Behaviour through the Imperative to Survive - Case Study Example

Explaining behaviour through the imperative to survive Introduction In order to adequately explain human behaviour, the evolutionary psychologist looks at the ways in which adaptations have been made from needs that were present in pre-history and history that needed to be fulfilled. Through the theories that were posed by Charles Darwin on evolution, behaviour can be examined for its commonalities in behaviour between human beings having developed through years of adaptation to environmental stimulus. According to Vuchinich, and Heather (2003), evolutionary psychology attempts to identify psychological mechanisms that underscore human behaviour and the evolutionary development of those mechanisms (p. 250). While other theories on human behaviour can explain some types of behaviours better than evolutionary psychology, this branch of study has credibility through understanding that the adaptive traits that are exhibited in human beings are part of a process that can explain all aspects of behaviour from an historic, and prehistoric perspective of viewing the natural adaptive development of the human species. In order to examine the effectiveness in evolutionary psychology in explaining human behaviour, universal conditions can be examined for the common responses that are seen within the species. Using evolutionary psychology as a way of understanding attraction behaviours, for instance, reveals that men and women find each other attractive based on attributes that promote the survival of the species. Women will find men with resources more attractive, while men will find physical attraction, which is associated with good health and child bearing potential, a more important attribute in potential mates (Keil & Wilson, 2001, p. 751). Part of understanding evolutionary psychology requires an understanding that the behaviours that are present within the human species are directed towards specific adaptive purposes. Vuchinich and Heather (2003) argue that addiction behaviours are the result of an evolved psychological mechanism that has been shifted in the process of drug dependence (p. 251). This type of exaptation allows the researcher to examine the underlying cause of the responses that an addict will have to addiction seeking stimuli. Finally, looking at the example of aggression allows for the exploration of a set of behaviours that are typically tied to responses that are more blatantly tied to evoked responses. The frustration-aggression hypothesis postulated by Dollard suggests that when faced with a frustrating stimuli that would instigate the behaviour of aggression, a shift will occur in the target of that frustration if that target is socially out of reach in regard to an aggressive response, thus creating a scapegoat that will feel the response that was delayed and/or shifted (Hogg & Vaughan, 2005, p. 380). Thus, the evolutionary theories of psychology can be revealed as a way in which to explain human behaviour when understood through a universality of responses. Attraction One of the ways in which evolutionary psychology can be justified through the evidence of behaviour is by examining mating behaviours and the universal foundation of attraction between men and women. Males are specifically attracted to women in regard to the way in which they are seen as being physically capable of bearing children. According to Cartwright (2000), in 1993 Devender Singh, a psychologist from the University of Texas, published work that suggested that there were some universal aspects of female attributes that were considered attractive to males. The first consideration was whether there was a physically fit body that could be used for procreative purposes. The procreative impulse is considered a natural imperative and supports the idea that evolutionary needs will support behavioural responses to stimuli (p. 243). The second aspect of attraction was how the male had been conditioned to translate the physical appearance for physical fitness (Cartwright, 2000, p. 243). According to Fink and Pentan-Voak (2002), facial attractiveness can be defined by three specific cues that assess mate value. Symmetry, average, and not average sexually dimorphic features are utilized for the assessment of attractiveness of a potential mate. Symmetry of the bilateral traits can be directly associated with genetic heterozygosity, which suggests that it is symbolic of the presence of different variations of a gene on homologous chromosomes (p. 155). Attractiveness is also defined by the average look of the face. This may be because average looks can be defined as being similar, thus attracting one individual to another in order to continue the species along familiar lines. According to Wechsler (2007), “beauty is associated with order”, thus average denotes a sense of safety, convenience, and familiarity (p. 29). In considering the adaptation of attraction through an understanding of evolutionary psychology as a method of the continuation of the species, one must ask how homosexuality is taken into consideration. According to Miller and Kanazawa (2007), the explanation for homosexual attraction cannot be clearly understood through evolutionary psychology. They quote Geoffrey Miller, noted evolutionary psychologist, for not having an answer to the issue of homosexuality. The answer may be more readily found within behaviour genetics, where geneticist Dean Hamer has discovered a genetic cluster within the chromosome that may account for attractions between same sex individuals (p. 180). Therefore, behavioural biology may better explain the attractions between members of the same sex. Why this occurs has yet to be sufficiently explained through evolutionary psychology. Interestingly, Fielder and King (2004) have suggested that of the 42 world cultures, 11.9% have not knowledge of homosexuality (p. 172). This suggests that homosexuality is not culturally universal, thus bringing into question the biological component. However, Weiten (2010) suggests that no environmental explanation has sufficiently found causality behind homosexual