Humans as Captives of Evolution: An Analysis of Anxiety and Depression - Essay Example

The universality of emotional expressions and responses has been used by evolutionary psychologists as a proof that negative emotions suchas depression and anxiety are originally human adaptive mechanisms. There are various ways in which these mental disorders facilitate decision making and the nature of response of individuals. There are a number of theories and assumptions presented in the paper such as the Darwinian natural selection, social competition and defective theory that best explain the adaptive nature of what is considered as human abnormalities, namely, depression and anxiety. Moreover, the evolutionary perspective has been currently used by psychotherapist to effectively cure chronic depression. For some psychotherapists, consulting the evolutionary perspective improved their effectiveness and increased their therapeutic success. Humans as Captives of Evolution: An Analysis of Anxiety and Depression I. Introduction Humankind has a delicately developed range of emotional responses, and, even though individual’s experiences are deeply personal or private, people can still share their emotions with others and appreciate the emotional conditions of their fellow beings. Nevertheless, if one will examine this premise on a cross-cultural basis, variations in ways that individuals express their emotions through gestures and facial expression will surface. Moreover, another interesting issue on emotions that could be studied cross-culturally is whether emotional expressions are universal or culturally determined. For instance, a smile in some cultures connotes happiness or gratification while there are other cultures which perceive the act of smiling in a different manner (Cartwright, 2001). In order for people to understand the dynamics of human emotions, it is essential to first look at the abundant evidence that support the belief that people’s expression of emotions is a universal attribute of human nature. Verifying the universality and innate nature of emotional expression and experience creates several experimental dilemmas for the evolutionary psychologist. Primarily, these psychologists have to separate the influences on people of mainstream culture, with its reserve of prepared pictures of emotion and their corresponding expression, from something that might naturally develop. In order to overcome this problem, Paul Elkman in the 1960s conducted an interview and testing of people in an expansive array of cultures. He showed pictures of people’s face in different emotional conditions to respondents from Chile, Argentina, Brazil, USA and Japan, and requested his subjects to connect emotions such as anger, happiness, fear, depression, to each picture (Buss, 1999). Afterward, such studies were broadened by Elkman and others to take in a total of 21 countries. The findings were decidedly significant; in spite of the varied differences between such cultures with regard to economic development and religious values, there was astonishing agreement about faces that exhibit happiness, depression and disgust (ibid). Elkman then appropriated identical testing procedures to the people of South Fore in Papua New Guinea. During the time these people still inhabited a Stone Age way of life devoid of a written language and unreceptive to the sweeping global accomplishment of Western culture. Elkman brilliantly surpassed the language barrier to acquire significant findings. The people of South Fore selected the same facial expression for their emotions as those from the people of the other 21 countries tested (ibid). From such psychological studies it gradually more begins to appear as if people’s emotional aspect, at least in the manner it is conveyed facially, is part of a typical development plan. Since this plan develops without fail in all cultures, it would appear logical to expect that it has been formed through natural selection (Coll, 2004). As soon as this is established, then people can start to question about the adaptive relevance of having emotions and expressing them and sharing them with others. A workable beginning perhaps is to view emotions as acting similarly as other physiological responses such as sexual arousal, hunger and pain. Through this, it would be easy to perceive how they operate to guarantee that the organism steers clear of danger, flourishes and sexually reproduces. Following this perspective, emotions can then be seen as regulating people’s behavior to make certain that human genes will survive (ibid). In their book entitled Evolution and Healing, Nesse and Williams (1995) pointed out that, “Just as the capacity for experiencing fatigue has evolved to protect us from overexertion, the capacity for sadness may have evolved to prevent additional losses” (ibid, as cited in Cartwright, 2001, 74). To put it plainly, when people are hopelessly losing it is advisable to give up and sadness provides the push. Without this insight, both grief and depression would seem to be counterproductive because they are emotional conditions that guide people to pull out from normal way of life and its prospects to bolster their wellbeing. Both these emotions, ensuing as they commit the loss of something priceless to people’s interests such as prestige, power, wealth or a close ally, direct people to halt their current activities, ponder on their behaviors and actions and distrust the good judgment of their new strategies. Therefore, in this sense, depression is equivalent to pain that makes people stop consuming unripe fruit or stop nudging that sleeping dog. As the famous adage goes, “when you are in a hole stop digging” (ibid, 75). II. Anxieties in the Evolutionary Perspective Anxiety is frequently useful. For instance, a bit of anxiety before a school examination may encourage individuals to review more thoroughly. Anxiety confronting danger, such as walking through an open field with a hungry lion inside, may guarantee an individual to keep distance or, more rationally, keep away from the field altogether. In other words, showing fear in the face of danger may convince people to redirect their course of action or decision and curtail the risk through taking more carefulness (Buss, 1999). Hence, individuals