Essays
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Behavioral Heterochrony - Wobber, Victoria
Behavioral heterochrony is the study of the timing and speed of development of behavior from an evolutionary perspective. Key to studies of behavioral heterochrony is the comparison of development across different species. Such studies can illuminate whether a trait thought to be unique to a given species might in fact have its precursors in the early development of a closely related species. They can inform our understanding of how behavioral development is constrained by elements of somatic or reproductive maturation. Studies of behavioral heterochrony can also elucidate mechanisms by which behavior evolves, by targeting evolutionary shifts in developmental pathways. Finally, such studies can enrich our knowledge of human evolution, in contextualizing the vast shifts in human life history patterns relative to other primates in terms of corresponding changes in behavioral and cognitive development. On the whole then, research in behavioral heterochrony can advance our understanding of behavior through forging interdisciplinary links between anthropology, biology, and psychology. -
Darwinism as a Decryption Key for the Human Mind - Pléh, Csaba
The essay summarizes some of the key results and debated issues of Darwinian psychology over the past 150 years. Comparative psychology, psychological anthropology, research into the ontogeny of the mind, evolutionary interpretations of knowledge, and the study of individual differences are the main areas where evolutionary explanations remarkably influence traditional psychology. All five of them show up in twentieth century developments within the framework of overall selectionism, the idea that in all aspects of life—including human culture or habits—there is a certain diversity and variety not only in the form of living things but also in the form of “living‐things‐made” material, cultural or virtual, all of them being subject to natural selection. Some issues of overall selectionism, having been introduced by Karl Bühler, Karl Popper, and Donald Campbell, or by the genetic epistemology of Jean Piaget, are compared in this essay to the latest debates and ideas about the message of evolution by Daniel Dennett, to the coordination of evolutionary models, the theories about the social mind and its development, and the genesis of culture and evolution in rivaling models of human architectures, as in the one proposed by Michael Tomasello. Some of the continuously debated issues have been escorting us since the 1880s, such as the relative significance of nature or culture, the causal relations between different levels of selection, and the like. They all mean a real challenge to the unbounded and unanchored psychological and epistemological theories. -
Evolutionary Approaches to Understanding Children's Academic Achievement - Geary, David C.
There are evolved cognitive biases that influence what people pay attention to (e.g., faces, not rocks) and how they interpret this information (e.g., underlying intentions). These cognitive biases are organized to help us understand ourselves and other people (folk psychology), other species (folk biology), and the physical world (folk physics). Human cultural advances have resulted in the development of evolutionarily novel concepts (e.g., natural selection) and skills (e.g., reading) that are built from this evolved core. The basic architecture of folk cognitive biases is universal and adapted to nuances in local conditions as children play, interact with other people, and explore the environment. The learning of evolutionarily novel competencies is necessary for success in today's economy but children do not learn these as easily as they adapt folk knowledge nor are they as motivated to engage in the associated activities. This is because learning academic competencies requires adapting folk systems for tasks for which they did not evolve. The associated activities (e.g., direct instruction) are very different from the activities (e.g., play) that foster the adaptation of folk abilities to local conditions. Schooling thus involves the society‐wide organization of children's activities so they learn competencies that would not otherwise emerge. This perspective allows us to better understand the importance of working memory, a motivational focus on effort, and the need for explicit, organized instruction for children's learning in school. -
Evolutionary Perspectives on Animal and Human Personality - Manson, Joseph H.
