuals being more likely to share advantageous endowments. These results suggest that intrinsic, private other-regarding fairness preferences need not underlie widespread forager food-sharing, which could be maintained by self-interest enforced by others (i.e., "demand sharing") or by extrinsically maintained norms of fairness. Further, we find that individuals with greater exposure to cultures outside Hadzaland were more tolerant of unfavourable inequality, suggesting that marketization might promote not only greater material inequality but also stronger norms of tolerance toward disadvantageous inequality.

Considerable research has examined human mate preferences across cultures, finding universal sex differences in preferences for attractiveness and resources as well as sources of systematic cultural variation. Two competing perspectives—an evolutionary psychological perspective and a biosocial role perspective—offer alternative explanations for these findings. However, the original data on which each perspective relies are decades old, and the literature is fraught with conflicting methods, analyses, results, and conclusions. Using a new 45-country sample ( N = 14,399), we attempted to replicate classic studies and test both the evolutionary and biosocial role perspectives. Support for universal sex differences in preferences remains robust: Men, more than women, prefer attractive, young mates, and women, more than men, prefer older mates with financial prospects. Cross-culturally, both sexes have mates closer to their own ages as gender equality increases. Beyond age of partner, ne...

Італійський лікар, психолог та педагог Марія Монтессорі (1870–1952) розробила та реалізувала на практиці метод виховання і навчання дітей від 3 до 9 років, який ґрунтувався на створенні відповідно до природи дитини умов для самовираження й вільного розвитку її індивідуальності, мінімізуючи педагогічне керівництво цим процесом та виключаючи будь-яке насилля і тиск. Пошук альтернативних моделей освіти і сприйнятливість до інновацій зумовив цікавість вітчизняних педагогів до зарубіжного досвіду, зокрема і до методу Монтессорі, який уже здобув світове визнання. На українських землях царської Росії не було дитячих садків, які б працювали за системою Монтессорі. Проте сам метод Монтессорі був широко відомим та активно обговорювався українськими педагогами. Високо оцінюючи метод М.Монтессорі українські педагоги не вважали його універсальним, підкреслювали необхідність адаптації його до реалій українських дитячих садків, національних особливостей, менталітету, традицій. Ключові слова: метод...

Hace varias décadas la psicología cognitiva del razonamiento desarrolló una serie de trabajos que se conocieron posteriormente como la tradición de heurística y sesgo (HS). El cómo fueron interpretados provocó un conjunto de respuestas tanto desde la psicología como la filosofía. Lo anterior se debe a que se asoció a la HS la idea de que los seres humanos son "sistemática y predeciblemente irracionales". A ello se le denominó la interpretación pesimista de la racionalidad. Frente a ésta surgieron un abanico de propuestas en psicología cognitiva, cuyos resultados fueron interpretados como básicamente optimistas, lo que generó claramente una tensión con la interpretación pesimista. El debate entre algunas de estas propuestas llegó a un punto álgido en que algunos teóricos denominaron como el "Gran Debate sobre la Racionalidad". El propósito del trabajo es examinar críticamente este debate. Mostraré que detrás de las discusiones en dicho debate no hay una única manera de entenderlo y bajo el mote del "Gran Debate sobre la Racionalidad" existen varios problemas teóricos, algunos descriptivos, otros evaluativos y normativos, que es importante distinguir.

This chapter is written from a viewpoint largely unfamiliar to arts educators and arts education researchers-that of evolutionary psychology, whose basic tenet is that the human mind has been prepared by natural selection, operating over geological time, for life in a human group . My concern here is with the arts as they originated and developed during the evolution of the human species (phylogeny) and as they emerge in individuals (ontogeny). My hypothesis proposes that arts-or, more accurately, aesthetic proclivities that can be realized in every art-evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in our Pleistocene ancestors, contributing to their psychobiological fitness. 1 Manifested first in mother-infant interactions and later elaborated in cultural practices, these inherent aesthetic proclivities are in the repertoire of every individual human, from infancy to old age. They are normal, natural, and necessary human endowments. Such a broad and perhaps surprising claim provides justification for the importance of arts education and arts educational research, even though its author is not a practitioner of either profession. It is not my task here to suggest subjects or questions for research or point out connections between my ideas and other particular subjects of study that interest arts educators. The aim, rather, is to give arts educators and researchers empirical and theoretical support for an essential, if tacit, principle of their work: that the arts have been and remain not only important but integral to human lives. My argument is composed of five interrelated claims. These are followed by a concluding commentary that emphasizes the importance to individuals and societies of recognizing and developing the aesthetic abilities with which all humans are psychobiologically endowed. It further describes how a Pleistocene perspective can contribute to ideas about arts education in the twenty-first century. 1 . "Pleistocene" refers to the geological period from 1.6 million to 10,000 years ago, coinciding approximately with the appearance and development of the genus Homo.

