Applied Evolutionary Psychology

S. Craig Roberts
ABSTRACT

Evolutionary psychology aims to understand and describe human behaviour in the light of past
and continuing selection and adaptation. Still a young and developing discipline, the past couple
of decades has seen enormous progress. As the science matures, its scope is inevitably beginning
to broaden towards tackling contemporary issues in human society. To date, however, concerted
effort to apply principle to practice has been patchy and limited in extent. This book aims to
provide a foundation for an incipient focus on applications of evolutionary psychology. It draws
together a collection of r ... More

Print publication date: 2011

Published to Oxford Scholarship
Online: January 2012

Print ISBN-13: 9780199586073

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199586073.001.0001

AUTHORS

Affiliations are at time of print publication.

S. Craig Roberts, Editor

Department of Psychology University of Stirling, UK

Chapter 1 Applying evolutionary psychology

S. Craig Roberts

The chapter highlights the growing influence of evolutionary perspectives on psychology and
social studies in general. It distinguishes the approaches of mainstream and evolutionary
psychology based on proximate and ultimate levels of explanation for human behaviour. It is
argued that ultimate (or functional) perspectives on behaviour contribute unique and important
insights into human behaviour that are missed by standard social science approaches. Similarly
to how the new discipline of evolutionary medicine is providing new ways of looking at health
and disease, an applied evolutionary psychology may become increasingly influential in the
development of more comprehensive understanding of human behaviour and contemporary
issues.

Section 1 Business
Chapter 2 The evolutionary psychology of economics
Paul H Rubin, C. Monica Capra

In this chapter, we argue that applying evolutionary psychology to economics can explain
observed anomalies in decision-making. We provide an analysis of the relationships between
economics and the evolutionary and biological origin of economic choice, focusing on some
selected topics that are of special interest to us. These are: (1) rationality and biases, especially
as related to the endowment effect, (2) the extent to which individuals are selfish or pro-social,
(3) individuality versus heterogeneity, and (4) perceptions of economics. We discuss examples
of how evolutionary psychology can explain anomalous behaviour including violations to
rational choice, such as the status quo bias. Evolved mechanisms can also explain the curious
persistence of pro-social behaviour in one-shot anonymous interactions, and the observed
heterogeneity of agent types. Finally, we argue that the perception of economics is also affected
by evolved mechanisms from pre-modern times. We believe that more explicit attention to the
evolutionary bases of economic behaviour would lead to real advances in economic theory.

Chapter 3 The evolution of business and management

Nigel Nicholson

The fundamental processes of business and management how we organise, coordinate and
direct human activity towards collective goals have always been a feature of human life, and
subject to co-evolutionary development. This means they have adapted to the changing patterns
of human life, whilst seeking to satisfy the relatively unchanging forces of human nature. The
result has been a journey of cultural revolutions through our species history. The nature of this
process, and the inputs of human nature, is illustrated by taking the Credit Crunch of 2008 as a
case study: looking at how this classic bubble' was fed by human motives, cognitive biases,
social preferences, collective behaviour, symbolic sensitivities, and individual differences. The
review then broadens in scope to look at the history of work organisation and how the concept of
self-regulation is a key explanatory process mediating cultural evolution. Business and
management can be seen as conditioned by the tendency for male dominance hierarchies to
shape organisational design, and the article considers how alternative paradigms are emerging
to adjust to the new realities of advanced economies. In particular, the adaptive challenge for
leadership is discussed in two ways: first via a review of the effects of different paths to
leadership positions, and second by an analysis of how leaders self-regulatory dynamics
determine their effectiveness. The chapter concludes by discussing the implications this analysis
has for the capacity of our species, via leadership and organisation, to meet the extreme and
testing global challenges we face in the twenty-first century.

