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.
NOTE TO EVERYONE: Before posting, please always read the other commentaries in the thread (and especially my replies) so you don't just repeat the same thing.
ReplyDeleteThis article explains the methods and important features of evolutionary psychology. I found the description of environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) especially interesting. The author explains that many people mistakenly believe that the EEA is a specific location or time frame, when in actuality it is a specific set of circumstances that is unique to each adaptation. EEA is defined as “a set of selective pressures responsible for shaping a given adaptation” in this article. In studying evolutionary psychology, it is particularly important to consider adaptive solutions from multiple domains (perceptual, behavioral, emotional, etc.) in order to fully grasp the EEA for each adaptation.
ReplyDeleteMegan, it's certainly important to distinguish the contemporary environment from the EEA in trying to infer what adaptive pressures shaped a species' contemporary behavioral capacities. But the question to ask yourself is: does knowing the EEA help reverse-engineer the causal mechanism that produces those capacities?
DeleteI believe understanding the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) does not help reverse-engineer human behavioural and cognitive capacities. As outlined in the reading, various environmental threats lead to adaptive behaviours in human beings based on the frequency they were faced and magnitude of importance to survival and reproduction. Environmental threats which were frequent and high risk to survival and reproduction are associated with the most behavioural adaptations. Therefore, identifying these high frequency, high magnitude environmental threats may give us an important window into how the human brain developed and allow us to engage in a top-down approach to understanding our behaviour. However, when we are trying to actually reverse-engineer cognition, understanding the environmental pressures which caused a particular behaviour or cognitive mechanism to develop does not actually help us break down that mechanism. I may understand why it is beneficial for me to have access to my third-grade teacher’s name, or other memories and autobiographical information, but that does not mean I can actually understand how I accessed it. That being said, in one of our previous readings an idea was discussed which involved building a simplistic model of a child’s brain and allowing it to learn and develop as a real person does in order to recreate human neural mechanisms. Perhaps doing something similar, but starting with a much more simplistic brain and simulating the environmental pressures which lead to behavioural adaptation throughout evolution would allow us to simulate similar results to a real human brain.
DeleteZoe, cogsci attempts to reverse-engineer cognitive capacities (not "behaviors). These are capacities to DO certain kinds of things, like learning, problem-solving, and communicating. The goal is to explain, HOW and WHY we can do these things. EvoPsych might be able to help with WHY (though rarely with HOW). But even with WHY it's not clear when the EvoPsych explanation is the true explanation, or just a Just-So Story. As mentioned, the answers to the WHY questions have a better chance with sex/spider matters than with learning and language.
Delete- My go at a theory-driven, top down approach: evolutionary explanation of the physiological and psychological response to feeling embarrassment. The middle- level theory could be (1) behaviours to reduce possibility of ostracism which would likely have led to death (must-solve adaptive problem) or (2) positively increase social behaviours to promote more mating possibilities (beneficial adaptive problem). People feel embarrassed when they do something they perceive to go against what their social environment considers acceptable, violating this could lead to ostracism or less mating opportunities. The physiological reaction to embarrassment which is commonly a red face, could be increased blood flow to the brain to quickly respond to “fixing” the violation that occurred. I’m not sure how you would empirically test this, but I’m sure somebody already has.
ReplyDeleteIf anybody has any alternative function or incidental byproduct explanations, I’d love to hear them.
What I understood is that from an evolutionary perspective, there are several possible middle-level theories that can be used to explain the physiological and psychological response to feeling embarrassment. So for example in signaling theory, embarrassment may serve as a social signal to communicate one's recognition of a social norm violation or mistake. It can function as a nonverbal apology or a way to show submission and deference to others, thereby reducing the likelihood of social conflict or aggression. With this idea in mind, it can also work as a reputation management in both of reducing the social conflict/aggression but also if displaying embarrassment, allows one to show their awareness of their own social standing and their commitment to social norms, which can lead to an increase in trust and cooperation from others. Embarrassment may also function as social bonding and self regulation. So in these middle-level theories, one can think that blushing which shows embarrassment could have evolved in humans. But obviously, embarrassment is quite subjective and other factors could also contribute to the experience of embarrassment.
DeleteKaitlin & Marie-Elise, the mandate of cognitive science is to explain causally how and why organisms can DO all the (cognitive) kinds of things they can DO: to reverse-engineer and test the causal mechanism(s) that produce cognitive capacity.
Delete(The distinction between "cognitive" capacities and "vegetative" capacities is somewhat fuzzy, but learning and language are clearly cognitive whereas growth and digestion are clearly vegetative.)
Both "how" and "why" are causal questions. "How" asks about the causal mechanisms themselves and "why" asks about their origin and history through biological evolution. We know that this evolutionary explanation is an adaptive explanation: What problems of survival and reproduction did the mechanisms that produce cognitive capacities solve?
But a problem with adaptive explanations is the risk that they are merely "Just-So" stories rather than testable and tested causal theories. A Just-So story is merely a speculative interpretation. A causal theory has to be testable to see whether it is true or false.
How would you test your theories of embarrassment?
I would want to test problem-solving in social cognition based on the hypothesis that embarrassment leads to more effective and quicker problem-solving. Evolutionarily, the purpose of embarrassment could have been to reduce social errors quickly to avoid ostracism. To test this I would set up a social laboratory experiment to simulate embarrassment; perhaps telling the participant that because of their poor performance in the group the whole group would have to restart the group activity (hard to say whether this would cause embarrassment because it is subjective). Then I would have the participant complete a problem-solving task after the induced embarrassment and compare it to a problem-solving task they had taken prior to the induced embarrassment. To reject the null, the participant would have to perform significantly better on a problem-solving task after induced embarrassment.
DeleteKaitlin, yes, that would be a test, but it sounds more like a test of a social psychology hypothesis than an evolutionary hypothesis.
DeleteThis paper provides a comprehensive framework for implementing evolutionary perspectives in explaining why we can do what we do. A large part of this seems to be identifying adaptive problems, evaluating the selective pressure of these problems, and then theorizing a psychological capacity that could deal with that problem (for a theory-driven, top-down approach). However, in the context of cognitive science, evolutionary perspectives still don’t explain how these capacities arise.
ReplyDeleteOr perhaps I mean to say this paper does not show how evolutionary perspectives explain how these capacities arise.
DeleteJessica, you are spot-on.
DeleteI must agree with Jess here when it comes to the content of the paper. Indeed, it does not really explain how “in the context of cognitive science, evolutionary perspectives still don’t explain how these capacities arise”. However, it might be a bit too easy to say the next statement but doesn’t the term “evolutionary” explain itself? Isn’t it because for evolution to occur or to survive evolution– evolve or die? Though, it still does not really tell us how but more why.
DeleteDespite not being an evolutionary problem per say, in that what we can do is the starting point rather than something that has arisen as humans have evolved, the “easy” problem could benefit from the guidelines and framework set for evolutionarily informed research. By identifying a problem (how and why can we do what we do), one could then propose a mechanism to solve that problem (e.g., computation in the case of Turing). The specific design features of the hypothesised mechanism is then proposed (e.g., elements of the Turing Machine). We can then consider the cost and benefits of the mechanism’s outputs across contexts to generate contextual cues that likely activate or deactivate the mechanism (e.g., whether we use Cartesian coordinates to solve the mental rotation task).
DeleteGarance, kid-sib did not understand your point. (And remember that evolution here refers to genetically coded traits, not learned ones.)
DeleteJocelyn, yes, what you describe would be an interesting test -- but notice that the substance is in the model mechanism. But tests like this are indeed done in evolutionary modelling.
What I was trying to get is that cognitive scientists could benefit from a consistent framework when proposing solutions to the “easy” problem. In the case of the Turing’s computationalism, he would delve into the elements of the Turing machine, namely the read/write head and the tape. In the case of the Searle’s Chinese room, his argument might have avoided a lot of the pushback it received if he was more specific in detailing its design features (e.g., what instructions would he receive, whether he had notes on the wall or if they were in his head, etc.).
DeleteThis reading was a concise guide to how evolutionary theory is applied in the field of psychology. The paper stresses that the use of evolutionary theory in psychology requires using evolutionary frameworks to generate testable hypotheses, which can then be empirically tested, and the results interpreted. The paper describes top-down, and bottom-up approaches to evolutionary psychology. Top down approaches involve identifying adaptive problems humans face, and hypothesizing specific cognitive or psychological mechanisms that could have evolved to solve the adaptive problem. Bottom-up approaches start by observing specific behaviours, and trying to infer what adaptive problems they evolved to resolve. I found the paper’s description of High/Low impact and frequency adaptive problems particularly interesting.
ReplyDeleteI find the prospect of using evolutionary theory to explore cognitive science extremely compelling, but I think bottom-up approaches have some difficulties. To me, the problem of byproduct explanations seems like a major issue for the field. As the paper says “many psychological phenomena do not reflect the functional output of psychological adaptations”, instead many psychological phenomena are just accidental byproducts of other, intentional solutions of adaptive problems. If we don’t have a clear picture of the human EEA, I don't know how we could definitively determine whether an observed behaviour (the basis of the bottom-up approach) is directly adapted for, or is merely an accidental byproduct… How can we determine which psychological phenomena are directly adaptive, and which are “accidental byproducts”? If we can’t do this, does the bottom-up approach have any merit?
Daniel, yes, it's hard to reconstruct causal scenarios in evolutionary biology, but it's possible, especially with the help of computer-modelling, and even for evolutionary psychology.
DeleteBut it's easier for reproductive strategies and fear of spiders, and much harder for learning capacity and language, and that's where Cogsci's biggest reverse-engineering challenges lie.