From the many gods of the ancient world to abstract philosophical questions about the nature of the divine, the history of religion is a vast, intricate, and profoundly human story. Understanding this history, exploring its diverse manifestations across cultures and epochs, and engaging with the philosophical questions it raises is essential for comprehending the forces that have shaped our past and continue to influence our present. It encourages empathy, critical thinking, and a deeper appreciation for the enduring human quest for meaning and connection to something larger than ourselves.

A surprising number of humans are equipped with a subpar eye model-featuring pale, colorful irides that are nowhere as good as the original dark ones at guarding the retina from sunlight and do, in fact, raise one's risk of eye disease. Here I apply evolutionary theory to understand why. I propose that the allele for human blue eyes, which arose just once, managed to spread from one individual to millions at an astonishing speed because it is a greenbeard. "Greenbeards"—imaginary genes, or groups of genes, that produce both a green beard and a behavior that favors other bearers of a green beard—have been deemed exceedingly unlikely to show up in the real world. And yet, as individuals who prefer blue eyes are more inclined to mate with blue-eyed partners and invest in blue-eyed offspring, any blue-eye preference (whether random or arising from the bias for colorful stimuli shared by all recognition systems) becomes rapidly linked to the blue-eye trait. Thus, blue eyes gain an edge by working like a peacock's colorful tail and a nestling's colorful mouth: twice self-reinforcing, "double runaway" evolution via sexual and parental selection. The blue-eye ornament gene, by binding to a behavior that favors other bearers of the blue-eye ornament gene, is ultimately recognizing and helping copies of itself in both kin and strangers-and greatly prospering, just like theory predicts.

A review of the most prominent late 19 th century writings by biologists focusing on Charles Darwin reveals that a major plank of evolution theory was the belief that women were intellectually and physically inferior to men. Female inferiority was a logical conclusion of the natural selection world-view because men were exposed to far greater selective pressures than women, especially in war, competition for mates, food and clothing. Conversely, women were protected from evolutionary selection by norms which dictated that men were to provide for and protect women and children. Darwinists taught that as a result of this protection, natural selection operated far more actively on males, producing male superiority in virtually all skill areas. As a result, males evolved more than females. The female inferiority doctrine is an excellent example of the armchair logic that has often been more important in establishing evolutionary theory than fossil and other empirical evidence.

While previous studies guided by evolutionary life history theory have revealed several important socioecological moderators of the influence of population density (PD) on reproduction, absent is an understanding of how individual-level factors such as personal resources and sex differences might interact and play a role. Using data from a large sample of clients (N = 4,432,440) of an online dating company spanning 317 states nested within 23 countries, we contributed a robust multilevel analysis of life history effects by assessing the interaction between state-level PD and individual-level income on offspring quantity, and we further qualified this analysis by sex. Consistent with previous research, PD was negatively correlated with having children. Consistent with our novel hypotheses, this negative relationship was moderated by income such that the link between PD and low fertility became weaker with increasing levels of income and these patterns were stronger for men than for women. These results held despite controlling for a variety of country-level, state-level, and individual-level confounds. Findings are discussed together with theoretical and practical implications for the management of fertility based on evolutionary life history perspectives.

المقدمة

إن عالمنا اليقظ لا يختلف كثيرا عن الحلم، مقارنة بالحياة بعد الموت.

