Psychology of Every Day Life - Essay Example

Can evolutionary psychology explain why humans like music? Introduction Evolutionary psychology (EP) is a branch of social science that studies the mind and is founded on Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. It is grounded on the assumption that human mental abilities, preferences and emotions are adapted specifically for solving issues of reproduction and survival in the ancestral setting and derives testable predictions based on this assumption. EP is founded on the assumption that all organisms are a product of indiscriminate variation and natural selection. Each successive generation selectively picks out the variants that are fittest and are best adapted for surviving and reproducing in a given environment. This implies that most features of biological organisms are adaptations specifically designed for a certain environment (Heylighen 2013). However, some features might be by-products of adaptations or random variations that are yet to undergo variation. Similarly, major features of the human mind are adaptations to the ancestral environment. Evolutionary psychology views the mind as an information processing system that tackles problems by interpretation of sensory data, devising of schemes to deal with the perceived situation or condition and selecting an appropriate action (Heylighen 2013). EP assumes that owing to millions of years of evolution the human brain has accumulated a number of specialized neutral circuits, called modules, for tackling adaptive problems (Heylighen 2013). Each module performs one specific function while innate mechanisms postulated by EP are plastic and only exhibit themselves in the appropriate environment or context. Therefore, EP does not jeopardise the essential requirement for fitness needed to adapt to various situations, as such, EP adaptations do not predetermine the action to be taken but merely suggest a default action. The innate, subconscious preference for certain conditions and behaviors has direct implications for human well-being (Heylighen 2013). Music is a universal phenomenon found in every human culture past or present. It is incorporated into a vast array of cultural events such as religious services, dances, sports and weddings, as well as solitary listening sessions. While it is evident that humans spend a huge amount of time and financial resources on music, it stands in contrast to other enjoyable human behaviors like eating and sleeping as it gives no obvious benefits to the people who consume it (Trehub, Schellenberg and Hill 1997). This essay seeks to establish if there are any aspects of music that are innate and, therefore, targets of natural selection; are there aspects of music that helped it escape the hatchet of natural selection due to human’s innate preference for them? Every culture in the world has some form of music and most of this music apparently developed independently from other cultures suggesting the presence of some innate systems that motivate the production and appreciation of music (Trehub, Schellenberg and Hill 1997). Music can be defined as structured sounds produced either indirectly or directly by humans, varying in pitch, timbre and/or rhythm, made to convey emotions and can sometime have a complex structure. Therefore, some aspects of music are universal or widespread across cultures. Developmental studies have indicated that infants perceive music in the same ways as fully en-cultured adults even though infants have had minimal exposure to music while cross-cultural studies point to universal trends in the presence of different musical traditions implying that musical exposure cannot be credited for the common features (Cross 2001). Infants lack cultural exposure to music that adults have and developmental psychology is, therefore, a rich source of studies relevant to the origins of music, but they can be difficult to interpret as infants can have previous exposure to music especially considering utero experience during the third trimester of pregnancy when fetus can hear. There is a vast amount of evidence that very young infants develop certain competencies too quickly to be explained as an outcome of learning processes that involve interaction with the environment. All human infants acquire language quickly and expertly suggesting that they are primed for language at birth though they require continuous interaction with the language through communication with other humans in order for their language capacity to be fully expressed. Therefore evolution acts on the minds shaping infant predispositions and causing them to handle certain types of information rapidly and expertly without instruction or guidance ( Buss 2005). Infants appear to be primed for music, Trehud and others demonstrated that six months old infants are capable listeners sensitive to melodic contoural constancy and experiencing the same sounds that share the same contour or order of ups and downs even when pitches have been changed (Trehub, Schellenberg and Hill 1997). Infants less than 6 months old have been shown to exhibit a range of proto-musical habits in their interactions with their care givers, through the use of rhythm and pitch in a musical way. The proto-musical behaviors consist of both listening to sounds and producing them and actively moving while doing so. The regular synchronization of vocal and kin-esthetic patterns provides the infant with multimodal sensory information including visual, kinesthetic and tactile information. Therefore, it can be said that human predisposition is musical qualifying the musicality shown by adults in