I had similar questions concerning the merits of the bottom-up approach and the ability to determine whether an observed behavior is adaptive or merely a by-product. I think the paper addresses this a bit when speaking about how to discern between multiple hypotheses, which the authors say is to be done by examining the predicted outcomes of the hypotheses and how they differ. I would assume that this can be generalized to adaptive behavior vs by-products. If a behavior is hypothesized to be adaptive, I would imagine that further examination of that behavior would demonstrate its adaptive value, compared to a by-product, which I imagine would display less outwardly advantageous features.
DeleteOmar, it certainly helps to have more than one potential theory, but is theory-testing just picking the best Just-So story?
DeleteTheory testing is more than just picking the best Just-So story. It requires methods and measures, which can consist of questionnaires, surveys, or various types of studies. There has to be data backing the chosen story, making it a causal theory, not a Just-So story. The proven causal theory may differ for different cultures and environments, requiring a more complex theory to be formed. It is important to consider a variety of possibilities and not become narrow-minded from previous conclusions.
DeleteI also wanted to talk about the homicide simulation. It was incredibly interesting to me that a high impact and low frequency feature spreads. This computer generated model of evolution is approaching reverse-engineering as we can see how the murder-immunity gene spread, and not just why.
Nicole, yes, computer-modelling is a promising method in evolutionary explanation because it is hard to do experiments with the past.
DeleteMelika Yadmelat October 21, 2023 at 11:02 PM "This reading offers insights into why we possess specific cognitive and behavioural abilities, which have evolved through the process of natural selection, where certain genes are favoured in order to enhance an organism’s chances of survival and reproduction. In other words, evolutionary psychology provides a potential approach to addressing the WHY aspect of the easy problem. Although this reading delves into adaptive problems, their domains, and psychological adaptation, unfortunately, it does not explore how these capabilities take place, i.e. how we are capable of doing what we do."
ReplyDeleteMelika, yes, that's exactly the right question to ask (if you are doing cogsci reverse-engineering), and it's exactly the question the authors don't address. The kind of explanation that works for sex and spiders does not get you very far when it comes to learning and language.
DeleteProximal causes are presented as the immediate factors contributing to behavior, also referred to as psychological mechanisms. These are evolved responses to ancestral challenges. In contrast, the distal cause pertains to why the psychological mechanism evolved in the first place – in other words, the specific ancestral challenge it adapted to. This represents the evolutionary cause of behavior.
ReplyDeleteThe paper states that evolutionary theory will help us understand “functionally organized organic mechanisms, such as those of the human brain and mind." However, the examples primarily revolve around behaviors related to nutrition, kinship, mating, and ecological threats, which might not directly address the cognitive processes occurring within a thinker's mind today. As Professor Harnad mentioned above, finding specific scenarios from which learning and language might have evolved is hard; these capacities are highly general, and don't adhere to one specific psychological mechanism. Our ability to categorize is a broad behavior that would be hard to attribute to a single adaptation or ancestral challenge. It raises questions about the extent to which theories about mating and threats continue to be relevant in our daily lives and how much we can generalize these evolutionary explanations to other cognitive capacities.
I totally agree. I feel like evolutionary psychology has made valuable contributions to our understanding of human behavior, but it may need to be supplemented with other perspectives, such as cultural psychology, to account for the full range of human cognitive capacities and behaviors. Our lives have evolved beyond the ancestral environment, and contemporary human behavior is shaped by a wide range of factors that we need to take in account.
DeleteNatasha and Marine, good points. (But how would cultural psychology help cogsci reverse-engineer cognitive capacity?)
DeleteIn a similar way to what others suggest, I think that knowing aspects of cultural psychology would prove useful in certain contexts but not necessarily in the problem of reverse engineering cognition. Namely, understanding aspects of cultural psychology would focus on the ‘why’ behind an individual’s actions, rather than the ‘how’ that we are concerned with when talking about the hard problem. In this way, although there would be benefits to understanding a larger picture in reference to understanding why we behave the way we do, it does not account for the processes and mechanisms surrounding how we are able to do what we do, which is the real target of cognitive science.
DeleteHi everyone, very interesting thought! I agree that cultural psychology is always important to consider when we are thinking about the influence of external factors on human behaviour! I think the framework presented in this article does account for this when postulating the “design features”, specifically how the cognitive machinery interacts with the environment to enable us to solve the adaptive problem. I will preface this by saying I agree that evolutionary psychology does not help us answer the hard problem, but as a thought experiment, let me take a stab at an example: adaptive problems like survival and mating may look different from the prehistoric age, but we are still faced with these challenges today and they still, in theory, motivate the development of psychological mechanisms to solve these problems. For example, finding a mate is still biological ingrained in us, even though the dating territory is very different given the development of technology, infrastructure, and exponential increases in the global population. Thus, a potential adaptation which may improve the likelihood of finding a mate may involve developing passions/hobbies, whereby one might increase the likelihood of finding a mate in an environment of a shared interest (music, art, cycling, outdoor activities). We could hypothesize about the cognitive faculties which allow us to select, based on cost-benefit analyses, which hobbies would suit us best (ex.: problem solving abilities, assessment of our own personal skills, immediate pleasure). Finally, we might also postulate specific design features of this adaptive mechanism, thus we could identify social, cultural, and other environmental inputs that may influence the thoughts and feelings that the mechanism produces, and thus, which hobbies are more likely in what environments.
DeleteJenny, perhaps the biggest challenge to EvoPsych is the everpresent possibility that humans do things (especially cognitive things) because they learn to, or because they have thought about it, not because their ancestors EEA challenges built it into their genes.
DeleteKristi, I don't think you are talking about the "Hard Problem" (what's that?) but about the HOW problem -- and that, in the sex/spider domain to which EvoPsych is best suited.
This systematic guide for incorporating evolutionary thinking into psychological research presented more methods (categories) than I would have previously imagined derived from Darwinism. Melika brought up the important point that although it gives very good insight into the WHY we do things the way we do, it does not solve HOW. Is it therefore completely useless to our easy problem or can we apply it some ways? Could we, for example, use the variable output that we observe and explain thanks to evolutionary psychological research to variation in cultural/gender factors in cognitive science studies that directly tackle the HOW? Would we gain insight in the HOW problem by trying to distinguish the proximal and distal causes to the cognitive processes we are studying? Are these valid applications and are there others?
ReplyDeleteCsenge, good questions. Put another way: can EvoPsych answer either how- or why-questions that go beyond sex or serpents?
DeleteI am also fascinated by this question! Answer for me is no. It seems like cognition is not the central topic or what EvoPsych could reveal. Either top-down or bottom-up researching approach in EvoPsych starts from the notable phenomena to figure out a particular adaptive problem. While both approaches contain algorithm or computation as part of study, the latter is merely a middle stage and remains as the black box.
DeleteIn additional (maybe off-topic), it seems like that the topic we interest, thinking, is against the animal spirits within us (prefer comfort, seek advantages and avoid disadvantages). While maybe what push we think is to be more competitive in mate selection, there needs complex process of reasoning and a lot of info - an inconvenient way.
Hi Evelyn, you voiced my thoughts about EvoPsych perfectly. Throughout, the paper repeatedly made mention of inputs and outputs, with the middle-level theories attempting to explain the algorithm that mediates between. It talks about needing to know the WHY (adaptive problem) that a psychological mechanism needs to solve and HOW it operates in variable contexts. Its clear EvoPsych is interested in a different HOW, as many others have already said. What's interesting to me is that EvoPsych seems to be some sort of second-coming for behaviourism. A study that seems to be more interested in inputs and outputs this time acknowledging the existence of mental states in the blackbox but once again making no attempt to explain it.
DeleteEvelyn and Ishan, good points. There is something behavioristic about (human) EvoPsych, despite the talk about "modelling" and "top-down" vs. "bottom-up." Ad, beyond the s/s domain it really sounds like pop-psych.
DeleteHi Evelyn!
DeleteI thought that your last observation was quite thought-provoking. I was looking for a comment that would raise the crucial point about the nature of evolutionary psychology and its propensity to focus on our 'animal spirits' or instinctual behaviors, often overlooking the intricate aspects of human thinking/cognition.
EvoPsych focuses on the why we do the things we do (disregarding the how) but the question raised was “can it answer either how- or why- questions that go beyond sex or serpents?” My intuition here would be that understanding the proximal causes of our thinking often requires a different lens - one that cognitive psychology provides by studying the computations that underlie our cognitive abilities. It seems to provide theories and “Just-So” Stories that are less underdetermined.
That being said, Csenge, your comment made me think. Our ‘animal spirits’ may drive the basic motives and inclinations EvoPsych tries to account for, but it’s in the human capacity for reasoning and complex thought that we find the nexus between our primal instincts and our cognitive prowess. Can EvoPsych and CogSci intersect more effectively to bridge the gap? Can we explore how our evolutionary heritage shaped the way we think and problem-solve today? Does the answer to the easy problem all lie in our ability to categorize?
Perhaps, the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of human cognition are not as separate as they seem. In the reading, the homicide simulation section showed how computer generated models of evolution can help reverse-engineer HOW the murder-immunity gene spreads as well.
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DeleteMamoune, it's my turn to react to a comment that raises some interesting questionings. And that answers some questions I still had after having read the paper. Thank you for explaining so well the links that relate evolutionary psychology to all the rest of the topics we've covered in the class so far. However, I would like to answer to one of the questions you are proposing: Does the answer to the easy problem all lie in our ability to categorize?
DeleteI'd say that maybe, but that evolutionary psychology is not they key to answer the easy problem, because it does not necessarily offer the capacity to categorize, like cogsci does.
I am slightly confused about how much we can rely on a bottom-up approach to figure out what psychological adaptation may be responsible for producing a phenomenon. Considering that not every behaviour has one underlying cause, would a bottom-up approach not give rise to the possibility that we miss other causes of/influences on a certain behaviour? I would argue that a top-bottom approach has more certainty than a bottom-up approach. I do think that both methods are interesting and have different advantages maybe, but I am just curious as to how much we’d rely on these approaches.
