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.
Although this is not central to the reading, I am a confused about one specific sentence claiming that "As hypothesized, increased pathogen prevalence predicted greater valuation of physical attractiveness in potential mates, accounting for a full 50% of the cultural variation." For context, this refers to a study that hypothesized that in areas where pathogens are more widespread and therefore presented a greater threat to survival and reproduction, mates would be chosen based on their resistance to said pathogens, rather than on their attractiveness. Conversely, in places where pathogens are a weaker threat, mates can be chosen based on attractiveness to a greater extent. Therefore, shouldn't the results indicate the opposite? Thanks in advance to anyone who can clarify.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like an error. (But my guess is that the data are weak.)
DeleteAmelie,
DeleteI think I can clarify this.
They use the phrase "morphological perturbations" (which made me laugh a bit) and say that these can be caused by pathogens. Therefore, the theory is that more attractive (less morphologically perturbed, LOL) mates should lead to better offspring because they are less likely to have pathogen-caused defects. They then go on to claim that the data proves this as people living in more "pathogen-ridden" areas allegedly place a greater importance on attractiveness of mates.
This sounds like a spurious correlation to me, but as they don't show us the data or the research methods I cannot say for sure. My intuition, however, is that, a) attractiveness does not necessarily correspond to physical fitness, b) people place value on aesthetics for more than one reason and c) attractiveness is incredibly nuanced, with tons of cultural variation.
I hope that clears up the confusion but overall I agree with Dr. Harnad's guess about weak data.
Teegan, good reply. A lot of the simplistic pop evopsych generalizations about attractiveness and fitness that may work for explaining birds or squirrels attractions is trumped by cognition in humans. Evolution can explain the origins of the capacity to learn, think and speak, but not what we end up doing with them.
DeleteFitness-detection might have an influence on our attractions, but a minute one.
***Dear All, please remember to send me the Word file of your cut-pasted skywritings from Week 1 to 6 this week.***
ReplyDelete(Then do your skyreadings and skywritings for Week 7, which will not be covered on the mid-term.)
In their paper on evolutionary psychology, Lewis et al touched upon common “misconceptions” (according to them) of the field. In particular, they discuss alternative explanations to evolutionary psychology. They argue that the idea of this theory as incompatible/antithetical to sociocultural explanations, and as proved wrong by cultural differences, is a misconception. According to them, sociocultural hypotheses look for proximate causes of psychological phenomena, and adaptation hypotheses investigate distal causes while making predictions about proximate causes. As I have taken some courses in sociology and anthropology, their justification of these alternative explanations was interesting, though it still seems to me that the predictions for proximate causes of phenomena by evolutionary theories very often contradict sociological explanations of these phenomena. Additionally, it can also be argued that sociological explanations also account for distal causes of psychological phenomena, as they consider the larger historical and cultural context within which these phenomena develop.
ReplyDeleteMathilda, what are proximal and distal causes? And what are examples of rival proximate and distal (evolutionary) explanations?
Delete(Tw: SA)
DeleteProximate causes are those that deal with the immediate causes of a phenomenon, whereas distal causes are concerned with more distant historical origins of evolution of various cognitive and behavioral phenomena.
Conflict between these two types of explanations happens when the distal/evolutionary explanation leads to a different prediction in proximate causes of behavior than the proximate explanation it is compared with. For example, a paper I read in a sociology course (Thornhill, Randy & Craig Palmer (2000). “Why Men Rape.” The Sciences Jan/Feb: 30-36.) offers an evolutionary perspective on rape: men, especially those of lower-class status, rape because of the evolutionary need/impulse to spread their genes. The predictions on proximate causes of this explanation are therefore that rape relies mostly on sexual desire, and its prevention should therefore target this aspect: the authors suggest teaching boys that these feelings of rape are natural but should be controlled. This conflicts with, for example, feminist theories of rape which look at (among others) factors of power dynamics between men and women which contribute to this phenomenon. The ‘solutions’ they therefore propose to this problem are vastly different from the ones suggested by the evolutionary/distal explanation.
Hi Mathilda,
DeleteI fully agree with you. Evolutionary bases are a much higher order interpretation than socio-cultural interpretations, which in turn are of a higher order than behavioural interpretations – they are an interpretation of interpretations, and I doubt how much of such a high order interpretation would be fully fact-based. At that level, things become less certain. Also, it assumes certain presuppositions which make it hard to disprove. It does not mean that it is not a good theory, it is just that I do not think that it is wholly scientific. Then, I wonder, why at all do we have to seek psychological evidence in a top-down way, as very much anything can fit into the theory of adaptation? (e.g., if humans are attracted to red, it could be explained as the attraction of fruits which are beneficial for health and therefore survival; if humans are averse to red, it could be explained as red is the colour of blood which means potential danger.)
Hey Han!
DeleteI think you make an interesting point. However, I do not think distal explanations, higher order explanations are necessarily not fact based. When going through a deduction approach or theory driven approach it is possible for the evidence to be tainted through a bias to find proof. However, I would like to hope that researchers do follow the empirical and scientific methods of verifying and testing the hypotheses. As the authors comment “adaptation hypotheses can usually be tested using methods normal in laboratory experiments, questionnaires and surveys, cross-cultural studies, observational studies, and physiological data.”
The testing of these hypotheses and the subsequent interpretation of results is done scientifically through the evaluation of fit between prediction and observation, the development of alternative explanation
s, and the mentioned caveats of variable output and multiple instantiations. Therefore, I do think that if done correctly top-down approaches are can be considered scientific and good theories.
"I wonder, why at all do we have to seek psychological evidence in a top-down way, as very much anything can fit into the theory of adaptation?"