النبي محمد(ص)

"سوف ينتهي الأمر يوماً ما. ولكن لن يكون سريعاً"، هكذا يقول أصدقائي السوريون. وبينما أكتب هذه الكلمات، يتورط النظام السوري في شبكة ثورة شعبية مستوحاة من نموذج إخواننا العرب في تونس ومصر وليبيا والبحرين واليمن. لقد زرعت بذور ما يحدث في سوريا الآن منذ زمن بعيد، وقد شاهدت هذه البذور وهي تنبت. فقد أصر خبراء مخضرمون داخل البلاد وخارجها حتى منتصف آذار 2011 على أن ما يحدث في سوريا لن يحدث. ولكنني لم أصدقهم. فقد لاحظت وعايشت بنفسي السبب الذي جعل الناس يشعرون بالإحباط والغضب الشديدين، ولماذا أدى هذا الإحباط إلى الثورة.

منذ زيارتي الأولى لسوريا في عام 1978، كنت أشعر دوماً بأنني في وطني هناك. لقد جذبتني كل دولة عربية بشكل مختلف، ولكن في سوريا وجدت، وما زلت أجد، كل ما أحبه في العالم العربي: الناس الودودون ولكن المحترمون، والتعلق بالقيم العائلية التقليدية، والولاءات العميقة والصداقات - كل ذلك في نسيج متعدد الألوان من المواقع التوراتية والكلاسيكية والعصور الوسطى في مناظر طبيعية ذات جمال مذهل.

وبعد سنوات، تم تكليفي بكتابة دليل سوريا لبرادت، وكان سحر البلاد قويًا كما كان دائمًا. قلت لرفيقتي في السفر: "لا أعرف السبب، لكنني أشعر أن دمشق هي المكان الذي يمكنني قضاء الوقت فيه".

"كيف يمكنك أن تفعلي ذلك؟" سألتني. "ليس لدي أي فكرة"، كانت إجابتي الصادقة.

كانت هذه القصة في ذهني لسنوات عديدة الآن، وحثني كثيرون على كتابتها. في البداية لم أفهم حقًا السبب. ما الذي يجعل شخصًا يشتري منزلًا في سوريا مثيرًا للاهتمام؟ بالنسبة لي، أصبح الأمر طبيعيًا، وإقامتي المنتظمة في سوريا روتينًا. ولكنني أدركت تدريجيا أن العنف المستمر جعل من المهم للغاية أن نظهر جانبا من سوريا يتجاوز هستيريا التقارير الإعلامية ويختبئ وراء التحليل السريري. أردت أن أستكشف أعماق تماسكها الاجتماعي والروحي وأن أفحص كيف يمكن لتنوعها الغني أن يساعدها في مواجهة المستقبل بعد الثورة. لماذا كانت معقدة إلى هذا الحد ولماذا أسيء فهم البلاد إلى هذا الحد؟
إن تحيزاتنا الغربية عميقة. بعد 35 عاما من التخصص، اعتقدت أنني أعرف الشرق الأوسط جيدا. ولكنني كنت من الخارج، أنظر إلى الداخل. والآن، بفضل ملكيتي لبيت البارودي، أصبحت من الداخل أنظر إلى الخارج ــ لقد تغيرت وجهة نظري.

كيف بدأ كل هذا؟ في ملاحقة حلم، هذا كل ما أعرفه، حلم شراء وترميم فناء منزل. ولكن الأحلام نادرا ما تقود إلى حيث تتوقع.

من أنت؟
أنا الزمن الذي يخضع كل الأشياء ويجري إلى الأبد. ولماذا لديك أجنحة على قدميك؟
لأنني أطير مع الريح.
ولماذا يتدلى شعرك على وجهك؟
"حتى يتمكن من يقابلني من أن يأخذني من ناصيتي.
ولماذا، بحق السماء، مؤخرة رأسك صلعاء؟
لأن أحداً ممن سبق لي أن مررت بهم على قدمي المجنحتين لن يمسك بي من الخلف الآن، رغم أنه يتمنى أن يكون ذلك مؤلماً.