ReplyDeletetop-down* has more certainty...
DeleteThe distinction between the bottom-up and top-down approaches in understanding psychological phenomena is actually very interesting. It raises questions about the reliability of each method.
DeleteA potential argument in favor of the top-down approach is its capacity to provide greater certainty by initially identifying an adaptive problem and then a hypothesized adaptation. This is a systematic method that offers a structured framework for generating/testing predictions.
However, the bottom-up approach provides a very important perspective on incidental effects or evolutionary byproducts. Although these occurrences may not demonstrate the functional outcomes of psychological adaptations, they can emerge as byproducts. Understanding these unintentional effects can shed light on the complex structure of psychological systems and their importance in various situations, such as the problem of racial prejudice described in the reading.
It's important to recognize that each method has advantages and disadvantages.
Selin, Julide, don't assume that everything I assign to read is there to be admired! "Top-down" and "bottom-up" became a popular weasel-word for theory-based and data-based explanations. What do they mean here?
DeleteI am wondering whether the field of evolutionary psychology could help in the symbol grounding problem. The field would suggest that language might've evolved to help us survive and reproduce. Being able to communicate abstract ideas and share info about threats and resources could've been a big advantage. Studying how such a cognitive ability evolved might tell us how our minds got wired for symbols and language.
ReplyDelete
DeleteThis is an interesting point. We can explore the cognitive evolutionary mechanisms that may have led to the emergence of symbol grounding by drawing conclusions from the reading. Studying how language helps in fostering collaboration, organizing communal tasks, and passing down essential information through generations can offer a deeper understanding of the evolutionary basis of our cognitive abilities related to symbols and language. It can also be helpful to analyze how the cognitive processes associated with symbol grounding could have developed as a consequence of other adaptive cognitive mechanisms, considering the concept of incidental byproducts discussed in the reading. The complex mechanisms enabling symbol grounding may be better understood by delving into the interaction between various cognitive processes and their potential incidental effects.
Aimée, Julide: kid-sib says trying to explain the evolution of language in terms of its adaptive advantages sound reasonable in principle (since the capacity for language is clearly a genetic trait, unique to our species). But now what? What were its advantages, and how/why did it evolve? (Week 8). But no Just-So Stories, please!
DeleteAs several comments have already mentioned, it doesn't seem like evolutionary psych will be particularly useful for the project of reverse-engineering. But I don't think that means we should dismiss its role in cognitive science completely.
ReplyDeleteEvolutionary psych does seem like it can help us with questions like how and why we're attracted to certain people or afraid of snakes, and while it won't alone be able to explain the causal mechanisms of more complex abilities like language, understanding how our cognitive abilities developed could be helpful in generating hypotheses and identifying evolutionary constraints, all of which could provide guidance in our task of reverse-engineering.
I'd argue, in essence, while our evolutionary past provides a foundation for understanding human behaviour, incorporating perspectives like cultural psychology is essential to grasp the full spectrum of our cognitive capacities and behaviours in today's diverse and rapidly changing world. The field of evolutionary biology has undoubtedly shed light on our cognitive and behavioural tendencies based on our evolutionary history. However, cultural factors play a significant role in shaping human behaviour. Our ancestrally identical minds have now been forced to adapt to tasks like using smartphones, which weren't part of our ancestral environment. This is an example of how evolutionary psych may be limited in it's ability to solely reverse-engineer.
DeleteNicolas, I agree with your point, I think that is it best to use evolutionary psychology as one of many helpful tools in understanding cognition, because it does not explain everything. That being said, I challenge your idea that evolutionary perspectives can't account for something like us knowing how to use a smartphone. Taking a bottom up approach, the ability to use a smartphone with the effortlessness we do requires motor coordination to be able to type quickly without necessarily looking at the keyboard, which could be related to evolutionarily adaptive traits like cognitive plasticity and capacity for "muscle memory" that allow us to quickly learn new skills for survival and take our limited cognitive resources off of repetitive motions. While smartphones might not have been in our ancestral environments, it doesn't mean features in our ancestral environments didn't help select for the traits that help us with our smartphones.
DeleteHi Adrienne, I also hold the opinion that unfortunately, while evolutionary psychology has the opportunity to question and identify why we developed cognitions and behaviours and why they may still be adaptive in our lives today(which look very different and yes, includes cell-phones), that it doesn't hold the key to reverse engineering.
DeleteI however, challenge your challenge that evolutionary biology accounts for our ability to know how to use and hold a smartphone. We didn't evolve in an environment with the smartphone wherein individuals likelihood of survival or reproduction was impacted positively or negatively by being able to use it. Our opposable thumbs and colour-vision did not give us an advantage that led us to be able to use the cellphone after generations of selection, rather we created the cell-phone and tailored it to our already evolved capacities. Infact, I think in terms of our biology and survival mechanisms, cellphones have a net negative effect on our chances of survival by causing more sedative behaviours, and eye-strain as well as changing the behaviour of our neurotransmitters. What is interesting about cellphones though, is that the evolutionary capacity and drive to communicate that we know to be true of humans is demonstrated here. You may be more likely to find a mate if you have a smartphone now, with online dating, and you may have a better chance of survival, if you are able to call for help when you need it.
While evolutionary psychology (EvoPsych) holds a valuable space in cognitive science, I agree with Elliot that it may not be directly helpful for the reverse-engineering problem. In my discussion post, I will highlight what some students discussed and my belief that EvoPsych can solve and can not help with.
DeleteEvoPsych illuminates aspects of human behavior, especially those related to nutrition, kinship, mating, and ecological threats. As noted by Nicolas, cultural psychology is also important for understanding our cognitive abilities in consideration of today's modern changes. However, I agree with Evelyn You that the 'how' during those intermediate stages remains a black box.
Still, the bottom-up approach could offer insights into understanding foundational abilities as Adrienne pointed out with smartphones and a better understanding of our motor abilities, cognitive plasticity, and muscle memory. I also agree with Josie's perspective on the survival mechanism of smartphones. While smartphones have made some people more sedated, it increases mating chances. There are cognitive abilities that can be studied about people through new technology.
In this context and in relation to ChatGPT reverse-engineer and cognition, integrating new technology that ChatGPT needs to rely on--like smartphones did to us--might demonstrate a better understanding of 'how' ChatGPT works. This method could study the proximal causes--"immediate causes of
a behavior or mental process" as well as how it developed in their lifespan, like what Adrienne and Josie discussed with phone usage in people. Moreover, as mentioned in the EvoPsych reading, understanding both proximal and distal is "essential for understanding the frequently misunderstood and mischaracterized relationship between sociocultural and evolutionary hypotheses." So, using EvoPsych, there may be a workaround for categorizing how reverse-engineering cognition can be done.
On another topic, this reading made me consider that, with ChatGPT's big gulp, there are also cultural factors that affect its output and inner workings because most of the information that it swallowed is from the last decade or few.
Hi Adrienne, I agree with your point! I also struggle with the function of evolutionary psychology, and the utility of the explanations they provide, when it comes to our interest in reverse-engineering cognition. However, I agree that some of the processes outlined in this paper are think to note when considering the questions presented in this class. The process of task analysis, as outlined in this paper, stuck out to me. The process of questioning “what psychological machinery and behavioural outputs would help solve this adaptive problem (360)?” is interesting in light of our discussions of how we are able to do what we are able to do. Further, the authors highlight the importance of following top-down theorizing with “testable predictions suggested by the proposed adaptation,” in order for the proposed explanation to go beyond pure speculation—how can we create these testable predictions to build on the questions posed this course? (362)
DeleteI think that evolutionary psychology, even with the limitations previous commenters have already discussed (for example, these theories may help us craft a theory for WHY we can do what we do, but not HOW), can be used as an additional guide or framework in attempts to reverse-engineer cognition. How can the processes/tools proposed in this paper be used or adapted to reverse-engineer cognition?
Elliott, you've made a good case for EvoPsych in explaining s/s. But how does that help with explaining cognitive capacities?
DeleteNicolas, isn't the most direct way to explain learnable cultural practices to explain the capacity to learn?
Adrienne, yes, we evolved the capacity to use (and make) smart-phones, among other things. But how does that explain that capacity, or even how or why we evolved it? (Note that this objection does not apply to s/s tendencies -- though even those are culturally variable and modifiable.)
Josie, yes, a smart-phone may help find a mate, but do you really think that's the level at which such gadgets (among them: ChatGPT) are significant for cognitive explanation?
Daniel, very good synthesis -- this discussion thread was quite rich -- and highlighted the controversy.
Shona: good questions: what are your answer to them?
I think it gives us an idea of why these capacities developed, for example individuals who had greater cognitive flexibility might have had a better chance at learning new skills for survival. It does not seem to explain HOW they developed though, which leaves us at a loss for reverse-engineering cognitive capacity.
DeleteI think that to answer some of the questions posed by this course (for example, how do we form categories? How much positive/negative feedback do we need to form categories? And ultimately, how can we do what we do?) we can use computer modelling to try and determine the circumstances and situations which have allowed our cognitive processes to evolved as they have. I remember from a previous weeks reading that used an artificial-life model to demonstrate how categories can be learned, and the differences between trial-and-error feedback and learning through hearsay. Further, we have also discussed the use of neural nets as a model of supervised learning. I think these method could be adapted to help us answer the salient questions in cognitive science--with the added benefit that animal research is not required. However, as discussed throughout this course there are some things that cannot be modelled, namely feeling, which may be a limit to using this methodology.
DeleteEvolutionary psychology appears to be the basis of many other cognitive and behavioral theories, from which emerge testable hypotheses.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that struck me, is the diversity of questions that can be constructed using one same basis. As explained in this article, evolutionary theory can lead to the construction of middle level theories (the example being the theory of kin selection) which in turn leads to specific hypotheses. Using this model, researchers are able to address one single aspect from many different perspectives, using different cues to refer to the same construct, which in the given example was sibling’s recognition.