DeleteHan, I found this statement of yours very interesting, but I wonder whether I fully agree. Indeed, if everything can be explained by a particular theory, does that necessarily mean that other explanations are irrelevant or do not provide useful input? For example, knowing that humans are attracted to red due to the adaptiveness of that trait does not remove the benefit of psychological evidence that could provide more details on this trait, for example the ways in which we are attracted to red (attention, curiosity etc), or the interaction of this phenomenon with other psychological mechanisms (eg interaction with attractive things in other modalities, interaction with the level of familiarity with an object etc). I don't know if this makes sense?
Han, I find it very interesting that you mentioned the red colour example. A guess, in short, may be there are two things involved: that we also have the adaptability and capacity to to incorporate and apply our knowledge from experience. That is to say we know red fruits are good, but also red suggests danger.
DeleteWhat are "Just-So Stories"?
DeleteA just-so story is a type of causal explanation for a particular phenomenon; they are usually compelling because they sound plausibility, or provide satisfying explanations, but lack testability or falsifiability. Hypotheses of evolutionary psychology are often criticized for being just-so stories. However, the idea that evolutionary hypotheses are in general unfounded and untestable isn’t exactly accurate. The hypotheses should act as predictive tools; as outlined in the article, they should be “used to generate specific testable empirical predictions.” The idea is that higher-level theories based on evolutionary hypotheses should yield many specific and testable hypotheses that shed light on new psychological phenomena, illustrated in the kin selection example. As such, the hypothesis of evolutionary psychology can be useful in discovering, examining, or relating previously uninvestigated psychological mechanisms.
DeleteThis is an interesting schema of evolutionary methodology in psychological research, and it appears to hold up quite well for the basic, relatively invariable, factors that have driven human evolution in our prehistoric/preagricultural era. We can fit historical framing about our ancestors into experiments testing for certain evolutionary responses. The heuristics employed aren't always directly empirically derived, but they are basically undeniable.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the environment humans inhabit has changed exremely rapidly thoughout our existence. While evopsych tends to focus on givens such as resistance to predation and injury, these problems were not always the most pressing issues faced by our agriculturally settled (and highly reproductive) ancestors. Even the diseases we faced were very different in their frequencies and magnitudes (arguably getting much worse after agriculture).
Homo Sapiens emerged around around 300,000 years ago. Agriculture emerged around 12,000 years ago. So, about 4% of our species' evolutionary history has been under the selective pressure of a settled lifestyle, and with it fundamentally different social pressures and distributions of reproduction, all during an explosion in population. This pressure changed our bodies in many ways, including a 12% decrease in brain size- almost certainly altering at least some of our cognitive architecture along with it.
Interesingly, this leads to the impression that we probably can't have a complete evolutionary explanation for our present way of cognizing without accounting for some sociocultural factors.
One other human cognitive capacity that has evolved is decision making. Evidently, a humans decision can highly impact its chances of reproduction and survival. A highly discussed example of decision-making is that of mate selection. The premise of this decision was originally based on physical fitness (and still is to a large extent) in order to ensure fitness of offspring as the ultimate goal is gene propagation. I personally found it interesting how the authors describe a mothers parental investment as higher than that of the father naturally due to gestation and birth, leading females to put more effort into her mate selection decision. The authors translate this as a possible hypothesis for modern-day women as being more choosey when it comes to choosing a mate.
DeleteIn addition to Laura's example in mate selection, kin selection and altruism were other examples in the paper about human cognitive capacities having an evolutionary explanation. From an evolutionary perspective, our ultimate goal is to pass on copies of our genes. One way to accomplish this is to reproduce on our own. By performing altruistic actions towards any other human, we inherently expect this favour to be returned, which promotes our reproductive success in the long run. Moreover, we can also achieve this by promoting the reproduction of other bodies likely to carry copies of their genes. By performing altruistic actions selectively toward the genetic relatives, we act upon kin selection theories and expect copies of our genes to be passed on indirectly through blood relatives.
DeleteWhy don't mammals eat their offspring when food is scarce?
DeleteFemale mammals are always choosier than males: why?
I assume the second question is about when it comes to choosing a mate. Female mammals are always choosier than males because men and females differ largely regarding the minimum parental investment required for reproduction success. Female mammals take more responsibility during the whole reproduction and rearing process. They gestate, give birth and lactate, which makes the minimal parental investment much higher for them than for men. As a result, they would be more choosy (and have to be) to ensure the suitability of their mating partner because it costs them more than men. Also, this is more common for the mammal kingdom because, unlike birds, fish and other non-mammals, it takes female mammals more time and energy to produce offspring, and offspring number is much smaller for mammals compared to other animals. Therefore, ensuring the survival of their offspring would be more pressing for female mammals than for other animals.
DeleteNadila, yes, and squandering on a partner who won't help, or disappear, risks the much fewer progeny a female mammal can have, compared to a male.
DeleteSo why don't mammals eat their babies in hard times?
Hi Nadila, this is correct according to the reading. In concurrence with women carrying more weight when it comes to bearing children, Lewis et al. explain that the fitness benefits of having multiple sexual partners reaped by men were greater than those reaped by women. This is because they were able to spread their gene pool easily and with less commitment than their counterparts. Lewis et al. explain the range of perceptual, behavioural, and emotional mechanisms that were driven by these sex differences. For example, men differ from women in terms of cognition because they seek sexual partners more frequently. They also cognize differently due to having more sexual fantasies.
Delete"So why don't mammals eat their babies in hard times?"
DeleteAccording to the kin selection theory, the key to promoting the success of one's genes is reproduction, either directly or through its relatives. So if a mammal kills its offspring, it is directly preventing the propagation of its gene pool.
Rosalie, correct for inclusive fitness and kin selection, but I don’t think that the well-known male over female advantage (in all mammals) in terms of maximum potential life-time fertilizations explains much of anything about male/female differences in cognitive capacities, as opposed to differences in how they are motivated to use them in social and reproductive contexts. And even that is trumped by "culture" (i.e., experience, learning and language – unsup, sup, and verbal learning) in humans.