Chapter 4 The social animal within organizations

Abraham P Buunk, Pieternel Dijkstra

As organizations are large groups, and consist of many subgroups, evolutionary theorizing
would seem very relevant to understand behaviour in organizations. Applying evolutionary
thinking to organizations may help understand why people in organizations behave the way they
do, even if these behaviours seem counterproductive or irrational. We first discuss how the
human brain seems to have evolved particularly to deal with living in large groups. We suggest
that comparing oneself with others seems a basic human characteristic that may have various

positive and negative consequences for individuals, as well as for organizations. Next, we focus
on intrasexual competition, and discuss how this may lead not only to investing in ones career,
but also to gossip, bullying and conspicuous consumption. Finally, we discuss the role of
altruistic behaviour within organizations, and link this also to intrasexual competition. An
evolutionary perspective does not provide unequivocal recommendations for organizational
practice, but it may help understand why some persistent problems in organizations continue to
occur.

Section 2 Family
Chapter 5 The evolved child: adapted to family life
David F Bjorklund, Patrick Douglas Sellers II

While the influences of natural selection on human behaviour are most obvious in adulthood,
selective pressures actively operate on humans across the entire lifespan, even prenatally,
necessitating an examination of childhood from an evolutionary perspective. Application of
evolutionary theory is especially important to an investigation of early childhood, as this time
period is critical for cognitive and social development, particularly in response to familial
interaction. We discuss research on child and family behaviour from an evolutionary
developmental perspective, with particular emphasis on differences between family members in
investment behaviours. We conclude by examining emerging research and theory related to
differential susceptibility to rearing environments, which addresses how childrens early social
environment plays a key role in setting developmental pathways, with significant implications
for a variety of behaviours throughout childhood.

Chapter 6 Application of evolutionary psychology to academic learning

David C Geary

There is a gap between what children find easy to learn and are motivated to learn based on
human evolutionary history, and what they need to learn to be successful adults in the modern
world. In this chapter, I provide a brief overview of evolutionary educational psychology and
begin with an outline of the evolved cognitive, developmental, and motivational foundations for
learning in evolutionarily-novel contexts. I close with several illustrations of how this framework
can be used to better understand childrens motivation and learning in modern schools.

Chapter 7 Serial monogamy and clandestine adultery: evolution and consequences of the dual
human reproductive strategy
Helen E Fisher

Considerable data suggest that humans have evolved a dual reproductive strategy: life long
and/or serial monogamy in conjunction with clandestine adultery. This paper explores the
underlying biochemical and genetic mechanisms likely to contribute to this flexible, yet specific
human reproductive system, and explores some of the implications of this dual human
reproductive strategy for contemporary partnerships. Critics of evolutionary psychology fail to
find the profound value of this budding discipline, yet it yields important insights that could be
of use to medical and legal professionals, researchers and therapists.

Section 3 Society

Chapter 8 The evolutionary psychology of mass politics

Michael Bang Petersen

A number of modern political issues mimic ancestral problems of social living. By implication,
our evolved social psychology is engaged by mass politics and helps facilitate the formation of
public opinion and behaviour. Yet, the contextual differences between ancestral small-scale
interaction and mass politics are many in terms of scale. On the one hand, the automatic
operations of our evolved psychology prompt individuals to disregard these differences:
individuals effectively think about mass political issues as small-scale social problems. On other
hand, in the large-scale setting of mass politics, individuals cannot rely on directly available cues
but are left with cues provided by media and political elites or, when these too are absent, on
internally-generated cues. In these situations, our evolved social psychology will not so much
facilitate a clear choice as produce ambivalence and attitudinal inconsistencies.

Chapter 9 Gender equity issues in evolutionary perspective

Bobbi S Low

As mens and womens work and social roles have converged in modern times, questions of
gender equity arise: Are women promoted as promptly as comparable men? Paid as well? Here I
examine mens and womens roles, and the sexual division of labour, first across traditional
societies, where divisions of labour are common often do not favour either sex. In sexual
matters, however, men tend to control and dominate women in traditional societies. In modern
nation-states, mens and womens opportunities range from essentially indistinguishable
(several Scandinavian countries) to favouring men strongly. The level of Human Development
Index, calculated by the UNDP, allows calculation of relative equality, both in general social
issues, and in political and economic realms; it is strongly correlated with gender equity. In
addition, when a major religion exists (i.e., when more than 55% of people are regarded as being
of one religions persuasion), large differences can arise.