بوسيديب، الشاعر اليوناني، عن كايروس، "اللحظة المناسبة"

Dominance is a biological concept of an asymmetric 'power' relationship between (any pair of) individuals, as a result of previous encounters with others biasing likelihood of contesting. That this requires dedicated neural structure shows that dominance is adaptive; and it is usually thought that fitness is increased through dominance (hierarchy) minimising mutually unproductive contest over resources, and/or determining access to or control over resources. But highly inconsistent data indicates that this operational definition is too wide, and given clear evidence that dominance is invariably same-sex, it would seem instead to function primarily to allocate reproduction. Dominance contest exposes individual differences in metabolic vigor especially, but also in various other, including sophisticated attributes; and by a selforganising process there is ranking of same-sex individuals in a hierarchy. But this achieves nothing in itself without an integral mechanism of corresponding individual variable self-suppression of the physiology re reproduction -and mate choice with rank as the criteria. Reproductive suppression would appear to vary along a continuum, from in some species (most 'cooperative breeders') a 100% reproductive skew with total suppression of all individuals bar the sole breeder to, in most others, a gradient down the length of the dominance hierarchy. The mechanism in most species is directly either hormonal or pheromonal, on top of an indirect consequence of the stress caused by relatively low rank. Dominance would seem to have evolved as a major instrument of the proposed 'genetic filter' function of the male, whereby in effect accumulated deleterious genetic material is 'quarantined' in the male half of the lineage from where it is purged, so as to keep this source of reproductive logjam away from females, thereby to avoid amplifying the problem of the female being necessarily the limiting factor in reproduction. The theory makes predictions mutually exclusive of the consensus model, that dominance/DH is: same-sex only; present whenever, within one or both sexes, there is potential conflict over reproduction, and there is no mechanism to preclude this, but otherwise is absent; always associated with some degree of differential physiological reproductive suppression. This new conceptualization of dominance has major implications for the social as well as biological sciences, in that resource-competition models of the basis of sociality will have to give way to a thoroughgoing biological understanding that places centre-stage not resources but reproduction; with consequent radical revision of notions of 'power'.

There have been few attempts to bring evolutionary theory to the study of human motivation. From this perspective motives can be considered psychological mechanisms to produce behavior that solves evolutionarily important tasks in the human niche. From the dimensions of the human niche we deduce eight human needs: optimize the number and survival of gene copies; maintain bodily integrity; avoid external threats; optimize sexual, environmental, and social capital; and acquire reproductive and survival skills. These needs then serve as the foundation for a necessary and sufficient list of 15 human motives, which we label: lust, hunger, comfort, fear, disgust, attract, love, nurture, create, hoard, affiliate, status, justice, curiosity, and play. We show that these motives are consistent with evidence from the current literature. This approach provides us with a precise vocabulary for talking about motivation, the lack of which has hampered progress in behavioral science. Developing testable theories about the structure and function of motives is essential to the project of understanding the organization of animal cognition and learning, as well as for the applied behavioral sciences.

Many different general systems of human motives have been postulated in the psychological literature. However, as yet, no consensus on which motives should be nominated, nor how many there are, has emerged. Recently, we deduced the existence of a number of motives using a logical argument derived from evolutionary theory; that humans have evolved an independent psychological "engine" to respond to each kind of evolutionary problem set by a dimension of the human niche, or life-way. Here, we confirm the existence of 14 out of 15 of these postulated motives using factor analysis on a web-based sample of 500 respondents from the UK: Lust, Hunger, Fear, Disgust, Attract, Love, Nurture, Hoard, Create, Affiliate, Status, Justice, Curiosity, and Play. The items which loaded most strongly for each factor confirmed the expected core value of each motive. Comfort did not emerge, perhaps because it is more about satisfying specific physiological requirements than a cluster of activities linked semantically by the concept of attaining "comfort." We believe this analysis can form the foundation of a scale for use in applied psychological work ranging from personality testing to personnel selection to public health program design.

Many different general systems of human motives have been postulated in the psychological literature. However, as yet, no consensus on which motives should be nominated, nor how many there are, has emerged. Recently, we deduced the existence of a number of motives using a logical argument derived from evolutionary theory; that humans have evolved an independent psychological “engine” to respond to each kind of evolutionary problem set by a dimension of the human niche, or life-way. Here, we confirm the existence of 14 out of 15 of these postulated motives using factor analysis on a web-based sample of 500 respondents from the UK: Lust, Hunger, Fear, Disgust, Attract, Love, Nurture, Hoard, Create, Affiliate, Status, Justice, Curiosity, and Play. The items which loaded most strongly for each factor confirmed the expected core value of each motive. Comfort did not emerge, perhaps because it is more about satisfying specific physiological requirements than a cluster of activities linked...