Another aspect that I found really interesting about the evolutionary perspective is the methodology used to find out how a problem may have been overcome. This Top-down approach, as opposed to the bottom-up one beginning with observations, starts with identifying a problem before the “psychological equipment” used to solve this problem. To me, it seems that this approach is closer to reverse-engineering the human brain than the bottom-up approach. If we begin with observations, we might be able to understand what is in front of us but not necessarily how we solve it. By starting to identify a problem that has been solutioned, we can solve the question of how we adapted to our environment to overcome the obstacle, and thus, understand how a specific behavior arose, and why.
DeleteAdrien, maybe, but it would sure help if you gave a few concrete examples. Even with reverse-engineering the heart, knowing that the problem it solved was circulating blood does not tell you how it does it; ditto for a car, or a rocket.
DeleteSome comments have expressed doubt that evolutionary psych can explain the "why" behind truly cognitive abilities like language and categorization. I think an evolutionary psychologist would disagree. They would say instead the compositionality of human language, which is what distinguishes it from animal communication, is a byproduct arising from the ability to communicate about threats and work together to solve problems, once these communications achieve a certain level of complexity. As for categorization, I believe that identifying one's kin is a form of categorization, and the reading mentions an evolutionary explanation for that (altruistic behaviour towards your kin increases the chances of survival of your shared genes). And isn't the very definition of categorization - doing the right thing with the right kind of thing - an evolutionary explanation for its existence (doing the right thing with the right kind of thing is advantageous to your survival, and doing the wrong thing harms your chances)? An evolutionary psychologist would be able to come up with an evolutionary explanation for any cognitive capacity at all, because it is a tenet of evolutionary psych that any features of a species, barring new mutations, have been selected for by the environment, or they would not exist in their current form.
ReplyDeleteI think an evolutionary psychologist would be wrong to claim with certainty that an evolutionary psychological explanation for a cognitive capacity is the correct explanation. It is worthwhile to consider that any evidence seeming to support an evolutionary hypothesis for why a causal mechanism developed is not enough to show that the hypothesis is correct. Different, conflicting hypotheses can give equally valid explanations over the same set of evidence for why we have evolved a causal mechanism that produces a particular cognitive capacity. There is the additional consideration that the cognitive capacity in question, which we’ve attributed to a particular causal mechanism, may exist as a byproduct of a different mechanism entirely, as shown in your example with language. It seems to me that an evolutionary psychologist could give an explanation for the "why" of any cognitive capacity, but that this explanation would suffer from underdetermination in almost all cases.
DeleteThat's a good point to integrate with last week's focus! I would say the argument regarding evolutionary psychology's ability to explain cognitive abilities like language and categorization is valid to an extent. Evolutionary psychologists indeed seek to provide explanations for cognitive capacities based on the principles of natural selection. The compositionality of human language, distinct from animal communication, could possibly arise as a byproduct of complex communication about threats and problem-solving, once it reaches a certain level of sophistication. Furthermore, the identification of one's kin does involve categorization, supported by an evolutionary explanation rooted in the advantages of altruistic behavior toward shared genes. However, while evolutionary psychology can explain the existence and origins of cognitive capacities through "reverse hypothesis", it still doesn't always delve into the specific mechanisms underlying cognitive processes. For example, it may not offer a detailed account of the neurological and psychological processes involved in categorization or language, which is where cognitive science provides a more comprehensive understanding by investigating how we perform these cognitive tasks.
DeleteAya, there is much more than compositionality that distinguishes language from other forms of communication. Propositionality is a much more fundamental feature (but that doesn't explain itself either). And "complexity" is a weasel-word. Countless species can learn categories, so that doesn't tell us much about the evolution of the human capacity either.
DeleteAdam, remember Week 1? No empirical scientist can claim an explanation is correct with certainty. They're all underdetermined. (Why not? What are the only two kinds of truths we can claim with certainty?) But some explanations are a lot more underdetermined than others. Just-So Stories are examples. (So, your point is basically right.)
Kristie, whether or what EvoPsych explains depends on what you count as an explanation: What is an explanation? (Week 1).
I found this reading very interesting because it proposes that evolutionary psychology should be incorporated in human psychology research as it could provide important insights. I think that the incorporation of evolutionary psychology perspective to explain aspects of psychology such as human behavioral or cognitive capacities could be beneficial. For example, in the reading, the authors placed a lot of emphasis on mate selection and how the decision-making process of choosing a mate influenced an organism’s chances of reproduction and survival. Indeed, the authors described that a mother has a higher parental investment than that of the father due to the process of gestation, birth, and lactation, which consequently leads females to put more effort into their mate selection. The authors interpreted this as a possible hypothesis for women as being more careful when choosing a mate. However, even if evolutionary psychology appears to offer a solution as to why we have certain behaviors or cognitive capacities, it does not explain how we got to have these responses. I think that an evolutionary psychologist could reply and say that the how is evolution, but in our quest to solve the easy problem of cognition to then be able to move on to the hard problem, evolutionary psychology does not offer the full answer. Another example that can illustrate my position is that we can know why we have a fear of snakes, as it maybe evolved as a special attention/defense system to avoid poisoning, but we don’t know how this fear mechanism came to be.
ReplyDeleteValentina, there's no question but that EvoPsych is in its home territory in explaining s/s, in all species, including humans. The question is the extent to which that carries over into explanation of cognitive capacities.
DeleteThis article presented an interesting and thorough analysis of what in their eyes are best practices for applying evolutionary perspectives to theories of cognition. I especially appreciate their emphasis on pushing scientists to be methodologically rigorous in testing. As someone who is not an evolutionary scientist, it has always struck me as a difficult field to navigate (especially in terms of interpreting behavioural adaptations) as we have to make best guesses about the most probable reason something would arise without being able to confirm with certainty (at least, as much certainty as you can have with causal tests of necessity and sufficiency). The fact that we already don’t have answers to the hard question makes trying to use it to guide interpretations of evolutionary phenomena seem intractable.
ReplyDeleteMadeleine, the fact that you can't do (much) experimental testing of evolutionary hypotheses, especially in humans, is a handicap for evolutionary explanation. But with cognitive capacities, it's even harder, because it's not clear that looking for an s/s style of explanation is even the right way to go. (Why?)
DeleteEvolutionary psychology addresses the main question of “why,” or in other words, the reason why we do things. This aspect of evolutionary psychology could ultimately provide some valuable insights for answering the “how” that causal relationships entail. However, evolutionary psychology is not the exact answer to the “how” questions or causality the field of cognitive science investigates. More so, it could serve as a tool for the task of reverse-engineering.
ReplyDeleteIn the context of animal behavior, environmental factors lead to adaptations in living organisms. The fact that changes in humans and non-human animals are mainly centered around increasing chances of survival is an interesting theme that I emphasized in my previous skywritings. Living organisms are attempting to reduce uncertainty (using supervised learning, for example)--- they want to focus on features that promote their survival. The reading addresses examples where trial-and-error feedback learning would work, such as when one organism may be injured by another. The issue will not result in death, and the organism, because it has now experienced the consequences, will learn how to improve its chances for survival. This is also demonstrated in the table the reading provides. It summarizes issues living organisms experience in their environment, and the adaptive responses that result because of them. For example, an animal’s survival would rely on being able to detect specific features that hint that an object could be poisonous— and they develop these adaptive specializations in order to be able to identify these crucial aspects of the environment.
Michelle, there is no question but that all of our genetic capacities and dispositions -- vegetative, s/s, and cognitive -- have evolved. But it does not follow from that that reflecting on the survival value of capacities will reveal how, or even why they evolved, any more than reflecting on the valence (positive or negative) of feedback would explain supervised learning.
DeleteOthers have spoken about the fact that it gives us a why but not a how but what is it about the why that fails to deliver the how when it specifically comes to learning? A random gene mutation of a feature detector for 6 legs that causes an avoidance response works great for things like spiders but not so well for language. A random gene might give me an ability to make or understand more diverse sounds but how does that help me evolutionarily before it can amount to language? A gene mutation can't make me understand what grunt my friend arbitrarily decides means poison even given the fact that that would be extremely helpful to my survival.
ReplyDeleteHi Marie,
DeleteAfter reading the article, I think it’s also important to consider what they said about byproducts as phenomena of other adaptations. They also empahsize the potential coexistance of sociocultrual explanations in psychological evolution. I think in this case it might be more complicated than just saying that a gene mutation will make you understand what grunt your friend arbitrarily decides means poison. While I do not specifically have the answer to your question, I think the authors did a good job introducing a specific model to study why evolutionary adaptations occured while also considering all the different factors that could have had an impact on those adaptations and on their expression. Feel free to respond if I missed/didn’t understand something.
Marie, you may be being too stern with evolutionary explanations: They do work for s/s, after all, but once you've evolved enough cognitive capacity, cognitive explanations (in terms of learning, reasoning, culture, hearsay, memes) compete with genetic s/s explanations.
DeleteLili, "by-product" can be a weasel-word for the failure to find a plausible Just-So Story. We'll talk about that in Chapter 7-8 when we get to "spandrels" and the attempts to explain the origins of Chomsky's Universal Grammar (UG).
In this week's reading, researchers propose an evolutionary theory to explain human psychology through a stepwise approach. They begin by identifying specific survival or reproduction-related problems in ancestral human environments which involves gaining knowledge and evaluating the surroundings. The top-down theory outlines the integration of sensory, perceptual, and physiological systems that are involved. An essential concept discussed is the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA), which represents the selective pressures shaping specific adaptations. A clear point was made on the misconception that there is a single "human EEA," emphasizing distinct EEAs for each adaptation. I am wondering how the absence of a sensorimotor system in machines might challenges these theories, as the perceived environment may differ. For instance, machines cannot distinguishing the impact between mosquito bites and consuming tiny poisonous mushrooms without the sensory experience and feedback. To really understand human cognition in the 'how', are we afterall just lacking an advanced T3 robot which we could more easily generalize and reverse-engineer the pathways?