Chapter 10 The evolution of charitable behaviour and the power of reputation

Pat Barclay

Charitable behaviour is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective: why does such behaviour
exist despite its costs, and what causes it to evolve and persist? Answering such questions helps
us to promote helping and charitable behaviours. In this chapter, I examine various selective
pressures that select for cooperative sentiment and how these might be harnessed to promote
helping. In particular, I focus on reputation-based theories (indirect reciprocity, punishment,
costly signaling) because these are more novel and important for the generalized helping seen in
many humans. I discuss how reputation promotes helping, how to take advantage of its effects,
the linkage of cooperative acts with reputational pressures, as well as several important
limitations that must be addressed before the science of reputation is mature enough to
maximize its effectiveness.

Chapter 11 Altruism as showing off: a signalling perspective on promoting green behaviour and
acts of kindness
Wendy Iredale, Mark van Vugt

In this chapter we discuss whether altruism towards genetic strangers may have evolved because
of its reputation benefits altruism as showing off. Traditional explanations for the evolution of
altruism towards genetic strangers suggests we help others who will help us back; however, this
restricted tit-for-tat scoring is not representative of most human altruism. Recent theories of
costly signalling argue that altruism does not need to work directly as a process of 'I'll scratch
your back and you scratch mine', but that it may have evolved because it signals underlying
qualities about the individual that are important to others. Those who signal altruism may
therefore increase their fitness through prestige and mating opportunities. We highlight real
examples of how important it is for humans to be seen (and to compete to be seen) as altruistic.
We show that there are preferences towards altruistic individuals as mates, especially by
females. Finally, we discuss how signaling theory could be applied to promote environmental
conservation and charity giving.

Chapter 12 Evolutionary perspectives on intergroup prejudice: implications for promoting

tolerance
Justin H Park

Prejudice has been a topic of perennial interest in social psychology. Recent inquiries informed
by evolutionary perspectives have advanced understanding of intergroup prejudice in important
ways. As humans are a tribal species, an important insight is that humans may possess
psychological mechanisms specialized for intergroup conflict, including tendencies to draw
coalition-based ingroupoutgroup distinctions, to exalt the ingroup, and to hold particular
kinds of biased intergroup attitudes and cognitions. Diverging from standard social
psychological approaches, evolutionary perspectives have converged on the view that intergroup
prejudice (i.e. prejudice rooted in coalitional psychology) differs in important ways from other
kinds of prejudice (such as sexism and ageism)in their causes and symptoms, and in the
interventions that are likely to be effective. This chapter outlines key evolutionary principles as
well as specific hypotheses deduced from those principles, and reviews research on the
psychological processes underlying intergroup prejudice. Drawing on the research findings,
possible strategies for reducing intergroup prejudice are discussed.

Chapter 13 The evolutionary psychology of criminal behaviour

Aurelio Jos Figueredo, Paul Robert Gladden, Zachary Hohman

Etiological theories of criminal behaviour are reviewed, compared, and contrasted, stemming
from both standard social science and from evolutionary social science. Those stemming from
standard social science include classical theories, positivist theories, functionalist theories,
cultural, sub-cultural, and social learning theories, control theories, cognitive theories, and
traditional personality theories. Those stemming from evolutionary social science include
behavioural genetic theories, reactive heritability and epigenetic theories, sexual selection
theories, differential parental investment theories, competitive disadvantage theories,
frequency-dependent selection theories, pathogen stress theories, and life history theories. We
propose that most of these theories are mutually contradictory to a minimal degree, mostly
differing on matters of detail as well as in the conflation of proximate and ultimate levels of
causation. As an alternative to this chaotic state of affairs, we propose a cross-disciplinary

integration based on the inclusive framework provided by Life History Theory. A wide array of
empirical evidence is provided in support of this view as the most inclusive and integrative
framework currently available, as well as the most useful framework for helping to explain many
of the previous findings within an evolutionary context.