particular cultures as evolutionary. Predisposition to be musical involves listening, producing patterns of sound and incorporation of action (Wallin, Merker and Brown 2000). In reference to evolution, proto-musical behaviors are critical to development of capability for flexible social interaction and in the cognitive development of individuals. Music can be seen as a risk-free means of exploring social interaction and an allowance for rehearsing processes critical to achieving cognitive flexibility. Due to musics non-efficaciousness and its multiple potential meanings, it is specifically suited for exploration of social interaction. A child’s interpretation of music is not threatened by the existence of potentially conflicting meanings and, therefore, music provides a child with a medium for the incubation of a capacity for social interaction. Music provides risk-free space for exploration of social behavior that can sustain potentially risky action and interaction (Distin 2011). Music’s significance can shift with changing situation or be simultaneously manifold helping develop a child’s individual cognitive capacities. Its transposable relevance can be exploited by infants to form connections between different domains of infant competency such as biological, mechanical and psychological domains. Proto-musical activity can sustain the emergence of a metaphorical domain that creates and maintains the cognitive flexibility that distinguishes humans from other species. Even though music varies widely with different cultures, the attribute of infant proto-musicality is universal pointing to a likely significance in the very emergence of the human species particularly in individual cognitive development and social interaction. Humans are exceptionally flexible in confronting problems of survival and are more versatile in dealing with habitual selection, exploitation of natural resources, tool manufacture and choice and management of complex social relations (Seashore 1967). While previous versions of human species had sophisticated skills in discrete spheres of life, such as tool design, the humans of today can transfer expertise between domains and develop expertise independent from any particular domain. Since music plays an important role in the development of social flexibility and cognitive development of modern infants, then it is possible that the upsurge of proto-musical behaviors and their cultural exhibition as music were key to the emergence of the cognitive and social flexibility of modern humans (Hargreaves MacDonald and Miell 2005). The earliest archaeological musical artifact identified is a bone pipe found in southern Germany and was uncovered in a context associated with Homo sapiens sapiens. It is dated around 36,000 BP the date associated with ‘cultural explosion’ or the emergence of modern human cognitive capacities. This find suggests that musicality is human and ancient; the pipe predates all known visual art and capacity for musicality must predate the construction of musical artifact (Hallam, Cross and Thaut 2009). Primates have been observed to dedicate a considerable amount of time to grooming, further, groups of primates that groom end up forming strong bonds and cooperating in diverse activities. It is proposed that humans developed language as a surrogate for physical grooming allowing humans to live in large groups with complex social relations (Hargreaves MacDonald and Miell 2005). It could be argued that music, in some ways, provides several advantages over language. For one singing can be louder than speaking facilitating group interaction. The role of music in religion, superstitious or sexual rites, ideology and military arousal demonstrates the value of music in establishing behavioral coherency in masses. In prehistoric times, music could have had important survival value as increasingly complex human environment demanded coherent collective actions in groups of humans. Music could have been used to synchronize the mood of many individuals in a large group helping them prepare for a collective action (Tonneau 2000). Conclusion While the study of music in pre-historic human is not much developed it is important to note that music leaves few traces except those in the mind of those engaged in it. It therefore likely that those traces of music left in the minds of our ancestors still resonate in our contemporary everyday life and are exhibited in our agility of thought and complexity of our social interactions. It could be that without music humans would not have evolved.  Bibliography: Buss, D., 2005. The handbook of evolutionary psychology. Hoboken, N.J.: J. Wiley. Cross, I., 2001. Music, mind and evolution. Psychology of Music 29(1), 95-102. Distin, K., 2011. Cultural evolution. Cambridge [U.K.]; New York: Cambridge University Press. Hallam, S., Cross, I. and Thaut, M. 2009. The Oxford handbook of music psychology. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press. Hargreaves, D., MacDonald, R. and Miell, D. 2005. Musical communication. Oxford [u.a.]: Oxford Univ. Press. Heylighen, F., 2013. Evolutionary Psychology. Retrieved on 10th Jan 2013 from: http://pcp.vub.ac.be/Papers/EvolutionaryPsychology-QOL.pdf. perception and cognition: a developmental perspective. Hove: The Psychology Press. Seashore, C. 1967. Psychology of music. New York: Dover Publications. Tonneau, F. 2000. Evolution, culture, and behavior. New York [u.a.]: Kluwer Acad./Plenum Publ. Trehub, E., Schellenberg, G. and Hill, D. 1997. The origins of music Wallin, L., Merker, B. and Brown, S., 2000. The origins of music. Cambridge, Mass: A. Bradford.       Read More