should be able to distinguish between fears and phobias. Fears “are natural human emotions that bear some relationship to the source of danger” (Cartwright, 2001, 77) whereas phobias “are fears wildly out of proportion to the actual hazards faced” (ibid). Therefore, it can be concluded that fears are adaptive while phobias can result in maladaptive or abnormal behavior. Fears can help out survival in several ways. If fear and sensible anxiety embody evolved responses then it could be that further specific expressions represent ancestral recollections of dangers confronted in the history of humans’ ancestors. For instance, fear of the dark is obviously understandable in these circumstances: people are defenseless at night from attack by killers with improved night vision or from marauders. It has been put forth that the function of sleep links to weakness of humans at night. If hazards are present in the process of moving about, making a sound and not carrying out activities effectively then it is better to keep quiet, keep motionless and remain inactive for the rest of the night. Sleep is the means in which genes make sure that their medium, which is the human body, shun from risky behavior (Holloway, 1999). This table illustrate, in principle, on how people could determine particular fears and anxieties to the adaptive memory they correspond to. Type of Fear Adaptive Origin Fear of Snakes Poisonous snakes have been a threat to primates and hominids for the last few million years Fear of Heights (Acrophobia) Humans are relatively large animals and falling has always posed a grave danger. Significantly, acrophobia usually provokes a freezing reaction, making it less likely that a person will fall. Claustrophobia In a small confined space humans are vulnerable since escape is difficult Stranger anxiety (xenophobia) Harm from unfamiliar humans, especially males. Response to threat of disease transmission—strangers could bring diseases from remote areas to which the local population has not evolved a defense. Agoraphobia Risks lie beyond the familiar territory of the home. (Cartwright, 2001, 79). The fears shown in the table are embedded to some extent in the human psyche. It is essential that greater numbers of city residents with abnormal fears of snake visit psychiatrists and unfamiliar persons than do those with fears of vehicles or electrical gadgets (Buss, 1999). However, for modern urban people, cars and electricity signify numerically a higher threat than snakes or strangers. The anxiety that young children frequently exhibit before unfamiliar faces is understandable in these circumstances. It is probable that infanticide embodied an actual risk for humans’ primate predecessors. In promiscuous mating bands of a number of animal species, when the leading male is put out of place by another, the triumphant new dominant male starts slaughtering the infants of his previous enemy. This has the consequence of returning the females back into fertility and also guaranteeing that no males, including the dominant one, squander time and energy on rearing offspring that are not his own (Murphy & Stitch, 2000). This rather heartless and cruel section of our past may have left its stains on contemporary humans. Margo Wilson, an evolutionary psychologist, has discovered that the risk of infanticide for an adopted or a stepchild is far greater than for a child with biological parents. It is conceivably not startling then that human infants are habitually afraid of strangers. The frightened and often anxious reaction of an infant when an unfamiliar male moves toward may be a remnant of humanity’s vicious past (ibid). Some amount of social anxiety may be adaptive in numerous ways. Primarily, human and non-human primates have to be ready to fear maddening, perilous or disapproving human countenances (Mineka & Zinbarg, 1995). Social anxiety warns people to potential hazards and indicates the need to set in motion successful coping responses. Moreover, showing of social anxiety may also contribute as a coping mechanism in the face of danger. Furthermore, in addition to the contribution of social anxiety in warning and safeguarding against potential perils, it has been contended that establishing a good inkling on others may have a significant survival purpose. Humans have developed to vie for attractiveness, so as to draw out essential social resources and wealth from others. Some amount of social anxiety may assist people to control their social behaviors, hence avoiding social punishments or segregation (Gilbert, 2001). The evolutionary importance of social anxiety is possibly most apparently demonstrates by the experience of blushing, a general symptom of social anxiety disorder. Darwin presented a comprehensive explanation of the blushing occurrence in humans, emphasizing that it involved a sudden reddening of the face, neck and ears in reaction to the thought of what others might think about one. Likewise, a more current thorough evaluation defines blushing as the natural reddening or dimming of the face, ears, neck that takes place in reaction to imagined social inspection or examination (Leary & Meadows, 1991). Blushing also has function in situations of imagined social scrutiny or threat. In the animal dimension, prevailing and inferior status are warned by an array of mechanisms. One instance of mechanism, referred to as conciliation displays, contributes to the indication of approval of the status quo to an overriding specific (De Waal, 1989). Humans have most probably also developed or evolved effective mechanisms for identifying thoughts and sentiments in other humans and taking action accordingly. The blushing reaction, timid gaze and anxious smirk generally showed by social anxiety disorder patients in anxiety-stimulating social conditions are questionably suggestive of flaunts in animals. Indeed, an array of information that imply that patients suffering from social anxiety disorder misinterpret data about the necessity for social pacification, such as over-calculation of social hazards because of an overstated view of the inferior standing of the self and the prestige of others, whereas scientific researches have portrayed that shows of embarrassment to lessen the negative responses of others (Leary