ReplyDeleteEvolutionary psychology plays a significant role in cognitive science, particularly in the realm of reverse engineering. For instance, on the intermediate-level theory of kin selection which assists in predicting human behavior in their development. The pivotal pursuit of evolutionary psychology is to unravel the predicaments of our ancestral environment and decipher how these intricacies influenced our mental state in heredity.
ReplyDeleteFor cognitive science, comprehending such mechanisms is critical to facilitating reverse engineering. This understanding of the end-goal of cognitive development can significantly enhance our ability to target specific functions and mechanisms. Therefore, once a goal is properly established, it leads the way for a more efficient and effective targeting of specific operational functions and structures.Thus, some black-box will be solved and it is easier to locate the mental activity with actual functions.
There are undoubtedly significant challenges to consider, particularly in categories that evolutionary psychology struggles to address, like mirror neurons. Although mirror neurons can be discovered through evolutionary processes, these alone don't provide sufficient grounding to reverse engineer an AI machine to the complexity of a T2-T3 level.
DeleteBeyond computation, evolution plays a part in cognitive development, yet there remain numerous unsolved elements. Unless we can accurately determine their proportions and values, we remain unable to fully realize cognitive science with its reverse-engineering along through the sole lenses of Darwinian evolution and computation.
The key point perhaps lies in integrating these two aspects with the broader dimensions of cognitive and neurological sciences and evolution.
Jia-Jun, please read the replies to the other skywritings.
DeleteI liked that the author really emphasized that there is no single "EEA" for a given species or even for a given behaviour (ex. the adaptation of flight in birds depends on adaptations preceding the EEA of flight, which all have EEAs of their own). This (once again—sorry) makes me think of language, and how the majority of biolinguists posit that language arises from a single mutation (some mutation that fostered the psychological correlate of the "Merge" operation; given that here we understand "language" to mean our ability to generate and detect grammatical sentences, independent of other mechanisms involved in actual language use such as memory, sensorimotor systems, etc.). I wonder how an evolutionary psychologist interested in the origin of language might go about specifying its EEA, especially since (I imagine) it would be very difficult to isolate an evolutionary explanation for language from the other mechanisms I mentioned above.
ReplyDeleteignore the quotation marks around EEA in the first line
DeleteJordan, we'll discuss language in Weeks 8 and 9. Language is not just Universal Grammar (UG) and "Merge." But it's certainly not explained as s/s either.
DeleteThis paper provided a rigorous framework for applying evolutionary approaches in psychology, refining my perception of evolutionary psychology as a narrative explanation that may not be easily empirically tested. What intrigues me is that, as depicted in the paper, the evolutionary perspectives seem to focus solely on the most recent phase of human evolution, without considering any preceding steps before hominids. While the most recent phase of human evolution is undoubtedly more pertinent to social psychology, I believe this may not hold true for cognitive psychology. Our cognitive abilities originated from a more primitive nervous system during a time when the adaptive problems were likely quite different. I think that an evolutionary approach to cognition could be beneficial by starting further down the evolutionary path when our cognitive abilities were rudimentary, making them more accessible for comprehension and modeling. From these rudimentary models, potentially simulated using computers, we could gradually construct more intricate models of cognition. Gaining insights into the cognition of animals could probably offer a reasonable approximation of the cognitive capabilities of our ancestors. But I think that this is already a pursued avenue in the field of Cognitive Science.
ReplyDeleteJoann, good points. Read 7b.
DeleteBased on the earlier comments, the general consensus seems to be that evolutionary psychology will not be able to give us an answer to why we do what we do. It could however be integrated into our reverse-engineering approach.
ReplyDeleteUsing the top down approach, we identify, for example, a rare adaptive problem like that of homicide, and hypothesize what psychological capacity could solve this problem. Reverse-engineering could follow this framework in which we see an adaptive problem then try to find a solution for it.
Fiona, sounds rather vague -- and as if it would lead straight into Just-So Stories...
DeleteBased on my understanding, one reason for studying evolutionary psychology is to help us to solve the question: whether the capacity of thinking, and cognition, is an incidental byproduct, or is the result of EEA. However, the boundary of cognition is blurry and evolutionary principles cannot help with identifying the “how” and “why” questions. There are too many different interpretations of a single phenomenon in adaptedness, and yet it is criticized as just-so stories because of a lack of solid evidence. One way of interpreting EP is that it helps with the bottom-up process of understanding cognition in separating details; however, I am not confident that EP can address hard problems individually.
ReplyDeleteHi Eugene! I agree with your assessment that Evolutionary Psychology (EP) can’t give us the answer to the hard problem on its own, especially given the vagueness and potential for errors in the area of “Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness” or EEA. But, I think EP still has some use as a tool in studying cognition, even if it doesn’t have all the answers. You mentioned that it could be useful in terms of helping us with the bottom-up aspect of understanding cognition; as a few other people have mentioned, I think EP’s support of categorization is key in this process. As we’ve talked about in class, categorization is a key aspect of cognition that allows us to understand and adapt to our surroundings. I think EP is a worthwhile area of study in that it allows us to delve into what mechanisms support categorization and how our categorization skills have developed over generations, even if it doesn’t answer the “how” and “why” questions on its own.
DeleteEugene, never mind the "hard problem": Can s/s EvoPsych address the how/why "easy problems" of cognition?
DeleteLili, how does EvoPsych explain "how our categorization skills have developed over generations"? And what does (the weasel-word") "developed" mean here?
A lot of the examples given in the articles of evolutionary adaptations are dependent on our ability to categorize. For example, determining kinship that allows us to show more altruistic behaviors for kins than for non-kin and to avoid incest, or racial prejudice, a by-product of greater trust for ingroups than for outgroups, or even choosing a mate. For all of those, we are required to be able to discriminate between an ingroup and an outgroup to ensure our survival or reproduction or a beneficial vs neutral or even maladaptive feature. This shows that, in the context of evolution, categorization is central for us to navigate the world as it guides our attention that drives our behaviors. By reverse engineering these output adaptive behaviors, we can trace back the mechanisms that led to them. I am wondering if, at least for psychological adaptations, it all comes down to this special ability we have to categorize, whether aware of it or not, as the first step of the main explanatory mechanism.
ReplyDeleteMitia, what is categorization? We share it with all species capable of reinforcement learning!
DeleteAlthough their paper focuses on research methods, Lewis & Al-Shawaf describe the importance of categorization in evolutionary psychology. For example, in the kin recognition hypothesis, there are multiple cues (environmental, social, linguistic, phenotypic) through which organisms are able to distinguish between — and to categorize — siblings and non-siblings. As offspring from siblings yield high rates of congenital birth defects and death, we can argue that incest aversion is an adaptive mechanism, a “must-solve feature”, which increases reproductive success. This process is facilitated by the capacity to categorize.
ReplyDeleteAnaïs, see reply above to Mitia. Don't get carried away with EvoPsych hermeneutics!
DeleteCategorization has always been a crucial adaptation tool for humans in the face of the “hostile forces of nature”. Early humans had to discern between what was safe and dangerous, an essential "must-solve heuristic" leading to behavioral outputs that solve the adaptive problem. Those who couldn't effectively categorize potential dangers likely faced elimination over time. Can we assert that this influenced the innate categories we possess today? Categorization's role in improvement is equally important. We categorize to understand, adapt, and enhance our world. Does our ability to categorize fundamentally shape our evolutionary path? However, evolutionary psychology itself still does not explain the formation of the mental processes needed to overcome the adaptive problem.
ReplyDeleteRosalie, read preceding 2 replies...
DeleteEvolutionary psychology (EP) appears to be a powerful method of modelling, understanding, and predicting human human behaviour. However, there is a tendency to generate “Just-so” stories to explain behaviour, which we should be cognisant of. Though it is not mentioned directly in this paper, the gist of the advice within it is to follow the cornerstone of the scientific method: generating testable and falsifiable hypotheses, distinguishable through empirical research.
ReplyDeleteI think there's a fundamental issue that often gets overlooked when generating these theories, related to “environment of evolutionary adaptiveness" (EEA). The EEA concept is often too vague to predict the exact biological changes that could have resulted in a particular behavior. Why? Because biological evolution involves a lot of randomness, like mutations in our DNA. So, even if we know the 'why'—the survival benefit—a particular behavior might have, we still can't be certain about the 'how'—the specific biological mechanism that makes it happen. In other words, EvoPsyc. is not enough: it can be useful in uncovering broad patterns in human behaviour, but often will be limited to these broad patterns.
Thomas, there's no doubt that evolution shaped us, as it did every living organism. But evolution is LAZY. Wherever possible, "it prefers" (which means it's simpler, cheaper and faster) to "offload" adaptation onto predictable features of the environment - or onto learning (and language, in the case of our species) rather than genetic modifications.
DeleteThe authors begin by describing the evolutionary theory as “a framework for understanding the distal causal processes responsible for creating functionally organized organic mechanism,” but as I read on, I began to wonder if this framework has much validity or reliability. For if the evolutionary theory is primarily based on a framework, which this framework relies are either the beginning setup of the top-down approach or the output conclusion of the down-top approach that is not universal solid. And since many of us believe that the evolutionary psychology does not contribute to reverse-engineering cognition, does this imply that the two approaches customarily used in evolutionary psychology do not contribute to establishing reviser-engineering cognition either.
ReplyDeleteJinyu, it's not that our cognitive capacities are not created by evolution, it is that sometimes what is created is a general purpose capacity rather than some dedicated reproductive or predator-protective purpose. What are memes?