DeleteHi professor, mammals don’t eat their babies in hard times because the offspring number is much smaller for mammal kingdoms compared to others. From a kin selection perspective, they do not eat their offspring even if they might starve to death because the benefit of altruistic
Deletebehaviour— not eating their babies, is greater. They do that to ensure their gene can be successfully passed on. Cannibalism happens more often to birds, fishes, etc., when lacking food because they usually have a large number of offspring, so they won’t need to worry about their gene won’t pass on.
Jacob, the incorporation of an evolutionary perspective to explain aspects of psychology I think is beneficial in order to formulate a wholly account for human psychological mechanisms and cognition. With that being said, I do think that this is not the only component to consider
DeleteAs we continue to evolve in a contemporary society, we are faced with scenarios never before encountered. This leads me to believe that while we do use previously established evolutionary measures, they do have the potential contribute to give rise to more spontaneous thought, whether influenced by sociocultural factors or something else. This is why, in building models of explanation, its not sufficient to merely follow a just-so story but it's also not all-encompassing to use only an evolutionary model. Instead, in account of the complexity of our cognitive development, our explanations will likely match.
So I really agree with your point "Interestingly, this leads to the impression that we probably can't have a complete evolutionary explanation for our present way of cognizing without accounting for some sociocultural factors." and I think that there may be even more factors to consider.
I found the hypothesis that “because pathogens can cause morphological perturbations during development, individuals living in parasite-dense regions of the world should place greater importance on physical attractiveness in mates” particularly interesting. This hypothesis suggests that humans’ mate preference mechanisms should put a stronger emphasis on physical attractiveness in high pathogen-prevalence regions and put a lesser emphasis on its importance in regions with lower levels of pathogens. It would be interesting to know how physical attractiveness correlates with pathogen resistance, and how we instinctively do this. This mechanism explains an evolutionary function, such that, over generations, we’ve developed a more adaptive property to better survive, which is also explained by natural selection; over these generations, those with the capacity to do this would survive more often and pass their genes on more than those humans who didn’t.
ReplyDeleteSee earlier discussions of this in this thread.
DeleteIn this reading, Lewis et al. suggest a more evolutionary based approach to psychology. Indeed, they provide a practical hands-on guide to push researchers in psychological and behavioural sciences to apply evolutionary principles to their empirically research program. This will thereby contribute in the merging of sociology, behavioural sciences as well as life sciences. Thus, Lewis et al, link adaptive problem and psychological adaptation.
ReplyDeleteI found interesting the idea that adaptation problems are considered to drive the evolutionary adaptation. Indeed, my initial thought when reading this article was that adaptation guided by selective pressure was against evolutionary principles. I considered the adaptation to be exterior the individual and the evolutionary principles to come from within. However, after reading this article, both come hand in hand as the necessity to adapt to a selective environment requires more than gene, it requires an evolution. Lewis et al. believe the strength of the adaptative problem depends on the magnitude and frequency of its impact on survival. Thus, it made me think what aspects of human cognition are driven by the necessary adaptation to the environment.
Ines, I'm not sure you have grasped what evolution is. What do you mean by the difference between "evolution" and "adaptation"? Please define each, as you understand them.
DeleteI'm not sure what you mean about cognition and adaptation either. But the question to ask yourself is: what can evolution do to help solve cogsci's easy problem of reverse-engineering how and why organisms are able to do the things they can do, from the vegetative things to the cognitive ones, like learning, thinking and language?
I can attempt to share my thoughts on this last question. It seems to me that to simplify, cognition operates at a sensorimotor level and a symbolic level, and cogsci studies both of these levels in terms of what they do as well as how, and why they operate, as well as how these two levels are bridged. So anything that gives us some picture of the "why" for any of these from an evolutionary perspective (that is, what specific evolutionary pressures might have selected for a certain cognitive capability or set of capabilities) might be helpful for solving the easy problem.
DeleteThis guide on how to apply evolutionary psychological approaches had a large emphasis on some of the content I had previously learned in biology classes, which was interesting as the purpose of the paper was to make this information readily accessible and applicable to psychological and behavioural science researchers. Despite being familiar with natural selection along with some of the proximal and distal causes for adaptations within species, evolutionary theory itself was new to me. The term describes the framework used to understand distal causal processes responsible for the creation of functionally organized natural mechanisms. The use of top-down and bottom-up approaches were outlined and described for creating the hypotheses with the key difference being that a bottom-up approach is only completed when the researcher generates a new testable prediction based on their hypothesized psychological mechanism. Overall, my confusion lies in the novelty of this approach as it seems fairly standard for researchers to use similar thinking in creating hypotheses without this guide. I may have slightly misunderstood, but the methodology behind creating a hypothesis as well as verifying it (competing adaptation hypotheses and incidental by-product hypotheses appear to be terms coined in this guide for common occurrences in research as one should always consider alternative reasons for getting certain results).
ReplyDeleteKarina, you are not wrong in being hesitant about the authors’ “scientistic” posturing about methodological banalities. What is their “bottom-up” and “top-down” approach, and how might be related or applied to cogsci’s mandate to reverse-engineer cognitive capacity?
DeleteEvolutionary psychology may be a possible avenue to tackling the “why” component of the easy problem, as it can generate explanations for why we have certain cognitive and behavioral capacities through Darwinian evolution (selection of certain genes that lead to doing capacities that promote an organism’s replication and survival). However, while the paper provides examples of adaptive problems (“doing capacities”) that evolutionary psychology can aim to assess in terms of why these doing capacities materialized, it falls short of explaining how these actually occur (how we are able to do what we can do).
ReplyDeleteDarcy, spot-on.