et al., 1992). An artificial conciliation distress or a malfunction in otherwise adaptive conciliation indicators may hence underlie social anxiety disorder (Stein, 2003). Moreover, the population and nature of blushing and social anxiety disorder have considerable overlap: provided that conciliation displays are more probable in inferior members of organisms, from an evolutionary perspective it is likely not astonishing that both social anxiety disorder and blushing seem to be highly common in women, who by the way still take on an inferior or passive status in numerous societies, and that social anxiety disorder normally has its beginning in childhood or adolescence (Kaminer & Stein, 2003). While social anxiety may play a role as an adaptive mechanism in identifying and responding to social hazards, and in bringing forth essential resources, social anxiety disorder may imply a false alarm that trigger conciliation responses in the nonexistence of threat (ibid). Social behavior in lower form of animals, and social anxiety disorder in humans, seems to be prevailed upon by identical neurobiological mechanisms. Evolutionary perspectives hence provide a valuable momentum towards the growth of a strong theoretical framework for treating social anxiety disorder, and animal representations provide potential as a way to improve understanding of its pathogenesis (ibid). III. Darwinian Depression Evolutionary psychologists claim that the brain and mind was molded by natural selection to serve a particular global function, which is to process information so as to regulate behavior and physiology in manners that make the most of complete wellbeing. Individuals’ capacity for happiness and enjoyment and agony or depression seems to be fundamental components of the system (Nesse, 1999). Their expression seems firmly tied to the probable effects of a state of affair on Darwinian fitness. Persistent efforts to answer the controversies surrounding the evolutionary perspective of depression and other emotions gave rise to confusion and debates, but they are of deep-seated philosophical and realistic relevance. Religions, political ideologies and restorative systems all account human depression to some source or another, whether craving, social disorder, wickedness, original sin, economic injustice, deformed thinking or genetic flaws. Disciplines in the social science pursue the same objective as that of philosophy, which is to gain understanding of human suffering, particularly depression, in order to bring back humanity on the right track (ibid). Unfortunately, such goals have been, so far, confronted with a remarkable lack of success; provided with this situation, improvements toward scientific knowledge of the evolutionary origins of happiness and depression should be valuable. While endeavors to comprehend the purposeful significance of the emotions are as ancient as human thought, justifications based on natural selection evidently started with Darwin; in his work entitled Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, he presented the basis for much successive research, and substantial confusion (Nesse, 1999, 435). His general argument, and the point he emphasized, is that the human emotional expressions are universal since those are consistent across diverse cultures and are linked with those of lower animals. Darwin thought that emotional expression was primeval and of trivial adaptive importance for contemporary Englishmen. Even in the case of animals, he profoundly stressed one role of emotions, communication, and provided moderately insignificant attention to other likely advantages. Therefore, the father of evolutionary theory instigated experimental studies on emotions through reducing their adaptive importance for humans and ignoring the entire array of benefits they offer for animals (Murphy & Stitch, 2000). However, the contemporary period had witnessed a burgeoning in the discipline of evolutionary psychology which looks at mental disorders such as depression in a new perspective. Instead of being categorized as disorders they treat depression as an evolutionary technique instinctively used to obtain support that they will not get if they will do otherwise. For instance, evolutionary psychologists perceive crying as perhaps an evolutionary adaptation to call the attention of social support (Wesley, 2007). As one of the proponents of evolutionary psychology claim, “modern day depression is a mismatch between human beings adapted for hunting-gathering societies and the contemporary world” (ibid, para 2). Apparently, evolutionary psychology perceives the mind as a reserve of developed mechanisms, or adaptations, which made possible continuous existence and reproduction. A professor of psychology at the University of Newcastle, England, Daniel Nettle asserted that, “For our ancestors, it was quite useful to follow impulses strongly and spontaneously; suddenly these people have a disorder” (ibid, para 4). A few think that trying to prevent the symptoms of depression through various ways such as through therapeutic systems might be disrupting the natural flow of the body’s natural defenses. Psychiatrist J. Anderson Thomson Jr. was treating a teenager whom he portrayed as extremely depressed, has a high tendency to commit suicide and has, in some ways, acquire pleasure from hurting herself. Initially, Thomson admitted, he would have understood her depression as fury consumed inside. But he sooner or later resolved that her symptoms perhaps are a means of conveying her despair to people close to her. Then later on, he found out that his patient’s parents had forced her to study in the university and take up science, although her genuine interest is in the arts. Throughout the therapy, he helped her to develop assertiveness with regard to her goals. Once she was able to transfer to another school and was able to take up finally her favorite course, her depression vanished (Klein, 2007). Apparently, Thomson based his approach on the knowledge that depression is not merely a disease to be removed, but a means of drawing out support and attention from significant others such as the family and friends. It is a framework developed from evolutionary psychology, a growing field that is beginning to affect