There have been few attempts to bring evolutionary theory to the study of human motivation. From this perspective motives can be considered psychological mechanisms to produce behavior that solves evolutionarily important tasks in the human niche. From the dimensions of the human niche we deduce eight human needs: optimize the number and survival of gene copies; maintain bodily integrity; avoid external threats; optimize sexual, environmental, and social capital; and acquire reproductive and survival skills. These needs then serve as the foundation for a necessary and sufficient list of 15 human motives, which we label: lust, hunger, comfort, fear, disgust, attract, love, nurture, create, hoard, affiliate, status, justice, curiosity, and play. We show that these motives are consistent with evidence from the current literature. This approach provides us with a precise vocabulary for talking about motivation, the lack of which has hampered progress in behavioral science. Developing testable theories about the structure and function of motives is essential to the project of understanding the organization of animal cognition and learning, as well as for the applied behavioral sciences.

The concept of collective consciousness is rooted in sociology and psychology, positing that a set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes bind a group together.This shared mental framework can influence individual behaviors and physiological responses, shaping group dynamics and social structures.

A leading idea in evolutionary psychology and philosophy of mind is that the basic architecture and dynamics of the mind are very old, presumably dating back to the Stone Age. Theories based on this idea are liable to paint a caricature of our ancestors by projecting our modern self-conception onto earlier minds. I argue that this ‘Flintstones Fallacy’ is an underrated risk, relieved neither by standard biological arguments nor by arguments from psychology and philosophy. Indeed, each of these fields has better arguments for the contrary view that the mind as we know it from present-day experience is not ancient at all.

This paper proposes a new analysis of indirect speech in the framework of game theory, social psychology, and evolutionary psychology. It builds on the theory of Grice, which tries to ground indirect speech in pure rationality (the demands of e‰cient communication between two cooperating agents) and on the Politeness Theory of Brown and Levinson, who proposed that people cooperate not just in exchanging data but in saving face (both the speaker's and the hearer's). I suggest that these theories need to be supplemented because they assume that people in conversation always cooperate. A reflection on how a pair of talkers may have goals that conflict as well as coincide requires an examination of the game-theoretic logic of plausible denial, both in legal contexts, where people's words may be held against them, and in everyday life, where the sanctions are social rather than judicial. This in turn requires a theory of the distinct kinds of relationships that make up human social life, a consideration of a new role for common knowledge in the use of indirect speech, and ultimately the paradox of rational ignorance, where we choose not to know something relevant to our interests. Indirect speech is the phenomenon in which a speaker says something he doesn't literally mean, knowing that the hearer will interpret it as he intended: Would you like to come up and see my etchings? [a sexual come-on]. If you could pass the salt, that would be great [a polite request]. Nice house you got there. Would be a real shame if something happened to it [a threat].

The article examines the biological function of consciousness asso- ciated with learning, in particular with the acquisition of automatic skills. It is shown that it is necessary to distinguish consciousness in the process of learning, in the formation of conditioned reflexes, long-term memory and motivation, and in other situations. The re- lationship of the learning argument and the «hard problem of con- sciousness» is examined using the function of consciousness in the formation of conditioned reflexes as an example. It is concluded that in the case of learning, the «hard problem of consciousness» argu- ment does not work, since phenomenal consciousness here acts as exactly the condition required for the formation of a conditioned reflex. The evolutionary advantage of consciousness is discussed, due to which organisms are able to learn more easily and acquire automatic skills and long-term memory. It is also shown that the learning argument allows for a new interpretation of a number of neurobiological studies if consciousness is considered not as a re- sult of some neural processes or a causal cause, but as a factor influencing the statistics of neural processes in the brain in general.

EVOC (for EVOlution of Culture) is a computer model of culture that enables us to investigate how various factors such as barriers to cultural diffusion, the presence and choice of leaders, or changes in the ratio of innovation to imitation affect the diversity and effectiveness of ideas. It consists of neural network based agents that invent ideas for actions, and imitate neighbors' actions. The model is based on a theory of culture according to which what evolves through culture is not memes or artifacts, but the internal models of the world that give rise to them, and they evolve not through a Darwinian process of competitive exclusion but a Lamarckian process involving exchange of innovation protocols. EVOC shows an increase in mean fitness of actions over time, and an increase and then decrease in the diversity of actions. Diversity of actions is positively correlated with population size and density, and with barriers between populations. Slowly eroding borders increase fitness without sacrificing diversity by fostering specialization followed by sharing of fit actions. Introducing a leader that broadcasts its actions throughout the population increases the fitness of actions but reduces diversity of actions. Increasing the number of leaders reduces this effect. Efforts are underway to simulate the conditions under which an agent immigrating from one culture to another contributes new ideas while still 'fitting in'.