DeleteFrom my understanding, a meme is a trait that looks like a genetic trait but is picked up from others (i.e. it is not a trait coded in genes like blue eyes).
DeleteMimicking (mirror neurons, for example) is a source of memes; it looks like a gene and behaves like one (it spreads in a population).
As others have mentioned before I think there is only so much Evolutionary Psychology can explain. It provides a causal explanation for some of the things we do: we do this now because some time before the environment pressured us to adapt. However, they propose adaptation is strictly through natural selection and do not give an account of other reasons genes might have spread more. Mutations are random which means that a gene could be replicated for reasons other than environmental pressure. As well, although it provides an explanation for 'why' these faculties emerged it does not explain how.
ReplyDeleteEmma, it's not about genes replicating, it's about organisms reproducing (hence replicating our genes). And for (some) s/s traits, it's fairly obvious why they were adaptive. The missing "how" is not about how the mutation occurred; it is about cognitive capacities, which need a mechanism, not just a gene.
DeleteWhat also is intriguing is that could our capability in learning and language evolved the same way as sex and serpents? If all our capabilities, like categorization, language, and learning, are results of natural selection in a similar way as sex and serpent evolved, what kind of selective pressure has driven these adaptations? And since language and learning are so universal in every individual, it must have been vital to our species’ survival. However, to say that everything is evolution is not helpful because, as other comments have mentioned, it is difficult to test hypotheses about evolution. And yet, if language and learning, and categorisation arise in humans due to different reasons than evolution, what could be the reason?
ReplyDeleteTina, there still seems to be a lot of confusion here about evolution. For example, sexual jealousy and fear of serpents are clearly shaped by reproductive and survival consequences, easily inferred. Learning and language capacity evolved too, but determining (and especially testing) their reproductive/survival advantages is not so straightforward -- especially because, unlike sexual jealousy or arachnophobia, their reach extends far beyond their immediate survival/reproduction advantages.
DeleteIn the reading, the author mentions racial prejudice as an example of a byproduct of evolved psychological mechanism. Then the author describes a possible hypothesis as to why racial prejudice came out as a byproduct, where he states, “race-based prejudices arise as nonfunctional outputs of adaptations designed to track coalition or group membership”. The author explains that racial prejudice may have arisen due to humans’ natural instinct of “group membership”. It was really fascinating to find out that social problems like racism can be linked (related) to humans’ natural instinct (tendency). I wonder if there are any other social problems that stem due to our natural instincts.
ReplyDeleteEunsung, don't be so fascinated by what is almost certainly just a Just-So Story in this case. You have to be especially critical of adaptive hypotheses since they are based on so little evidence.
DeleteWhile I was reading this paper, the mechanism of EEA was really interesting to discover. If I have understood correctly, the author describes EEA as an ancestral surrounding, where species are adapted. It was really captivating to learn that our traits or tendencies that we have in the current day have been shaped due to our ancestor’s environment in the past. The example that the author gives is our “incest-aversion adaptations” and states that this may have formed due to selective pressures that favored incest-aversion adaptations, such as, “the need to find a reproductively viable mate and severe negative fitness consequences of genetic inbreeding”. This made me think of if our tendency to avert abuse and violence is also related to EEA.
ReplyDeleteHi Eunsung!
DeleteI find your observation on EEA quite intriguing. It's definitely interesting to consider how our current traits and tendencies have been shaped by the environments our ancestors lived in. The example of the aversion to incest and the selective pressures that led to them, i.e. the need to find a reproductively viable mate and avoid genetic inbreeding, shows us the complex interaction between our evolutionary past and our present-day behaviours. Your last thought on whether our tendency to avert abuse and violence could also be related to EEA is also thought-provoking. It's possible that behaviours and traits related to social cooperation and conflict avoidance could have been influenced by ancestral environments. I think this idea should be further explored perhaps in class.
The part about the human disease-avoidance system made me think of a similar behavior in dogs. When I went to a park, I saw two newly acquainted dogs basically sniffing each other from their rear ends the whole time. I was curious about why they were doing that and found out that dogs do that to determine how healthy the other dog is and kinship.
ReplyDeleteThis paper gives an outline on the evolutionary approach to human psychology. It describes many detailed conceptual and methodological tools to understand and explain the human mind and our behaviour. It helps us find out why we do the things we do - some things at least, like our primal instincts, but it is not enough to explain our cognitive capacities, let alone a modern thinker. Just as last week’s readings suggest that most things we do are learned instead of it being innate, so we should not depend on evolutionary psychology to find the answers we are looking for regarding cognition.
ReplyDeleteAs others said, even though evolutionary psychology might seem like a candidate for answering “why” we do the things we do, it doesn’t seem to help with reverse engineering cognitive capacities and rarely escapes from being a “just-so story”. Humans’ cognitive capabilities overall seem much broader than just adaptive functions like survival and reproduction, and EP has a tendency to disregard the role of learning. Yet, EP can also say that our ancestors' genes are the basis for our capacity to learn, but this seems like a non-testable loop that feels similar (to me) to psychoanalytic explanations of behavior. I was wondering if can evolutionary psychology ever help explain the “how” portion of the easy problem, or is it limited to “why”? Besides the “adaptive” explanations in response to explaining why we do things, can it provide answers about the causal path to how we can do the things we do? I would guess it would be dominantly biological explanations (maybe on a more molecular or cellular basis), but can it ever be useful to explain how we have cognitive capacities? Or does this question directly lead us back to somewhere similar to Fodor’s arguments on localization studies? Intuitively it feels like trying to uncover the “how” of cognitive capacities through evolution seems more plausible compared to trying to find neural correlates of cognition and behavior, but I am unsure if it can lead us anywhere.
ReplyDeleteMany of the previous comments have already pointed out exactly what I was thinking when reading this article, which was that evolutionary psychology can only take us as far as answering the “what” and “why” questions of cognition, without answering the all-mighty “how” question that we are so concerned about as cognitive scientists. The paper did offer some valuable insights about various methodologies and showed how we can test and hypothesize about abstract concepts such as cognition empirically, but I must admit I was relieved to see that a large majority of the comments before me had the same unsatisfied reaction to the findings of the paper. Regardless, I am interested about this week’s lecture as this week’s readings were significantly different than any of our focuses so far, and despite its shortcomings, the paper did offer a new perspective that is worth noting and discussing.
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned in the above comments, in cognitive science we study the how of human capacities, while causal models of adaptations to external environments provide the why to certain human behaviors. Further, it is more difficult to connect evolutionary models to unique human abilities such as communication than it is for mating practices for instance, so the hard question of why and for what way we feel remains unsolved. However I’m curious how we can use the theoretical ideas of this paper of integrating several levels of explanation into a cohesive model to better understand the hard problem. For instance, modeling methods such as predictive coding, that focus on decreasing uncertainty (or learning what information or inputs to pay more attention to) can help in one level of explanations as to how a human communicates; they need to not only pay attention to the person speaking to them but also incorporate the facial expressions and body language of that person. Further, interpreting correctly the feelings that the person speaking to us is experiencing will help us better respond to that person as well as predict what the person could say next. Thus without making claims to how the speaker experienced a feeling, we may still learn something about how those feelings guided the conversation and the behavior of the listener.
ReplyDeleteThe paper outlines two ways to generate hypotheses for evolutionary psychology. The first, which is a theory-driven and top-down approach, involves a systematic process of identifying specific adaptive problems that our ancestors faced in their environments followed by the articulation of the specific psychological equipment that could have been instrumental in solving these challenges. The second, which is an observation-driven and bottom-up approach, involves the observation of psychological phenomena and resulting behavior, followed by a reverse process in which we work backwards to propose the adaptive problem and potential adaptation that could have led to that phenomena and behavior. I believe that the top-down approach is most conducive to answering the question of how we do the things we do (i.e., this is the adaptive problem, here is the mechanism by which we solve it), and the bottom-up approach is most conducive to answering the question of why we do the things we do (i.e., here is what we do, what adaptive problem did we solve with it). Together, the two approaches should theoretically be able to answer the Easy Problem of psychology, which is how and why we do the things we do. At least, that is the goal of the paper: to outline a framework on how to study psychology from an evolutionary standpoint so that we can address the how and why of our cognitive abilities. However, I don’t believe the paper accomplishes this. Something about these two approaches to hypothesis generation seems very hand-wavy and wishy-washy to me (for lack of better words). I just can’t imagine that there would ever be a one-to-one correspondence between adaptive problems and cognitive abilities. By this I mean you could propose a myriad of different cognitive and psychological abilities to solve the same adaptive problem (top-down), and similarly you could propose a myriad of different adaptive problems that would have led to the same cognitive and psychological phenomena (bottom-up). This is a valiant attempt at the Easy Problem, and I believe that evolution and natural selection should definitely play a role in the answer, but I don’t think that the framework outlined in the paper is the way to go about it.
ReplyDeleteCognitive mechanisms were developed due to "evolutionary pressures" that as a by-prouduct, might have given us generic mathematical ability. If we can identify these mechanisms, then cogsi might be able to reverse-engineer them. Although we may not be interested in the processes themselves, they are needed to generate any incidental by-product such as generic mathematical ability.