DeleteI agree with Darcy in that the authors of this article mainly lay out the adaptive problems and their domains along with the psychological adaptation. For example, the adaptive problems that come with ecological threats, including dangerous and poisonous animal aversion, explain psychological adaptations such as specialised spider/snake fears or specialised attention systems. However, it would really interest me to know the how we are able to have these capabilities.
DeleteHi Darcy, your comment reminded me of the mirror capacity readings from week 4. To my understanding, Evo psych could explain why the evolution of mirror capacities helps us survive through natural selection as a social species, but how our cognition has evolved to allow us to do what we can do is largely unexplored. Evo psych regards cognition as any other biological trait subject to natural selection, thus helping to explain (conjecturally) why certain cognitive traits have evolved for our survival purposes. However, just like mirror capacities, we all have are correlations between mirror neurons' activations and imitation, intention/action understanding, etc -- these correlations cannot help us unpack the causal mechanisms behind our capacity to imitate (the how). Likewise, the fact that many methodologies used in Evo psych are correlative in nature (e.g., the polygenetic comparative studies, the fitness approach) does not bring us any closer to answering the question of "how we can do what we can do?"
DeleteThis reading presents evolutionary psychology as a new perspective that can be used to explore the origins behind cognitive functions. Evolutionary psychologists identify problems that would affect humans' ability to reproduce, formulate hypotheses on what features we evolved to solve them, and use the results from a multitude of studies to arrive at a conclusion about which theories are most likely to be correct. The authors also combat the idea that evolutionary perspectives oppose sociocultural perspectives by drawing a distinction between proximal and distal explanations of behavior. They assert that sociocultural perspectives can only offer explanations as to why individual people develop certain features or cognitive functions while evolutionary perspectives explain why and how humans develop features. However, this seems to underestimate the importance of sociocultural effects, as they seem to only be interpreted in relation to evolutionary effects.
ReplyDeleteSociocultural hypotheses look at proximate causes, because they investigate how a psychological mechanism works in a real-life setting, whereas adaptation/evolutionary hypotheses look at distal causes because they attempt to answer why such a mechanism works. The researchers believe that evolutionary perspectives can be a powerful tool to make predictions about proximate causes, although past discourse suggests a natural confliction between sociocultural and evolutionary phenomena. The paper gives a framework for how to go about reconciling these two concepts.
DeleteI agree with Elena that the importance of sociocultural effects are underestimated, as evolution cannot solely explain the vast and complex nature of human behavior.
Elena, “sociocultural effects” covers anything that people might do based on learning from (nonverbal and verbal) experience. Can evolutionary psychology “predict and explain” that?
DeleteEvolutionary psychology can only predict and explain the structures or tendencies that we have. Therefore, it can help explain some of our current behaviors by examining how our experiences interact with evolved structures, but it cannot account for the experience itself.
DeleteThis article is very interesting because it shows that some behaviours might have evolved in order to sustain the maximization of human adaptability in the environment, but I am wondering how much some behaviours were set in stone and how much they were influenced by the culture and society we live in. For example, when the authors talks men’s sexual behaviour when saying “compared to women, men express a greater desire for a variety of sex partners, let less time elapse before seeking sexual intercourse, lower their standards dramatically when pursuing short-term mating”, I am wondering how much these characteristics differ depending on the culture, the environment, etc. If we look at men raised in a more open-minded and inclusive environment, would they display the same behaviours as men raised in a very masculine environment marked by a lot of gender stereotypes (such as sports that would be considered as the typical “masculine sports”)? In other words, how much characteristics of language and cognition such as fake beliefs, information shared between peers through language, or social imitation mediate that relationship between gender and a sexual role they display? It would be interesting to study the evolution of different “gendered” behaviours in different environments, different cultures, and maybe different times.
ReplyDelete
DeleteThis reply highlighted that certain heritable features seem more consistent than others due to their advantageousness. Considering there is still variations between people in behavior and identity, I then wonder if it is within the scope of cognitive science to produce consciousness in various contexts. The article highlights that social, cultural and environmental inputs the mechanism processes will determine what the outputs are. Since T2/T3 machines are meant to be indistinguishable from a human, wouldn’t they need to have some variation, and cultural influences, as humans do?
Hi Melis! Your last question regarding T2/T3 robots is a very interesting debate that I had not considered. My understanding of the Turing test was that it evaluated very technical, standardized human abilities. However, I wonder if aspects of humanity, such as individual differences, personality, or emotions would have to be integrated into the robot in order for it to truly be indistinguishable from humans. Perhaps it would be acceptable if these robots simply had the ability to develop a personality or be influenced by culture, rather than these traits being inborn when the robot is created.
DeleteHey Melis and Kimberly! The "personality" aspect of a T3 is something that I've often considered since the beginning of this course: how can we reverse-engineer cognitive capacity and not infuse it with a personality of some kind? For me, this question recalls earlier discussions in the course about whether we need to reverse-engineer a child-like mind or a fully-formed adult one to successfully reverse-engineer cognitive capacity. I think this reading provides a comprehensive framework to help answer the personality/variation question. For example, by following the bottom-up approach, we can ask ourselves: what psychological adaptation is responsible for producing a personality and what adaptive problem does a personality try to solve? Looking at it this way, we can start to generate some hypotheses about why evolution selected for certain personality traits (i.e., what adaptive advantages do selected-for traits confer?). On page 362 of this reading, during the discussion of the bottom-up approach, the article even mentions "reverse engineering" which is exciting to see considering it hints that evopsych may offer key insights that help us one day solve the Easy Problem. Overall, I found this article very interesting because it proposes a systematic way to study evopsych, namely by identifying common misconceptions about the field and walking the reader through useful heuristics.