Because human cognition is creative and socially situated, knowledge accumulates, diffuses, and gets applied in new contexts, generating cultural analogs of phenomena observed in population genetics such as adaptation and drift. It is therefore commonly thought that elements of culture evolve through natural selection. However, natural selection was proposed to explain how change accumulates despite lack of inheritance of acquired traits, as occurs with template-mediated replication. It cannot accommodate a process with significant retention of acquired or horizontally (e.g. socially) transmitted traits. Moreover, elements of culture cannot be treated as discrete lineages because they constantly interact and influence one another. It is proposed that what evolves through culture is the mind; ideas and artifacts are merely reflections of its current evolved state. Interacting minds transform (in part) through through a non-Darwinian autopoietic process similar to that by which early life evolved, involving not survival of the fittest but actualization of their potential.

The social exchange theory of reasoning, which is championed by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, falls under the general rubric "evolutionary psychology" and asserts that human reasoning is governed by content-dependent, domain-specific, evolutionarily-derived algorithms. According to Cosmides and Tooby, the presumptive existence of what they call "cheater-detection" algorithms disconfirms the claim that we reason via general-purpose mechanisms or via inductively acquired principles. We contend that the Cosmides/Tooby arguments in favor of domain-specific algorithms or evolutionarily-derived mechanisms fail and that the notion of a social exchange rule, which is central to their theory, is not correctly characterized. As a consequence, whether or not their conclusion is true cannot be established on the basis of the arguments they have presented.

Nadie puede poner en duda que entre las características del ser humano se encuentra su naturaleza moral, y, muy probablemente, los sistemas normativos que el hombre en sociedad establece son el resultado de ella; sin embargo, no hay suficiente claridad acerca de cómo desarrollamos dicha naturaleza como especie humana. Una respuesta de tipo evolucionista sugeriría que si hay un rasgo característico distintivo en nosotros como especie debió ser el resultado de adaptaciones al medio en la lucha por sobrevivir. El objetivo de este artículo es revisar dos propuestas de este tipo, la de Ernst Tugendhat, según la cual los sistemas normativos son producto del desarrollo del lenguaje proposicional, y la de Richard Dawkins y su concepto de memes.

Evolutionary psychology and behavioral endocrinology provide complementary perspectives on interpreting human behavior and psychology. Hormones can function as underlying mechanisms that influence behavior in functional ways. Understanding these proximate mechanisms can inform ultimate explanations of human psychology. This chapter introduces this edited volume by first discussing evolutionary perspectives in behavioral endocrinology. It then briefly addresses three broad topic areas of behavioral endocrinology: (1) development and survival, (2) reproductive behavior, and (3) social and affective behavior. It provides examples of research within each of these areas and describes potential adaptations. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the importance of integrating mechanisms with function when investigating human behavior and psychology.

In this essay, William Clifford explores the nature of reality and consciousness through the concepts of object, eject, and mind-stuff. He proposes that all matter, including the physical world, is ultimately composed of elementary units of experience—what he calls "mind-stuff." Clifford argues that consciousness arises not from special substances, but from complex organizations of these fundamental experiential elements. Through this lens, matter is not separate from mind but a reflection of it, suggesting a universe fundamentally composed of experience and thought.

The mechanisms of emergence and evolution of collective behaviours in dynamical Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) of multiple interacting agents, with diverse behavioral strategies in co-presence, have been undergoing mathematical study via Evolutionary Game Theory (EGT). Their systematic study also resorts to agent-based modelling and simulation (ABM) techniques, thus enabling the study of aforesaid mechanisms under a variety of conditions, parameters, and alternative virtual games. This paper summarises some main research directions and challenges tackled in our group, using methods from EGT and ABM. These range from the introduction of cognitive and emotional mechanisms into agents’ implementation in an evolving MAS, to the cost-efficient interference for promoting prosocial behaviours in complex networks, to the regulation and governance of AI safety development ecology, and to the equilibrium analysis of random evolutionary multi-player games. This brief aims to sensitize the reader to...