ReplyDeleteAs a supplement to what someone above said, I think that evolutionary psychology might inform conversation on WHY humans think in our stereotypical ways such as to prevent survival threat and increase reproductive opportunity, but does little to explain the more proximal WHYs. While trading goods at the market certainly increased survival skills in early agrarian societies, it is hard to fathom how doom-scrolling, for instance, a behavior that many of our younger generation are subject to, could be profiting off evolutionary adaptivity. To word my thought a little more explicitly, I think that in a late-stage capitalism society, it could also be useful to think about the ways that companies might benefit from our 'built in' biases and behaviors to generate a profit (commercials, etc), and if sustained, the impact this could potentially have on human behavior. But separate from this point, I agree with the general concensus that while evolutionary psychology's concern is the WHY, the HOW of cog sci remains untouched. I am wondering, however, if achieving a sufficient amount of granularity about biological processes, (like cellular stress responses in a situation of survival threat for instance), might provide a base for understanding HOW the biology of humans correlates to a certain advantageous behavioral output.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThis sentence in the article impressed me deeply： "Evolutionary and sociocultural explanations are only in disagreement when they make con- tradictory claims about the proximate causes of a psychological phenomenon, and sometimes they do not. As such, evolu- tionary and sociocultural explanations are often logically compatible with one another" (G.Lewis & AI-Shawaf, 369-370)
There are some differences between evolutionary psychology and what I studied in social psychology.
Why evolutionary psychology and social culture have so many disagreements is because social culture contains many uncertain factors. It involves the culture of each country, the culture of each nation, different genders, the influence of the environment in which one grew up, and the influence of parents and friends.
Revolutionary psychology’s root lies in the issue of human ancestors. It is to determine the psychological adaptation and current evolution of human beings to solve the problems of human ancestors hundreds of years ago and thousands of years ago.
However, times are changing, and economic development is also changing. People's concepts of understanding the world, whether values or aesthetics, have changed to a certain extent, and they will be very different from what their ancestors knew then.
For example, the most familiar example is that men like women with sexy figures, while women like rich men.In fact, in this era, within the scope of my understanding, this concept has gradually disappeared and changed slightly. Because there are too many uncertain factors, if this evolutionary psychology is adapted to practice, it will also have different uncertain factors. There will be a complicated process to get the result we want.
ReplyDeleteThe article “Evolutionary Psychology: A How-To Guide'', briefly taps into some criticisms the field of evolutionary psychology faces. It says (p. 367) “misconception that evolutionary psychological hypotheses assume narrow developmental trajectories—for example, that mechanisms are present at birth, static, and insensitive to environmental input”. It then goes on about how evolutionary psychology is a descriptive science rather than a prescriptive one. This field of psychology helps in understanding how psychological mechanisms have evolved. Its purpose of the field is to understand the origins and functions of human behavior, not to provide moral judgments. Understanding the evolutionary basis of behaviors provides a more comprehensive view, which can be beneficial for interventions, education, and societal advancements.
This reminded me of the criticism over labels/diagnoses of mental illnesses that I hear a lot around me. I agree, it is quite common to blame certain behaviors on some diagnoses. I work with kids and behaviors and I get this a lot from their parents. It is true that a non-neurotypical individual might have to face some challenges to “fit-in” to our modern society. That being said, those diagnoses shouldn’t become excuses but rather a tool for one to understand how their brain works in order to adapt and develop their own strategies. For instance, a child with ADHD might have a hard time focusing in class and/or might be disturbing the class in some way. In such case, the parent should do their own research or talk with specialists to see what could be put into place in order for the child to be able to learn and not disturb their classmates in a classroom environment like putting them in sport, having fidget toys in class or sitting on an exercise ball rather than a typical chair.
Evolutionary psychology could potentially address the easy problem by offering insights into the evolutionary basis for our cognitive and behavioral capacities. This perspective considers how natural selection has favored specific genes that enhance an organism's ability to carry out functions essential for reproduction and survival. While the article outlines the adaptive challenges that evolutionary psychology might evaluate to understand why these abilities emerged, it does not adequately clarify the mechanisms through which these abilities are realized (the underlying process that enables us to perform our capabilities).
ReplyDeleteHi Kareem,
DeleteI agree with a lot of what you had to say and just wanted to add more to your skywriting. I agree that evolutionary psychology may help in addressing the easy problem, I believe it can only ever help us understand the why of why we do what we do as it paints a narrative of our cognition and doesn’t fully explain the how as many other skywritings have mentioned and yourself has mentioned. I also believe that although Evolutionary psychology can address some problems and presents a novel way of answering these questions, we should still be weary. Although the paper talks about environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) the field minimizes the effect of the environment on our cognition and other things it studies. Reducing cognition to just our genes I believe is harmful because part of our ability to constantly problem solve and keep up with the ever-changing environment requires said environment. Therefore, evolutionary psychology cannot be a complete answer on that front as well.
After reading this piece, I was left with thinking, what if somehow through the use of technology, we could change human hardwired evolutionary traits that are found within our DNA. For example, what if we could make someone have enhanced empathy and a better ability to connect deeply with others, while we make someone more likely to take risks and say precarious things. If this was possible, would we essentially lose what it means to be human? If we could in essence customize our evolutionary psychology, what would it even mean to be human? If we had the power to alter our evolutionary traits, what would be the ethical implications for societal values and individual identity? Would you still be you if you could pick and choose what traits you thought you needed for every day activities or even a specific profession?
ReplyDeleteHi Stefan, I found your question very relevant, and it would surely be a deep and interesting subject to address in class. I feel like we can’t give you a definite answer, as it would involve knowing what it represents being a human and I think many factors intervene in our perception of humanity. I think that even if we had the possibility of genetically altering our personalities and traits, we would still behave and have the needs of any normal human being. We would also need language to communicate with others as well as a sensorimotor experience to ground a word and its meaning, so i wouldn’t picture it as a change in what it means to be a human, but rather a modification of our interactions and as you mentioned, there would surely be many changes in our professions. Finally, I don't think that computationalism (cognition = computation) would be closer to being true as it is now. Our interaction with the world around us would still rely on sensorimotor experience and it goes beyond the scope of manipulation of symbols.
DeleteThis paper delves into the field of evolutionary psychology, offering both theoretical foundations and practical guidance. From what I understand, Evolutionary psychology seeks to understand human behavior and cognition through the lens of evolutionary principles and processes. It aims to understand the underlying adaptive functions of our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and how they have contributed to our survival and reproductive success as a species. While it is a comprehensive theory in terms of explaining more innate behaviors, I believe that the main flaw of solely depending on evolutionary psychology to explain cognition is that it does not consider behaviors that are learnt or more experience based as well as the influence of individual, environmental and cultural differences on cognition. However Lewis acknowledges that evolutionary psychology is not a one-size-fits-all explanation for all aspects of human behavior, he recognizes the potential for misinterpretation or misuse of evolutionary psychology findings. as Lewis highlights the importance of interdisciplinary approaches, recognizing that human behavior is influenced by a multitude of factors that interact to give rise to our unique personalities. By emphasizing the importance of understanding the interaction between genetic predispositions and environmental influences, we can avoid deterministic interpretations that may oversimplify complex human behavior.
ReplyDeleteHi Mallak,
DeleteI think I agree with what you say about how evolution is useful to explain innate behaviors!
I’m just not entirely sure about the part where you say that “[evolution] does not consider behaviors that are learnt or more experience based as well as the influence of individual, environmental and cultural differences on cognition.” First, I feel that “evolution does not consider learnt behavior” is too strong of a statement. While I agree in the sense that a “learned” skill like playing basketball is not an evolved trait, I think that we can say from a Baldwinian perspective that yes, evolution does deal in some respect with learned behaviors - there are cases where there is a mechanism driving the inclination to learn some learned action that is an evolutionary trait (an example being imprinting, where there is some built-in mechanism that inclines the duckling to learn to follow the first moving thing they see.)
I also disagree (or at least think that the paper disagrees) with your statement that evolution does not consider “the influence of individual, environmental and cultural differences on cognition.” There is a section on page 366 that deals exactly with this misconception that a lack of universal human behavior is evidence against lack of a universal human nature. As in the paper, ““evolutionary” is not equivalent to “cross- culturally invariant,“ and that “culturally variable input into universal psychological mechanisms can lead to culturally variable out- put” (illustrated in Figure 1 of the paper.) The example given in the paper is that people in parasite-dense regions of the world more strongly emphasize physical attractiveness in mates. The paper emphasizes that selecting a mate that can withstand pathogen exposure is beneficial to all humans, however, this is especially important in these parasite-dense regions. Thus, the hypothesis is that “humans’ mate preference mechanisms [(this is a universal evolved trait)] should upregulate the importance placed on physical attractiveness in high pathogen-prevalence regions and down- regulate its importance in regions with lower levels of pathogens,” which turns out to be true. As the paper says, “evolutionary” is not equivalent to “cross- culturally invariant”: I don’t believe that it is fully correct to say that “evolution does not consider “the influence of individual, environmental and cultural differences on cognition.”
Hi Ohrie
DeleteThank you for explaining the role of evolution in explaining innate behaviors and the influence of individual, environmental, and cultural differences on evolution in the realm cognition! I find this discussion helped me understand where I went wrong in my initial comment :) Upon reflection, I now understand what you intended to portray and completely agree with your point that evolution does deal with some learned behaviors, especially when there are mechanisms that drive the inclination to learn certain actions. Imprinting was a great example of how an innate mechanism can influence learned behavior, I never thought about that! I now understand that it's important to recognize that while evolution may not directly encode every learned behavior, it can shape the underlying mechanisms that drive learning. When You address the interplay between culture and evolution in parasite dense, I see how evolution can influence cultural practices, and what can be considered the most i guess 'saught out' features, (or like a beauty standard), but I'm still a bit unsure about how culture influences evolution, could cultural norms put so much stress on us that we evolve too?
This paper addressed the use of evolutionary perspectives in psychological research. Specifically providing a step-by-step framework to go about evolutionary psychological research through generating testable hypotheses, testing empirical predictions, and interpreting results, as well as key concepts whose understanding is essential to avoiding mistakes or null results. The most key criteria for studying evolutionary psychology is that the genes of the individuals who solved that problem had greater genetic success than those who did not solve that problem. It was interesting to learn about the incidental phenomena that may come alongside a functional adaptation. I find myself wondering why things have evolved in many animals and humans but sometimes they are not themselves adaptive but instead a side effect of a functional solution to the adaptive problem at hand. What I also question is how, in the event that all alternative explanations are competing with each other, the “right” answer to how or why things evolved?