DeleteMelis, yes, the TT requires the capacity for variation, and for being changed by nonverbal and verbal experience. But the question is: how much of the variation can evopsy predict or explain? And what contribution, if any, can evopsy make to solving the easy problem (especially in nonvegetative capacities)?
DeleteKimberly, cogsci’s easy problem is not about predicting and explaining what people will do but what they can do -- by reverse-engineering how and why. How can evopsy help cogsci with the “why”?
Polly, how does an organism get a personality? Partly from differences in inborn traits and partly from the effects of experience (learning, communication, language [if human]). Think of cogsci as trying to explain the generic cognitive capacities of each species. Evopsy tries to explain how and why they evolved. Genes influence how much of each capacity you are born with, and life experience, learning, and language then determine the outcome.
Evolutionary psychology could be helpful in solving the why of the easy problem because it provides theories and mechanisms for explaining the potential origins of of certain behaviors. I do agree though, that it is difficult to tell sometimes whether a behavior is learned or innate. On the topic of personality, for example, if one shares certain traits with a parent, whose to say whether those traits were inherited, or learned from constant exposure to that parent? Evolutionary psychology is certainly an intriguing avenue to studying cognition, but cannot be the only one.
DeleteThis paper tackles the complexities behind our evolutionary adaptations and their potential characteristics. There are various ways to reveal the causal influences on our present cognitive functions. The discussion about the variability in between level of impact and frequency was particularly surprising to me as I hadn’t thought about these different facets before.
ReplyDelete“Even a very rare adaptive problem [...] faced by a very small subset of the population can lead to the evolution of an adaptation possessed by all members of the species.”
This observation underlines the importance of simulation in modeling minute problems that affect selective pressure on the long run. Though this paper better equips me to understand the methodoligically rigorous explanations behind certain psychological adaptations I previously wouldn’t have had an explanation for, there is still a blind spot as to certain mechanisms like the Milgram experiment. What adaptive problem would this mechanism may be designed to solve? Could this be a byproduct of another adaptation?
Tess, evopsy (and to a certain extent all evolutionary explanation) faces a big “underdetermination” problem, especially with rare or one-off outcomes, long in the past. Modeling can help, but there’s ever the danger of falling into Just-So Stories (what’s that?). All historical explanation has the same problem. Again, with modeling, at least one can test rival J-SSs…
DeleteIn this paper they discuss at length the importance of middle level theories. If I am understanding correctly, middle level theories seem to bridge the gap between evolutionary/genetic theories and pure behavioural theories. For example, they discuss the middle level theory of parental investment, which predicts that parents are invested in their children because of a genetic adaptation that desires them to keep their kin safe. This is considered middle level because it attempts to explain behaviour from an evolutionary perspective. If I am correct, researchers can use middle level theories to conduct both top down (starting with the theory) and bottom up (starting with an observation) research. As Darcy said above, this can be useful in the explanation of the “why” behind our behaviour on a universal level.
ReplyDeleteSophie, With underdetermined, unrepeatable Just-So Stories, it does not matter whether they are reached Bottom-Up, Top-Down, or straight to the middle. They're Just J-SSs.
DeleteWhile this paper provides a helpful guide to researchers who are interested in testing psychological behaviors from an evolutionary perspective, I am not sure if it helps with the “how” question of reverse engineering the brain. With the given examples about adaptive problems, we can surely make inferences about “why” we behave in certain ways in certain situations from an evolutionary perspective, however this still does not answer “how” the brain functions in these kinds of situations. It is only mentioned that sociocultural hypotheses investigate how a psychological mechanism works and adaptation hypotheses investigate why this mechanism evolved in the first place. So although there has been some investigations in why and how mechanisms work, I am not sure how much these would contribute to the reverse engineering of our brains, or maybe I am missing a point.
ReplyDeleteHi Alara! I had similar thoughts to you when reading this article, and noticed how it contributes more to answering the ‘why’ question rather than the ‘how’. However, I do not necessarily believe that the aim of the article or the field of evolutionary psychology in general is to answer the ‘how’ question. Rather, as the authors note, the emphasis is on the importance of “incorporating evolutionary thinking into psychological research.” It contributes to our greater knowledge and formation of a framework from which we can attempt to answer more of the ‘why’ questions.
DeleteCogsci’s “why” is not about why did this particular organism do this, but why did the species evolve the generic cognitive capacity to do this? (And there’s an evolutionary “how” too: how did the species evolve it? But that’s not cogsci’s mandate, except if it helps to reverse-engineer the capacity itself.)
DeleteIt was interesting to read that the evolutionary task analysis relies upon reverse-engineering the final product of evolution to understand the evolutionary process that led to it. Interestingly, task analysis utilizes computation as its basis to answer the "what" and "how" question of cognition.
ReplyDeleteFor example, the comprehensive analysis first detects the environmental information that our ancestors had (input), then it applies the algorithm that our ancestors had (computation), and finally, it looks at the output of the thoughts, emotions, or behaviours that our ancestors produced (output).
However, I wonder how the researchers can know what kind of algorithms our predecessors have had. Sure, we can make intelligent assumptions, but is there any evidence that points to them having certain cognitive features that we have today?
Hi Alexei! The theory of what algorithms and cognitive features our ancestors had comes from various forms of evidence. Researchers can combine “well-established data from disciplines such as anthropology, geology, primatology, and biology” (p. 356) to construct theories on human abilities and behaviour. Our ancestors faced many complex and challenging problems related to their survival, and our existence serves as evidence that they had the mental capacity to overcome these issues.
DeleteAdditionally, current brain structures and mental abilities can be traced back to our ancestors since such complex systems have evolved over thousands of years. It is a reasonable assumption that our ancestors had very similar internal systems to humans now, although they have definitely evolved and improved over time.
Computational modelling of evolution is more successful in modelling vegetative functions of nonhuman species than cognitive functions of humans.