attractions. Behavioural theorists suggest that homosexuality develops through learned preferences; however research has not supported this concept either. There is evidence to support that during prenatal development, hormonal secretions may lead to organizational differences that account for same sex attraction (p. 416). Therefore, cultures that do not experience homosexuality may not have the biological tendencies to develop towards homosexuality. While the purpose for this reorganization that leads to same sex attraction has not become clear to evolutionary psychology, the theories may yet support an evolutionary cause since some cultures do not experience the phenomenon. Currently, behavioural biology has come up with the clearest explanation for same sex attraction. Addiction One of the difficulties with evolutionary psychology is that it doesn’t always explain self-destructive behaviours. On the surface, addiction may not appear to be an aspect of human behaviour that is supported by evolutionary psychology. The part of the mind that has an addictive response would not seem to suggest that the survival of the species is involved in the behaviours of the addicted. In order to study the evolutionary psychology of the behaviour of addicts, it is important to develop an understanding of these attributes as outlined by Vuchinich and Heather (2003): “the identification of selective pressures that were present in the evolutionary past that are responsible for the selection of the mechanism; a description of the psychological mechanism selected by those pressures; and the manner in which the mechanism is currently expressed in present times and its interaction with today’s culture”(p. 251). The pressures that might have created a need for immediate reinforcement might be related to the need for survival and the response to available resources that are biologically identified as a need. Those with delayed responses to available resources would be at a biological disadvantage, while those who responded right away and were driven to fulfil a need would have a better chance at survival (Kucinich & Heather, 2003, p. 252). The drives towards addictive behaviour are explained by an ancestral past development that solved a specific adaptive problem. According to Miller and Carroll (2006), drugs that are dependently addictive take over old portions of the brain that are associated with drink, food, sex, and social interaction. The areas of the brain that are specifically affected are the limbic region, which includes the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex. Recent research suggests that the frontal cortex goes “offline” during the process of addiction, thus putting other regions of the brain that are affected by evolutionary adaptations from ancestral needs into place (p. 10). Therefore, the process of addiction can be associated with mechanisms that were developed in order to promote survival which are triggered by the means through which the addiction will manifest. The needs that are evoked during the process of acting on an addiction are fulfilling basic needs that were inscribed upon the human psychology, but are attached through latent triggers that are evoked during the use of a drug or behaviour (such as gambling or sex). It is probable that the contemporary availability of chemicals that are administered to the body through novel means, such as a cigarette, hijack the reward mechanism, thus triggering the need to repeat the behaviour. This does not discount environmental factors that reinforce the need to use a substance or behaviour to substitute for a particular absence within an individual’s emotional frame, but it suggests why this type of behaviour works to trigger the reward mechanism, thus addicting the individual (Buss, 2005, p. 915). There are other theories that explain the problems of addiction as they may be explained from a more sociologically centered theory of behaviour. Social conditioning suggests that it is the environment in which a person lives that will promote addiction behaviours (Rastagar and Fingerhood, 2005, p. 38). Through social learning theories, behaviour is the result of passive learning, culture giving cues to how one should behave (Lippa, 2005, p. 106). Addiction can be socially cultivated through observation, modelling, and learned coping mechanisms. Within this theory, the idea that addiction fulfils an evolutionary need is usurped by the forces from which an addictive behaviour has developed within a lifetime as a substitutive fulfilment of a need, created through learned behaviours that assign that particular addiction to the fulfilment of that need. Aggression One of the most observable and blatantly reactive responses within the behaviours of most all species of animals is that of aggression. According to Darwin, aggression can be a response for competition for resources (Buss, 2005, p. 629). There are two distinct models of aggression that can be observed. The first is proactive, with the second model of aggression being reactive. Proactive aggression is behaviour that has the end goal of some kind of reward. Harm is inflicted as a means to an end, thus the aggressive act is not done for the reward of the action itself, but for the result of the pressure it puts into the situation. Proactive aggressions are planned, not provoked by a threat, and have an absence of anger. They are a means to an end (Buss, 2005, p. 629). Reactive aggression is behaviour that occurs in response to a stimulus. As an example, Cartwright (2000) discusses experiments done by ornithologist David Lack in the 1940’s with the European Robin. The males of the species have a red spot on their breast that evokes an aggressive, territorial response from other males. This trigger can be placed upon an inanimate representation of the bird, triggering the same kind of aggression and territorialism behavioural responses from other male birds (p. 7). Aggression triggers develop through the signifiers that indicate that a threat is eminent. Evolutionary triggers are irrespective of actual threat, but are evoked because behaviours have adapted