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this paper because I think it gave a really clear explanation to how natural selection works that I did not get from prior psychology classes, which agrees with what is discussed in the beginning of the paper where there remains skepticism surrounding evolutionary theories and also that many lack the foundational knowledge to begin to understand them.
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ReplyDeleteThis text suggests different ways to apply evolutionary psychology to the study of cognition and explains why it is important. While reading this paper, I thought about epigenetics. Epigenetics is the study of how behaviour and the environment can cause changes that impact the way that different genes function. These changes are reversible and don't actually change the DNA sequence. I wonder if investigating the potential role of epigenetics and gene-environment interactions in evolutionary psychology could provide a greater understanding of human behaviour and cognition.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to touch on the section of this week’s paper titled “Incidental effects of an evolved psychological mechanism: an empirical example”. I want to use this section to go over and echo sentiments others have said, and my general concerns with the use of evolutionary psychology as a whole. Although it may be useful in providing a narrative as to why we do what we do, it doesn’t answer the how as mentioned by others. This section also goes over how racial prejudices may have come to be as an incidental effect as our ability to classify outgroup coalitions as much more dangerous than ingroup coalitions and that in modern times we Although I found this section interesting, it felt like it minimalized the factors behind racial prejudice. This feeling is furthered by the fact that evolutionary psychology as a field has been used to justify extremely racist practices, something that still plagues the field, and something I wish the authors touched on a little more as it’s a recurring issue in the field. The field has been used to push politically incorrect claims time and time again, which is another reason I am weary of its usefulness.
ReplyDeleteTheir delineation between top-down and bottom-up methodologies in evolutionary psychology opens up an interesting dialogue. It's reminiscent of even broader debates in cognitive science and whether our understanding should be built from the ground up, based on observable behaviors (Turing’s way), or if we should start from the overarching human experience and work our way down (wibbly wobbly).
ReplyDeleteThe article’s exploration of language evolution, particularly in the context of the symbol grounding problem, is thought-provoking. It begs the question: are our abilities for symbolic thought and language purely evolutionary in their quote unquote purpose, and is it even possible for them to not be? This line of inquiry could potentially unravel some mysteries about human cognition and its evolutionary pathways as well as evolutionary theory more generally, but in that I am a lilliputian.
This article solidified the concept that evolutionary psychology can be a component in solving the easy problem. It can be utilized as the why portion of this problem since it could provide reasons for the existence of specific cognitive and behavioral capacities by examining the process of Darwinian evolution. It leads us to explain how through natural selection and evolution, certain genes and traits involved with doing capacities are more likely to be selected leading us in this evolution. While evolutionary psychology can aid to explain the why portion of the easy problem, the article confirms that it cannot be utilized to explain how we are able to do what we are. This makes me question if it is even a good idea to look at evolutionary psychology when evaluating the easy problem since it leads us into a dead end. Is it better to just take a different route all together that will lead us to the why AND how or is it better to utilize these findings and look at a separate solution for the how?
ReplyDeleteEvolutionary psychology is a very important field for future research in cognitive science. What history is to politics, evolutionary psychology is to AI research and cognitive science (excuse my grammar if that doesn’t make sense). This reading gave me a deeper understanding of what evolutionary psychology research provides us. Starting from the the dawn of humans, evolutionary psychology is capable of providing us with behavioral pattern development and how our behavior evolved to survive. Cognitive science can use such data to analyze how the connections in the brain would adapt to create such behavioral changes. I feel like this opens the door to the question of whether these behavioral adaptations are conscious decisions. To me it is makes more sense if they are conscious because we have societal rules and norms based on these adaptations that we must adhere to. It could very much be possible, however, that in earlier times these adaptations happened without us thinking or even realizing.
ReplyDeleteIn general, this paper gave me an understanding of the backstage of such research, the methodology. The level of detail and specificity it requires is truly amazing.
I found the paper's explanation of middle-level theories particularly interesting. These theories offer detailed insights into how evolutionary pressures have shaped specific psychological and behavioral traits. They delve into distinct human behaviors, like the Parental Investment Theory's take on mating strategies or the Sexual Strategies Theory's perspective on gender differences in mating psychology. Kin Selection Theory, for instance, elucidates the evolution of altruistic behaviors in favor of relatives' reproductive success. These concepts provide a clear connection between evolutionary challenges and our mental and behavioral responses. These theories certainly can give an answer to the “why we might do what we do?” but certainly not to the “how do we do it?”
ReplyDeleteIt's important to remember what professor Harnad taught us about evolution being quite lazy.
DeleteMany mid-level theories are best explained by baldwinian evolution, it's must easier to evolve the capacity to learn an X then to evolve the capacity for X itself, as per professor Harnad, the evolution of language, which accelerates learning capacity to an extraordinary degree, can invalidate many evo-psyc theories.
Of course one still has to attempt to test if something is learnt, an interesting example that comes to mind is the evolution of determining distance with echolocation in bats.
Researchers in Tel-Aviv wanted to see if bats had the speed of sound "built in" for their echolocation capacities, and raised small bats in a helium enriched atmosphere, which changes the speed of sound. Turns out both bats raised in helium rich atmospheres and normal atmospheres undershot targets, when in the helium enriched chamber. So in this case, it isn't learnt! but in humans, as we have language, baldwinian evolution is often the simplest explanation.
Anthropomorphism is to interpret things in a human centric way, mind reading is subset of anthropomorphism by which we can understand understand what other people are feeling by way of being able to recognize similarities between how others display themselves (namely how they may look when feeling a certain way). Sometimes cars look like faces, I don't want to get too into face pareidolia here, but if we were to see a car with particularly wide headlights it would be both anthropomorphism and mind reading to assume that the car is feeling surprised. While we shouldn't believe that all things are mind readable in the same way humans are, ridding ourselves entirely of this habit would mean only thinking of what we can observe, and not what is happening inside the minds of ourselves and others. We should not just consider the behavior that may result from an emotion, but also the emotional capacity itself
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you. As humans, we have the tendency to attribute human emotions and characteristics to other species and inanimate objects. I’m guessing it’s the works of our mirror neurons and our attempt to relate and understand others. You’re right that we should always be aware of when we do this and keep the OMP in mind.
DeleteThe paper this week calls for an investigation of how our cognitive (that's what we're capable of doing by way of activity in our head) abilities evolved. It is proposed that we should look into proximate and ultimate causes of evolution. In order to do this we should go back to the original environments in which cognition evolved rather than thinking of what serves our fitness in current day conditions. There is also a distinction between proximal and distal causes of what may be evolutionarily driven. Distal causes are brought about by a survival purpose (example: snakes are dangerous, therefore I should avoid them) but proximal causes are more-so a psychological mechanism (I don't like the look of something which moves like a snake so I will try to stay away from it) in this way the distal is what steers what we are moved to do when it comes to proximal causes. However, the bigger question is how much of a role do things like snakes play in our day to day cognition, the thing we are interested in
ReplyDeleteThis paper provides a well written framework of evolutionary perspectives that can be applied in psychology. It seems clear to me that while evolutionary psychology provides valuable insights as to why we are able to do what we're able to do in terms of cognitive abilities, it still lacks the ability to answer the “how” part of the easy problem. But even with the “why” component of the easy problem, the authors only explore the surface level evolutions. For example, through natural selection, we can see that certain genes were preferred over others to increase the potential odds of an organism’s reproduction and survival. This is evident with sex, fear of spiders, and avoiding incest. However, it is hard to tell why certain capacities like language and learning were adapted/selected, given that these do not provide an immediate increase in our survival and reproduction capabilities.
ReplyDeleteThe article shows that evolutionary theory provides a broad context for understanding how complex structures like the brain and mind develop, but it isn't a psychological theory. The processes it describes, such as natural selection and adaptation, work over long periods to shape population traits.
ReplyDeleteWe need "middle-level theories" that bridge the gap between evolution and more immediate aspects of cognition and behaviour to study the mind empirically—perhaps, having more hypotheses.
This approach recognizes the expansive scope of evolution while emphasizing the importance of translating its concepts into forms that can be validated through experimentation.
We evolved to have the cognitive capacity for language at the expense of our ease of breathing and swallowing (week 8). In terms of Darwinian Evolution, traits are passed on to the next generations if it allows species a better chance of survival. The reading about EvoPsych prompted some thoughts for me, theoretically, it may be why language was that important. Humans, unlike other species, have language. This form of linguistic communication is one factor that enables us to cooperate with other humans effectively and coupled with our mirror neurons, we can sympathize with our members to a great extent. We are then able to invent tools and technology (we can code whatever we want using language) that surpass the physical capabilities of even the strongest animals and survive in many different ecological conditions. In this way, it increases our chances of survival because NOT that we should, but we CAN exploit other animals and resources for our benefit. On the other hand, however, our inventions have created a global climate crisis, that will ultimately (probably) lead to our extinction. I know that this is a just-so story.
ReplyDeleteThe paper outlines how to conduct psychological research with the help of evolutionary theory. One thing that strikes me the most is how there could be different explanations towards a result in hypothesis testing. This is important because it opens different paths to investigate topics in evolutionary psychology. However, I do agree with other comments saying that this approach does not explain how we could feel.
ReplyDeleteThis paper outlines a clear methodology for incorporating evolutionary principles into psychological research. In the context of cognitive science, I assert that the points emphasized in the article are primarily relevant to addressing the hard problem rather than the easy problem. Evolutionary psychology proves useful in understanding the reasons behind our thoughts and emotions, yet I struggle to see its utility in determining our actions during thinking.
ReplyDelete