DeleteThough I found the reading interesting, I was left wondering whether the points we discussed on week 4 regarding neuroscience / brain imaging also apply to evolutionary psychology. Why should cognitive science care about how our cognitive capacities came about (i.e. their "distal" causes)? How does it help us to achieve the goal of reverse engineering these abilities? It seems to be that, given its aims, cognitive science should concern itself strictly with the "proximate" causes of cognition.
ReplyDeletePerhaps evolutionary psychology has indirect role to play, as biological evolution is what theoretically justifies us using animal research to study human cognition (that is, we can use animals to study humans because the two share a evolutionary trajectory).
Gabriel, you are right in your parallel with Week 4. But a valid distal explanation might help reverse a cognitive capacity. (Hard to find a convincing example, though.)
Delete(Common ancestry is far from being a sufficient justification for animal testing and experimentation. Not that a justification can never be valid, just that it is very rare in practice, relative to the enormous volume of unjustified experimentation and testing, done just because there are no advocates for the victims and the victims cannot protect themselves.)
I think this paper had some important points about the importance of observation-based research when it comes to understanding and explaining human social behaviour when considering it in the greater context by which we humans carry out our actions (distal causation). But herein lies its limitation to its contribution to cognitive science. Cognitive science's primary focus is tackling why and how our brains perform cognition. Evolutionary psychology's contribution to understanding the mind will only ever tell us part of the story. This is not a comment against empirical research and ignoring the value of conducting research. Rather, I question the extent to which studying distal causes and "bottom-up" approaches to research in human behaviour is valuable in helping cognitive science answer its central question -- why and how do we cognize.
ReplyDeleteSara, and it may be over-generous to call observational evopsy research on the human species “empirical.” It’s not experimental. Computer-modelling is closer to empirical; at least rival hypotheses can be tested.
DeleteThinking from a cogsci point of view, for us humans, cognitive capacity could very likely be what's selected, but cognition is also seen in non-human animals, e.g., like my friend's very intelligent cat. From what I understand, natural selection selects traits that work (which may not be the best/the strongest trait for a species), it's kind of lazy but also make things work. Here's an example of that: a clam whose appendage looks like a fish, it uses this appendage to attract other fish to come. When other fishes approach, the clam retrieves the appendage and spits out its eggs onto the gills of larger fish. As large fish swims away, the water going through their gills and its eggs are carried to larger and wider areas. It just works on a biological level for survival and reproduction.
ReplyDeleteSo can we infer that cognition is just something nature thinks (or if it's actually thinking at all (let's not debate about it)) would work out for the sake of continuity and development of some species in the world, instead of the so-called homo sapien superiority? It's not a ladder, it's a tree where all species are connected in some way or the other, e.g., mice have 99% of the same genes that we do. My doubt is, can evolutionary psychology, with top-down/bottom-up approaches, help us explain the easy problem? I think it can to some degree, but what's discussed in this paper are somewhat vague in cognition but more about biology (which I think is where evolution/natural fits better).
Monica, of course other species have spectacular cognitive capacities. They just don’t have language. (What does it mean to not have language? And in what sense is evolution “lazy”?)
DeleteMy guess is that they don't have language meaning that they do communicate, but not categorize. Here "lazy" means that evolution gives species traits that work, but not all traits that are purposeful.
DeleteHi Monica, perhaps I can clarify a little:
DeleteOther species definitely can categorize. To categorize means to sort out the alternatives that may be confused with those that are sought after. For instance, a deer or a chimp can successfully learn to pick out edible fruits from poisonous ones via supervised or unsupervised learning. Also, I recently trained my cat to shake hands through my vocal command. The fact that my cat can associate my command with rewards but not just any other auditory stimuli means that he knows how to categorize - isolating one stimulus from other potential alternatives. However, other species do not have language in the sense that they cannot do "indirect grounding" as we can. Since language is a propositional property, I can tell a child that "if you put your finger on a burning stove, you will get hurt." As long as the other components in this sentence are grounded in the child's mind (either directly or indirectly), he will not touch the burning stove because the child can use the propositional property of language to associate his stove-touching behaviour with a particular sensorimotor experience (i.e., pain). However, I will not expect my cat to keep his paws away from the burning stove upon telling him not to because cats (including most other species) do not have the capacity to do indirect grounding.
To sum up, both humans and other species categorize (cognizing inevitably involves categorizing). Language helps humans categorize in various indirect ways, which allows us to skip the time-consuming, risky process of trial-and-error learning. For species that do not have language, trial-and-error learning is necessary for successful categorizing.
The methods I have learned in previous evolutionary biology courses align with the methods used in evolutionary psychology. Like Buss, I believe it would be a significant error to deny the influence of our evolution on human psychology. However, I am often conflicted with the isolated use of this method for analyzing psychological phenomena. While this method benefits theory development, I disagree with its use for drawing absolute conclusions. I think its benefit is in theory generation but that it should always be coupled with rigorous experimentation to ensure the phenomena is described taking into account the influences of many other factors.
ReplyDeleteFuther, this article prompted my contemplation of the continued efficacy of this method, given the rapid evolution of technology and society in the last hundred and fifty years. While the effects of biological evolution are seen within successive generations, the advancement of technology and the extreme changes in social organization due to globalization within just the last two generations makes me question whether or not this method stands for all psychological phenomena exhibited today. I do not doubt that we can still draw important conclusions using this method, but due to the fact that our intragenerational rate of technological advancement has superseded our rate of biological evolution, I am curious to know if this method's reliability has been maintained over time.
Hi Emma, I am very interested in your comment. I agree that evolution cannot alone be responsible for psychological mechanisms. However, I think this article does a thorough job at explaining that current models of psychological mechanisms can be linked to historical models to form a more complete picture, without neglecting the influence of sociocultural realities on psychology.