Chapter 14 War, martyrdom, and terror: evolutionary underpinnings of the moral imperative to
extreme group violence
Scott Atran

Why do people decide to sacrifice their own lives - the totality of their self-interests - in acts of
extreme violence against others? A standard assumption of policymakers and researchers on
war and terrorism is that decisions to support or oppose warfare are made in an instrumentally
rational manner and thus driven by cost-benefit calculations. But war in general, and suicide
terrorism in particular, arouse humans most noble sentiments and worst fears, and rarely, if
ever, derive wholly from reason and rational calculation. This challenges the claim that war is
basically politics by other means. In previous experiments carried out across different cultural
and political contexts, with political leaders and larger populations in the Middle East and
elsewhere, we found that decisions to support or oppose political violence could be framed as
moral dilemmas that lead to dramatic insensitivity to instrumental outcomes. Other research
supports the notion that extreme group violence is primarily a male occupation driven across
human history and cultures by an evolved aptitude for parochial altruism as a moral virtue.

Chapter 15 Evolutionary theory and behavioural biology research: implications for law
David J Herring

This chapter describes specific examples of legal scholars applying evolutionary theory and
research to particular legal and public policy issues. The chapter explains and demonstrates two
primary attributes of the work in this area. First, the works reveal the deep explanatory power of
evolutionary theory and research, useful for both legal scholarship and law in action. Second,
these works provide for the formulation of new and interesting hypotheses that researchers can
test through empirical studies in the field. In the end, this chapter demonstrates how this line of
inquiry contributes to the formulation and application of law based on human behavioural
research conducted in the context of an established and coherent theoretical framework.

Section 4 Health
Chapter 16 Motivational mismatch: evolved motives as the source ofand solution toglobal
public health problems
Valerie Curtis, Robert Aunger

While public health in most countries of the world is better now than it has ever been, a huge
burden of preventable disease still remains: our behaviour does not seem to match our
knowledge. In this chapter we focus on the psychological mismatch between the environments
in which we evolved and in which we now live. We show that most current public health
problems can be explained by maladaptive behaviour in the context of massive environmental
changes, most having occurred since the Industrial Revolution 150 years ago. We show how

almost all of our major public health problems are associated with motivated behaviour, usually
because we over- or under- use evolutionarily novel technologies. Hence, while we can trace
suboptimal health to a lack of fit between our evolved motives and our current environment,
understanding of these motivational drivers can help us to modify behaviour, environments,
and technologies such that they generate healthier outcomes. We give an example of how
ancient motives can be harnessed for the benefit of public health in the case of handwashing
with soap a novel health protective technology.

Chapter 17 Mental health and well-being: clinical applications of Darwinian psychiatry

Alfonso Troisi

This chapter deals with those activities that clinicians exert in their everyday practice and that
people suffering from mental disorders expect to progress at a fast pace: diagnosis, therapy, and
prevention. Each of these clinical tasks is analyzed from the perspective of Darwinian
psychiatry. When refocused from an evolutionary perspective, diagnosis of people with mental
disorders should be revised with regard to what information the clinician should collect, how
information should be sought, and where information should be gathered. The validity and
utility of psychiatric diagnosis can be improved by applying the concepts and methods of
ethology and behavioural ecology to diagnostic reasoning. Darwinian psychiatry suggests that
the aim of therapy is not only to reverse the pathogenesis of illness but also to restore the
congruence between a patients individuality and the conditions of the environment. Thus,
psychiatric interventions should aim at improving the patients chances of achieving short-term
biological goals, and symptoms reflecting evolved adaptive strategies should be distinguished
from those that are caused by compromised functional capacities. Effective prevention requires
a detailed understanding of those life events that elicit negative emotions and can precipitate the
onset of a psychiatric disorder. Yet, mental health professionals lack a body of knowledge about
normal emotional functioning comparable to the understanding physiology offers to general
medicine. An innovative and original contribution that Darwinian psychiatry can offer to the
prevention of mental disorders is the identification of those modifiable risk factors that were
absent in the ancestral environment but are common in modern environments.