psychotherapy (ibid). Fundamentally, evolutionary psychology considers the mind as an aggregate of evolved systems, or adaptation, that have facilitated continued existence and reproduction. On the other hand, the other field related to evolutionary psychology such as evolutionary psychopathology and abnormal psychology apply the evolutionary perspective in pinpointing aspects of the mind that are malfunctioning (Einon, 1998). Given with these premises, it is therefore essential to understand the various theories presented on the evolutionary psychology of depression. Social Competition This assumption is based on the theory that “depression is an evolved response to loss of status or to an unsuccessful attempt to gain status” (Nesse & Williams, 1995, 28). In reaction to such a loss, it perhaps is adaptive to dispose of the coping mechanism that people had previously used in order to attain a condition improvement. Likewise, perhaps people should modify their behaviors if previous behaviors were linked to reproductive potential that has now vanished (ibid). Moreover, social competition theory claims that depression provides an indicator that can be accepted by the brain which specifies when shifting strategies to locate another niche is in place. As anthropologists have put forth, small bands of hunters-and-gatherers have achieved greater success through shifting strategies. Depression is then nature’s technique of signaling individuals to recognize that their present behavior will not enhance their reproductive potentialities and encouraging individuals to seek behaving differently. In some instances, individuals are required to assess their behavior thoroughly, focusing on the negative (Stearns, 1997). People might also endeavor to keep away from social circumstances altogether if they deem they lack the resources to do well with them, and it has been discovered that depressed individuals testify being uncomfortable in interactions with their fellow beings, frequently perceiving these interaction as unsupportive, or even as unfavorable or negative (ibid). Defection Theory This assumption argues that in the ancestral environment postpartum depression was an adaptive response which resulted in women restricting the use of their reproductive capacity when due to social, biological or environmental elements, a chief investment in the offspring would be expected to diminish the overall number of children produced by that woman throughout her life who would arrive at a reproductive age and reproduce effectively (Coll et al, 2004). In contemporary societies with highly structured support mechanisms made available by the state and other organizations, it may be much less probable that these cues, namely, the social, biological and environmental are dependable markers that a mother who ‘defects’ and extensively curtails her investment in her infant will improve her own reproductive wellbeing. Yet, there is burgeoning evidence implying that these circumstances are indeed considerably interrelated with postpartum depression. Therefore, postpartum depression is another instance of a state generated by an adaptive mechanism that is operating just as it was intended to function, though in a context that is fairly dissimilar from the one in which it originated (Buss, 1999). IV. Conclusion Emotions can be valuable only if they manipulate the future, hence it is not unexpected that they are provoked primarily by events that alter our evaluations of whether we are capable of achieving our goals. Incidents that show that our best efforts will succeed stimulate hope whereas incidents that hint that our best efforts are pointless cultivate depression or despair. We all experience hope and depression, not at the starting point or final stages of our lives, but during our enduring efforts. These efforts emerge from the deep-seated values of cultures and their members, thus social outlooks toward hope for their victory and depression at their probable disappointment are not taken into account carelessly. As a matter of fact, majority of cultures have standards that spell out the proper attitude towards hope and depression (Nesse, 1999). And this phenomenon can better be understood under the evolutionary perspective. The world we live in today is not the same as it was when our evolution assumed their present stage. If we will compare our environments to those of recent hunter-gatherers, we discover that population masses are higher; as well as economic, social and political system are more highly sophisticated; family sizes are bigger; and the span of lands inhabited is greatly increased. Multinational corporations now take over the manufacture of products and services. Industrial contamination is a grave problem in roughly every part of the globe. Global conflicts appear to be an ordinary part of our existence (Cartwright, 2001). These, and an overabundance of other variations, interact to generate a world that our prehistoric predecessors would probably find bizarre and frightening. The presumed dissimilarities between primitive and contemporary environments frequently have been used to enlighten apparently abnormal or puzzling observations in both animals and humans. Several scientists argue that a number of human psychological and societal dysfunctions, particularly in this case anxiety and depression, can be rooted from ways of life varying from those who evolved to survive. Nevertheless, provided with all of these premises, it is obvious that modern psychotherapy has to take into account evolutionary perspective of depression and anxiety in order to devise therapeutic courses that would not only examine on the surface causes of these mental abnormalities but also their primitive origins. Works Cited Buss, D. (1999). Evolutionary Psychology. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Cartwright, J. H. (2001). Evolutionary Explanations of Human Behavior. Hove, England: Routledge. Coll, C. G. et al. (2004). Nature and Nurture: The Complex Interplay of Genetic and Environmental Influences on Human Behavior and Development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Einon, D. (1998). How many children can one man have? Evolution and Human Behavior , 413-426. 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