DeleteThe article allows for variable outputs in psychological mechanisms, that account for different ecological and cultural variables, all the while maintaining that a certain universal adaptation.
I agree that it is difficult to imagine how we can precisely attribute psychological mechanisms to a specific adaptive problem, especially since the article highlights the significance of byproduct effects, alternative functions and developmental shifts on evolutional mechanisms that cause all sorts of surprising phenomenons. It sure feels like evolutionary theory couldn’t keep up with today’s technological advancements given everything that’s going on in the world, such as highly impactful incidents caused by global warming or the heightened disparity between rich and poor countries, etc. Evolutionary theory, same as decades ago, must be able to consider all these factors somehow.
Hi Emma, I also agree that psychological mechanisms should not be analyzed solely through an evolutionary perspective, since there are other factors at play. This reading discusses adaptive problems and the psychological adaptations evolved to solve them. I find it interesting that, although we have innate (evolved) mechanisms to solve these adaptive problems, we can learn to do things that contradict them. Innate and learned categories are both influential, not only across different categories but within the same. The reading gives the adaptive problem of toxin aversion, to which humans developed the psychological adaptation of disgust toward spoiled and contaminated food to reduce likelihood of eating foods that can hurt us. However, humans can also learn to love foods that contradict this evolutionary aversion. For example, fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, or the famous Icelandic Hákarl, smell rotten; yet, many people consider them delicious. Rather than all categories being either innate or learned, many are influenced by a combination of evolutionary adaptations and learned preferences.
DeleteRosalie, what is a “psychological” mechanism? Is it a mechanism in the reverse-engineering sense? Does it explain causally how we can do something?
DeleteAs for global warming, it’s not just evolution that couldn’t keep up with that; evolution’s lazy product, cognition, could not keep up with it either (at least so far – and there’s not much farther left to go…)
Josie, we’ve done the exercise of looking though a dictionary to estimate what proportion of our categories are innate (very few); what percent do you think are hybrid (and how?)?
This paper seems to suggests that every behavior of an organism is either to a) solve one or more adaptation problem, b) assist to solve one or more adaptation problem, c) random noise or incidental effects of adaptations. Indeed, evolution theory is particularly useful in generating adaptation hypotheses which might explain how does an organism solve one or more adaptation problems.
ReplyDeleteThen, it follows how can we distinguish which behavior belongs to which categories (a, b, or c). However, this should not be an obstacle to us since there are only three possibilities.
So how does a, b or c help with cogsci's easy problem?
DeleteFrom what I understood, the bottom-up approach begins with observation. Taking an observable behaviour and performing a ‘reverse task analysis’ (as they call it) to see what sort of psychological mechanism may lie behind it. This process will also allow researchers to identify the adaptive problem the behaviour/mechanism is trying to solve. This then leads to the beginning of the top-down approach. Identifying the adaptive problem starts the process of formulating hypotheses and predictions to propose a complete explanation for the behaviour. I can understand how this reverse-engineering process can help solve the easy problem of cogsci but I’m not sure it’s enough. The easy problem focuses on how and why we DO what we DO. Doing is observable, hence why the bottom-up approach would be crucial. The top-down approach then helps try to answer the “why.” I don’t quite see how their approaches answer the “how” of the easy problem… I also wonder– what about the features of our cognitive capacities that are not observable (ie. the hard problem)? I struggle to see how EvoPsyc would explain the how and why of that…
DeleteIn addition, this paper also suggests there are three stages in solving adaptation problems, and I found each of them are related closely to cognitive science. First, to identify the problem, an organism uses its sensory, perceptual, and physiological systems to detect the "cues"; then the organism must prosses these perceptual inputs using some computations which finally, generates the output that solves the adaptation problem.
ReplyDeleteCynthia, I think you need to be more critical with what you read. Kid-sib finds these three stages quite vacuous!
DeleteYes, the rarity of examples to validate generalizations is another liability for evopsy theorizing.
ReplyDeleteThis paper highlighted to me the importance of evolutionary psychology. It brought up bottom-up type observation processes that were often used when observing most of biology. Then some top-down processes where they simulated artificially a setting where there was a two groups where one had a mutation that provided shielding which turn the population of that mutation from 1% to 99%. The adaptation hypothesis was put in to question here. But what does this have to do with cognitive psychology? At first, I didn't quite understand why this reading. From my perspective, this paper demonstrates that we still aren't entirely sure about how cognition works so looking back through history and evolution can lead us towards some answers.
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ReplyDeleteAccording to the paper, the top-down approach entails identifying a problem related to survival or reproduction in ancestral human environments and proposing a potential psychological adaptive to solve the selected issue. The bottom-up approach is similar to the top-down approach, except that it includes an additional aspect of observation.
Before reading, I assumed that concerning how this may be related to Cogsci's mandate, there was no promise that it could hold a link. In particular, since both approaches focus on proposing a mechanism that can solve the problem, reverse engineering would make this quite difficult. This is because we barely know the solution to the easy problem at the moment, so how could we possibly form a mechanism if we don't even know what can solve it?
However, based on the reading, I stand a bit in the middle. As it appears, from my perspective, evolutionary psychology can play the role of assisting us with the "WHY" portion of the easy problem. An example of this would be (to avoid repetition) the mate selection and authors' translation to potential reasoning why women are more choosey mentioned earlier. Notably, this is not the only example that can be used to display evolutionary psychology as a portion of answering the "WHY" aspect. Furthermore, relating to Fodor's argument on the brain, I'd like to think that, in some way, neuroscience can act as the side that plays the role of assisting us with the "HOW" portion of the easy problem. So maybe both aspects can be integrated in a way that can be translated into a solution for reverse-engineering cognitive capacity.