to respond. In order to understand group behaviour and aggression, a definition of intra-group conflict must be defined against inter-group conflict. Intra-group conflict happens within a group between individuals or entities that come into opposition. Inter-group conflict occurs when different groups come in conflict with one another (Singh, 2004, p. 305). Intra-group aggression is most often experienced when one member of a group is in conflict with another for issues of power and control. Dominance in primates is observed to be concerned with access to the more fertile mates, more food, space, and a disproportionate amount of grooming which promotes a parasite free exterior which in turn develops a healthier male. Similar rewards of power can be observed in human social structures, thus promoting the need to establish and maintain power and control within a group. Hierarchies in primates are established through force, threat, or outright violence. In the human species, these foundational resources of instinctual dominance are often established through intellectual equivalencies to physical aggression (McNamara & Trumbull, 2007, p. 47). Inter-group conflict is most often concerned with the same issues as intra-group conflict. One of the primary sources of war is the need to promote the dominance of one ethnic group over the other, supporting its procreative dominance and spreading the gene dominance of the victor to new territories (McNamara & Trumbull, 2007, p. 54). Coalition aggression, where groups form and make alliances in order to achieve certain goals, are formed to allow the group to gain dominance over another, promoting the most fertilely fit males to gain access to the greatest number of fit, fertile females. The only three species to create coalitions are humans, chimpanzees and dolphins. This indicates that cognitive development is specific in the formation of behaviours that are indicative to evolutionary adaptations and the way in which they manifest (McNamara & Trumbull, 2007, p. 54). Conclusion Aggression in human beings is subject to the cultural learning that encourages members of a society to hold their natural tendencies towards aggression in check and conform to social rules to promote an ordered society. According to Horne (2004), human beings react to their world through the use of the bodies, the physical consequence of aggression often being turned into violence (p. 477). Society demands that those impulses fall within an expected framework. Addiction and attraction, too, are physical responses to the world that are explained by evolutionary psychology, evocations of responses universally familiar as mechanisms for fulfilling biologically designed needs. The theories of evolutionary psychology explain the underlying structures of responses that define the human psyche, successfully explaining the causations of events within life that are universally experienced through an understanding of the impact of the ancestral past of human development on contemporary behaviour. Evolutionary psychology does not have the language or proofs through which to currently explain all behaviour. Homosexuality does not appear to serve any particular need towards the survival of the species. However, it also appears to be rooted in biological causalities. Therefore, at this time, evolutionary psychology does not adequately address all forms of human behaviour. The reasons that some members of society are attracted to members of the same sex do not appear to have an explanation within the theoretical framework. However, the fact that some cultures have no concept of homosexuality suggests that perhaps there is a reason that they do not, while in other cultures the genetic behaviours have been developed. Therefore, while not all behaviour has an current explanation through evolutionary psychology, it is highly likely that research will eventually discover a purpose behind behaviours that seemed to have no historic relevance to the survival of the species. References Buss, D. M. (2005). The handbook of evolutionary psychology. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley. Cartwright, J. (2000). Evolution and human behavior: Darwinian perspectives on human nature. Cambridge, Mass: CogNet. Fielder, C., & King, C. (2004). Sexual paradox: Complementarity, reproductive conflict and human emergence. London: Christine Fielder and Chris King. Fink, B. & Pentan-Voak, I. (October 2002). Evolutionary psychology of facial attractiveness. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 11(5), pp. 154-158. Hogg, M. A., & Vaughan, G. M. (2005). Social psychology. Harlow, England [u.a.: Pearson [u.a.. Horne, C. (September 2004). Values and evolutionary psychology. Sociological Theory. 22 (4), pp. 477-503. Keil, F. C., & Wilson, R. A. (2001). The MIT encyclopedia of the cognitive sciences. Cambridge, Mass. [u.a.: MIT Press. Lippa, G. (2005). Gender, nature, and nurture. Mahwah, NJ: Psychology Press. McNamara, P., & Trumbull, D. (2007). An evolutionary psychology of leader-follower relations. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Miller, A. S., & Kanazawa, S. (2007). Why beautiful people have more daughters: From dating, shopping, and praying to going to war and becoming a billionaire : two evolutionary psychologists explain why we do what we do. London: Perigee Book. Miller, W. R., & Carroll, K. (2006). Rethinking substance abuse: What the science shows, and what we should do about it. New York: Guilford Press. Rastegar, D. A., Fingerhood, M. I., & Ovid Technologies, Inc. (2005). Addiction medicine: An evidence-based handbook. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Singh, D. (2004). Mating strategies of young women: Role of physical attractiveness. The Journal of Sex Research. 41(1), pp. 43-54. Vuchinich, R. E., & Heather, N.(2003). Choice, behavioral economics, and addiction. Amsterdam: Pergamon. Wechsler, H. (2007). Reliable face recognition methods: System design, implementation and evaluation. New York, NY: Springer. Weiten, W. (2010). Psychology: Themes & variations. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning. Read More