Among many nonhuman animals, individuals differ consistently in their response tendencies (e.g., shy vs bold) across multiple contexts. Researchers have tested evolutionary hypotheses accounting for these phenomena, and have also begun exploring evolutionary explanations for human personality variation. For evolutionary biologists, a trait's significance lies in its effects on fitness, that is, the lifetime reproductive success of individuals who bear the trait, including indirect effects through the reproductive success of genetic relatives. Recent evolutionary personality research has pursued several alternative theoretical lines of inquiry: balancing selection models explore whether optimal levels of personality traits vary across time, space, or trait frequency distribution; mutation‐selection balance models propose that selection for a single optimum personality configuration is undermined by mutations at multiple genetic loci; and facultative calibration models hold that personality trait levels are adjusted, during individual development, to other characteristics that affect social bargaining power. A promising general approach links personality variation to variation in life history strategy, that is, the allocation of effort among the competing demands of growth, somatic maintenance, mate acquisition, and parental investment. Emerging areas of research include relationships between personality variation and biological fitness in humans and other primates; the extent to which personality trait levels are adjusted based on individual condition; the degree to which situational flexibility varies among individuals; and whether proposed structural models of personality, such as the human five‐factor model (extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience) are species‐typical or are affected by variable ecological and social conditions. -
Evolutionary Theory and Political Behavior - Petersen, Michael Bang
Political behavior is behavior aimed at regulating access to resources: Who is recognized to get what, when, and how? Evidence across a number of disciplines shows that humans over evolutionary history have evolved sophisticated abilities to engage in political behavior through status seeking and coalition formation in order to attract resources to themselves, their kin, and their allies. As demonstrated by recent research, this evolutionary history of politics continues to shape how modern individuals behave in modern mass politics and prompt people to derive their political attitudes from ancestrally relevant factors such as upper body strength and short‐term fluctuations in hunger. Important areas for research lies ahead in (i) understanding how evolution has given rise to individual variation in political behavior, (ii) investigating the extent to which the evolved psychology of humans biases modern political behavior, and (iii) strengthening the ties between this emerging application of evolutionary theory and more traditional research on political behavior. -
Grandmothers and the Evolution of Human Sociality - Hawkes, Kristen
We differ from the great apes in so many ways. Yet they all belong to our hominid family, and some are even more closely related to us than they are to each other. One distinctive human feature is our much great longevity, a difference that the Grandmother Hypothesis might explain. Grandmothering not only helps account for our long life spans but also changes childrearing in ways that may explain why distinctly human capacities for social engagement and mutual understanding evolved in our lineage. We review the background to this Grandmother Hypothesis and summarize it and related findings from evolutionary modeling and empirical measurements of both grandmother effects and social capacities of human infants. Then, we point to questions arising for social development, discriminating grandmothers, future mathematical modeling, and social strategies of men, as well as the physiology of human aging. -
Niche Construction: Implications for Human Sciences - Laland, Kevin N.
Niche construction is the process whereby organisms, through their activities, interactions, and choices, modify their own and each other's niches. By using and transforming natural selection, niche construction generates feedback in evolution at various levels. Niche‐constructing species play important ecological roles by creating and modifying habitats and resources used by other species, thereby affecting the flow of matter and energy through ecosystems. This process is often referred to as ecosystem engineering. This engineering can have significant downstream consequences for succeeding generations—often referred to as an ecological inheritance. One key emphasis of niche‐construction theory is on the evolutionary role played by acquired characters in transforming selective environments. This is particularly relevant to human evolution, where our species has engaged in extensive environmental modification through cultural practices. Humans can construct developmental environments that feed back to affect how individuals learn and develop and the diseases to which they are exposed. Here we provide an introduction to niche construction and illustrate some of its more important implications for the human sciences. -
The Intrinsic Dynamics of Development - van Geert, Paul
In this essay, we discuss an emergent developmental science. It provides an approach to development that redefines its theoretical and methodological basis in the general theory of complex dynamic systems. Its methodological research choices are in line with a focus on actual developmental processes, as they occur in individual cases, such as individual children, families, or relationships. Intraindividual variability based on frequent short‐term as well as long‐term measurements provides an important source of information. Theoretically, we advocate a model of a network of dynamically interacting components, generating a wide variety of developmental trajectories, in line with the idiosyncratic nature of developmental systems. -
The Role of School‐Related Peers and Social Networks in Human Development - Muller, Chandra
This essay describes the foundational research on peers within schools, the recent advances in the field, and new challenges and opportunities for future research. Schools bring together children and youths for many hours of the day over many years. The intensity of interaction and judgment within of peers within the school setting heightens the potential impact on human development during the crucial adolescent years. Extant research on the effects of peers in school cuts across disciplinary lines and is of interest to developmental psychologists, economists, sociologists, and anthropologists, who observe the potential for peers to structure and reinforce status hierarchies and opportunities to learn, contribute to the development of personality, identity, interests, and motivation, and shape the cultures that emerge in schools, all of which may impact students' learning, educational attainment, and adult earnings. Social network methods combined with more readily available data on students' course taking in schools provides rich and promising new opportunities for future research.