It is easy to adopt a computationalism view when we look at the work of artificial intelligence’s near, if not indistinguishable performance of human verbal behavior. At a general level we can take ourselves out of the matrix if we compare evopsycs adaptation problems faced by humans vs human-made devices. But at a middle level what does evopsyc enable us to say about the causal mechanism that the human used vs the device. The paper suggests “computational machinery that processes cues (algorithms)”, which takes us back into the matrix. The specific hypothesis level is now symbol crunching to get to a behavior. What I see as takeaways for our specific goal of reverse engineering our doing capacities is that at a general level evopsyc can tell us that some of our capacities evolved to adapt us to certain problems and some evolved as a by-product (hopefully feelings, to get the hard problem out of the way). This may inform us that there is evolutionary support that feelings are not a capacity we must reverse-engineer but a capacity that should come from successfully reverse-engineering the doing capacity. The “why” explanations of evopsyc seems to me as being functionalist explanations with layers of correlational a priori theories (maybe just-so stories). I think the developmental explanations section of the paper introduced an interesting model which considers constraints as a conceptual tool of understanding developmental shifts. I think if we were to develop a T3 robot, the initial learning phase of the robot could be inspired by human developmental shifts- maybe to constrain what stimuli is attended.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the most baffling part of this article to me is the line in the overview that states “no psychology graduate program in the United States requires even a single course in evolutionary biology”; to me, this seems ridiculous because many of the psychological mechanisms or theories that I have learned in my numerous psychology classes have been based in or at least influenced by human biology. It seems obvious to me that many aspects of our cognitive functions, and as the article states, I think this is due to a “top-down” approach of identifying certain environmental conditions that our ancestors encountered, and then recognizing a psychological mechanism of solving it. A good example of this recognizing the visual complexity of the environment that our ancestors lived in (i.e. in the jungle, there are many different moving objects, varying in size and shape), and tracing this to the ability of the modern visual system, specifically for edge detection and object differentiation.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this paper and the other comments I still don’t understand how evolutionary psychology can explain how we are able to do what we do. To generate a hypothesis, Lewis et al proposes two different approaches. One is a top-down, theory-driven approach that consists in identifying an adaptive problem (“conditions that would have had a recurrent impact on ancestral humans’ survival or reproduction”). Some examples of adaptive problems could be protecting offspring, staying close to an area with food, escaping predators… By identifying the adaptive problem, we can then formulate hypotheses to propose psychological explanations for the behavior. In another possible case, we start with the observation of the behavior (bottom-up approach). Then they perform a “reverse task analysis” in order to understand the psychological mechanism responsible for the produced behavior. Nevertheless, defining these adaptive problems such as “attracting a mate” or “resisting infection” does not help in explaining how we do these. Evolutionary psychology only highlights that these problems are observable (bottom-up approach) and that they have been selected as important attributes through Darwinian evolution. This could explain why we execute such behaviors but could not explain how.
ReplyDeleteThe evolutionary psychology perspective is a valuable one to consider when trying to explain human behaviour. The article cautiously describes the benefits of such a model but also what traps to avoid falling into when using it. They describe a theory driven top-down approach to analyzing problems with an evolutionary lens as well as an observation driven bottom-up approach. In terms of the relevance of this kind of thinking to cognitive science, I think the key offering is that if we understand why certain traits have evolved and why we have evolved certain behavioral capacities that may help us to understand how those capacities work.
ReplyDeleteI left this week skywritings to do later because personally I found these 2 articles very long to read. I am not very familiar with evolutionary theory however from class discussions and some questions I put in other skywrittings, I see that evolutionary psychology can help cog-sci to understand why humans do certain things. That is, if we explore how and when humans evolved a certain ability, we will be better at saying why they do that same ability. This paper highlights the importance of observation-based research, however I find that evolution will only be able to partly help cog sci due to its many limitations. To complete, the authors also lay the difference between proximal and distal causes which are the immediate causes vs the historical origins of evolution respectively.
ReplyDeleteJust to take your thoughts a little further based on my understanding more specifically on how evolutionary psychology intersects with cogsci. The top down approach discussed can be used in the reverse engineering of cogsci in a way that hypotheses can be formulated and tested on what human behavior is expected. Bottom down, behaviors are observed and then hypotheses made from that. This could start from looking at someone’s reaction. I think Cogsci takes a more bottom up approach in observing what is decided to be basic human behavior and replicating how it is done. To say a top down approach would be to sort of determine what people will/could do? Whereas cogscis focus is on what is currently possible. In any case both approaches would essentially not provide clear enough explanations into how we do things and more so explain the why and the relations with other behaviors we exhibit just as you stated!
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ReplyDeleteThis paper provided a practical guide to conducting research on evolutionary psychology. The guide thoroughly covered how to approach each stage of research from generating hypotheses, testing hypotheses, and interpreting results. In the generating hypotheses stage, they also provided additional heuristics to consider when identifying a problem to consider, including the distinction between the magnitude of impact and frequency of a problem. I thought the high impact, low frequency adaptive problem simulation was especially interesting because it showed how quickly a gene could spread despite over 99% of the population never facing this problem. Since these problems very rarely occur, there are likely very few clues showing evidence of these problems. I'm interested in seeing how someone would conduct research on high impact, low frequency problems. These problems seem especially difficult to study because they occur at such a low frequency, and when a trait does emerge to handle it, it no longer becomes a problem super quickly.
The ‘Which adaptive problems would have driven the evolution of adaptations?’ section was intriguing because it discusses how frequency and impact risk impact the evolution of specific psychological adaptations. The anti-homicide simulation they created showed that despite the extremely low probability, the entire population could develop the anti-murder mutation because of the high impact. Simulations like these can help display why specific adaptations occur while accounting for distal and proximate causes. Computations like these can be valuable tools for differentiating the proximate versus the distal reason. They do not need to use such extreme circumstances as this one did.
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