Chapter 18 Evolutionary perspectives on sport and competition

Diana Wiedemann, Robert A Barton, Russell A Hill

This chapter examines the theoretical and empirical research into evolutionary aspects of four
complex issues of human behaviour in sports. We highlight how evolutionary approaches have
promoted our understanding of human sports and competition. To begin with, we describe the
relationship between sports competitions and testosterone levels and elucidate how winning
and losing leads to different, sometimes status-changing, endocrine responses. Secondly, we
look at home advantage and examine how hormonal and psychological research has aided our
understanding of this well-known phenomenon. The next section focuses on possible
evolutionary explanations as to why left-handers may have an advantage in physical combat in
both traditional and westernized societies. The final section examines colour influences on
human behaviour in general and on sports competition in particular, focusing specifically on the
significance of the colour red in human competitive interactions. These four themes serve to
highlight the value of evolutionary approaches in enhancing and enriching our understanding of
human sports competitions.

Section 5 Marketing and communication

Chapter 19 Why we buy: evolution, marketing, and consumer behaviour
Vladas Griskevicius, Joshua M Ackerman, Joseph P Redden

Although one might think that evolution has little to do with modern consumer behaviour, a
closer inspection of our ancestral roots can provide much insight into why we buy. An
evolutionary perspective suggests that we interact with our present-day world using brains that
evolved to solve a recurring set of ancestral challenges. Accordingly, a growing body of research
suggests that a set of evolutionary social motives continues to influence much modern
behaviour, albeit not always in obvious or conscious ways. These motives include making
friends, gaining status, attracting a mate, keeping a mate, protecting ourselves from danger, and
caring for offspring. By considering how and why deep-seated ancestral motives continue to
shape modern behaviour, we examine their implications for modern marketing and consumer
behaviour. We detail how evolutionary considerations of motivation have novel applications for
many areas of marketing, including market segmentation, consumers targeting, brand
positioning, and advertising.

Chapter 20 Evolutionary psychology and perfume design

S. Craig Roberts, Jan Havlicek

We argue that the process of perfume design would be enhanced if it was developed with greater
understanding of the communicative value of the underlying body odour of the individual who
uses it? Evolutionary psychology has, and will continue to, produce insights into the informative
capacity of body odour in human perception and its role in social interactions, in five main
areas: individual recognition cueing and kin-related behaviour, cues of current state, mediation
of female reproductive physiology, cues of underlying good-genes, and cues of complementary
genes in partner choice. Since these cues have been shaped by selection over evolutionary time,
and play a role in co-ordination of key social interactions, incorporation of this knowledge into
perfume design could potentially provide a springboard for transforming the success of specific
perfumes. We discuss several promising possible avenues to take this process forward, as well as
possible problems with the approach. On balance, we see potential to harness insights from
evolutionary psychology to increase both the potency of perfume function and the strategies
employed in its marketing.

Chapter 21 Television programming and the audience

Charlotte De Backer

Why is television programming all about sex and crime, and why are we, as an audience, so
addicted to this? In this chapter we explain how television shows, as modern artifacts, trigger
our stone-aged emotions that evolved to deal with real-life situations. Mediated visual
information emerged about 200 years ago, which in evolutionary terms is a blink of the eye. As a
result, what we eye-witness is somehow processed, at a subconscious level, as reality eliciting
feeling as if we are part of the observed scene (I-witness). Next, if what, and especially who, we
see on screen reappears at a regular basis, it is no surprise that the repetitive activation of our
old emotional responses to modern artifacts leads to the establishment of friendships, and other
social relations, between audience members and onscreen characters. In addition, we also start
to talk about these onscreen characters with real life friends, colleagues and vague acquaintance.
Television stars have become the mutual friend we share with everyone else in our increasingly

scattered societies. And, from an evolutionary perspective, this addition to and gossip about the
private lives of onscreen characters, is not much different from the storytelling tradition that is
deeply embedded in our evolutionary history. The fact that we can vicariously learn how to deal
with life-threatening and life-saving situations at a quick and cheap paste, explains why we are
attracted to programs that deal with topics as sex and crime that continue to top the list of
most popular television shows.

Chapter 22 News as reality-inducing, survival-relevant, and gender-specific stimuli

Maria Elizabeth Grabe

The idea that the human brain struggles to distinguish--at least at some level--between
mediated and physical reality opened the door for evolutionary psychology perspectives to enter
the young field of media scholarship. Specifically, this line of thinking is grounded in the idea
that the human brain has not yet evolved the mechanisms for distinction drawing. Thus during
the initial seconds of exposure to media content, it treats it as real; and the more lifelike,
negative, and compelling the media message, the more seamless the equation with the physical
world. This perspective, known as the media equation, is slowest to find traction in the specific
media subfield of news research. This chapter will pay homage to the pioneers of the media
equasion perspective, quibble a bit with them, tackle the place of media in the life history of
Homo sapiens, and focus on journalism as a specific area of media research in desperate need of
an Evolutionary Psychology plunge.

Section 6 Technology

Chapter 23 Media naturalness theory: human evolution and behaviour towards electronic
communication technologies
Ned Kock

This chapter provides a discussion of what has become known as media naturalness theory, a
theory of communication media with a special focus on electronic communication, and
developed based on human evolutionary principles. The theory is centered on the media
naturalness hypothesis, which argues that, other things being equal, a decrease in the degree of
naturalness of a communication medium (or its degree of similarity to the face-to-face medium)
leads to the following effects in connection with a communication interaction: (a) increased
cognitive effort, (b) increased communication ambiguity, and (c) decreased physiological
arousal. It is argued here that the media naturalness hypothesis has important implications for
the selection, use and deployment of e-communication tools in organizations. Unlike some
previously proposed technology-centric theories, the media naturalness theory is compatible
with social theories of behaviour toward electronic communication tools. Among other things,
this chapter shows that the media naturalness theory is compatible with the notion that,
regardless of the obstacles posed by low naturalness media, individuals using those media to
perform collabourative tasks may achieve the same or better task-related outcomes than
individuals using media with higher degrees of naturalness.

Chapter 24 Evolutionary psychology, demography, and driver safety research: a theoretical

synthesis
David L Wiesenthal, Deanna M Singhal

Evolutionary psychologists have argued that young men are particularly prone to risk-taking in
the formation of dominance hierarchies, which arise in an effort to secure resources to attract
and keep females. Wilson and Daly (1985) have termed this effect the young male syndrome.
Risk-taking involves a variety of behaviours ranging from criminal activities and extreme sports
to dangerous driving. By examining data from the Canadian census and comparing it to national
driving statistics related to crash and alcohol-related injuries and deaths, the following
relationships were described: (1) the Canadian population has dramatically increased in the
three decades following 1970, but the proportion of young males in the population has declined,
(2) roadway deaths and injuries have decreased despite the increase in the number of vehicles
on the road, (3) young men from 16-29 years of age are disproportionately involved in collisions
causing deaths and injuries whether as drivers, passengers, or pedestrians, (4) young men are
disproportionately involved in alcohol-related crashes causing death and injury. A model was
developed to illustrate the effect of demographic factors, evolutionary principles, situational
factors, societal influences, and media effects to explain risky male activities. Alternative
explanations based on brain maturation and the effects of stress, producing aggression, are
discussed.

Chapter 25 Evolutionary robotics

Dylan Evans, Walter de Back

Robotics has been heavily influenced by cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology, but
evolutionary psychology, has not yet had such a big impact on the field. In this essay we describe
how evolutionary psychology may come to have a greater impact on robotics in the near future.
We first describe the role that cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology have played in the
development of robotics, and describe the few lessons that have been drawn so far by roboticists
from evolutionary psychology itself. We go on to propose a new research program in robotics
which we term synthetic evolutionary psychology. Finally, we also explore some of the lessons
which roboticists might draw from evolutionary psychology when designing robots intended for
rich psychological interactions with humans.

Copyright 2013. All rights reserved.

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