If one is to lead a ‘good’ or ‘successful’ life and achieve whatever it is one wants from life, then understanding what causes us to behave the way we do would seem like a good place to start. This blog discusses some causes of behaviour that we are thought to have acquired as a result of our evolutionary heritage. Generally speaking, evolution is a well supported theory that tells us how we got to where we are today. Perhaps the major point of interest for this blog is that we have developed certain behaviours and traits because they were adaptive for the replication of our genetic make up. They did the job, so to speak, and were advantageous for the survival of our genes.
The pacific salmon has a relatively short life and at the tender age of 4 it embarks on a monumental journey to mate, because they are hard-wired to do so as a result of their genetics. Over several months they travel 3000 miles in an attempt to return to mate in the fresh waters in which they were hatched. Although this sounds romantic, it really isn’t. The course of their journey leads millions to be killed by killer whales, stella sea lions, salmon sharks and bald headed eagles. If they are lucky enough to make it to fresh waters, then the risk of parasites and infections is huge, even in the fresh waters they battle against powerful torrents before reaching the spawning ground.
When they finally arrive they are tired and their battered bodies are easy prey for patrolling bears, but their hard wired behaviour means they won’t leave the spawning area until they have mated. Yet, the very water which they are drawn back to will eventually kill them. Kidneys and organs adjust to lack of salt water, resulting in a physiological response which renders appetite obsolete. After eggs are laid and fertilized, most salmon have (at the most) two weeks of rather uncomfortable life left in them, before their bodies which have been rapidly deteriorating for weeks, finally give up on them.
To me, this is a bit of a sad story. Genetic drives cause these salmon to undergo what would seem like tremendous suffering if human. I in no way think that salmon have thoughts and feelings, so maybe it isn’t all that sad. But we too are like salmon, in the way that often of our life can be driven by behaviours that might be useful for our genes, but not necessarily ‘us’. Many modern thinkers have described our genes as ‘selfish’, as they don’t really care about our happiness or life satisfaction and as the case of the pacific salmon underlines, they would happily cause much suffering if it meant there replication and survival was significantly increased. In this blog we will discuss some evolutionary drives and how they can get in the way of us leading ‘better’ lives.
Children. Perhaps the strongest evolutionary drive is to make some cute little kids. Women start to get very broody at 30 and warm to the idea of having another person living inside of them for 9months and men start to imagine how great it would be if they had a son who was a professional footballer. Although the popular conception is that children = great joy in life, this isn’t necessarily accurate. One thing that children do seem to do is have a big negative effect on how happy one is in their marriage. And as spousal relationships have a big impact on general life satisfaction this is fairly significant. This isn’t particularly new news.
Walker and colleagues (1977) report data which shows that marital satisfaction drops dramtically once the stork makes his drop off and doesn’t tend to recover until they have buggered off to university and flown the nest. Furthermore, Kahneman and colleagues use a very clever method of sampling how much joy individuals feel moment by moment and show that women tend to be significantly less happier when caring for their children than when shopping or watching T.V for example! This thrown in with the tremendous financial strain and stress children cause is perhaps somewhat saddening news (I have even heard that childbirth is a little bit painful as well). What this might suggest is that for some people children mightn’t be that good an idea. Does this reduce the genetic drive to reproduce? And do our genes care about this? The answer is no to both.
A further drive that has been proposed is our need for social acceptance and belonging to those around us. Pin pointing whether this is a definite evolutionary drive is difficult. Baumeister & Leary (2000) believe there is good reason to think there may be, as achieving such things would be helpful in aiding survival. If magnified, the need to be accepted and respected by others can be problematic. Although only speculatively, Baumeister and Leary (2000) go on to suggest that the reoccurring pattern of victims of domestic violence returning to their abusers may be testament to this. In addition, there is thought that the now all too familiar appearance of individuals working ridiculously long hours in stressful jobs for money that they don’t even need may be due to a similar mechanism, as such positions are coupled with elevated social standing. Furthermore, the extra income that such jobs provides is likely to have little effect on life satisfaction and happiness. If you were to ask yourself: what is more important? My life satisfaction and happiness or the extent to which others think I am at the top of my game? I would guess that on the balance of things most people would be picking the first one.
The first two examples are quite interesting but perhaps difficult in knowing what to do about. Are children for me? is a difficult question to answer. Yet, the final example is perhaps a bit more practical and straight forward. Humans appear to be quite neophobic about food, when young. We are risk averse and sometimes don’t like new things that we try. This would seem sensible, as new things can be dangerous or be toxic and until we have learnt about them we shouldn‘t probably take the risk. A fine example of evolution in action is our pickiness over vegetables. Naturally occurring toxins and poisons often are bitter tasting and previously if we had come across such foods when foraging, eating them would have been potentially fatal. It is because of this, it is thought that we have inherited a dislike and avoidance for bitter tastes in general.
Yet, many vegetables are bitter tasting. Although I personally love vegetables, a lot of people don’t and choose to avoid them, children even more so. However, many studies have shown that eating vegetables might good for a lot of things; significantly reducing the risk of heart diseases and maybe even promoting longevity if enough are eaten. Although slightly less dramatic than the pacific salmon example, this shows how our inherited tendencies aren’t always so good for us. There is good news concerning vegetables though. Our evolutionary past has also left us with fairly useful memory systems, by which we can learn from our past experiences and use such information to guide behaviour in the future. For example, Lakkakula and colleagues (2010) have shown that repeated taste exposures to vegetables increases their acceptance in school children (eventually learning that veg isn’t all that bad), which suggests that we can overcome such inherited obstacles with enough persistence.
Application
Don’t bother with children; get a micro-pig instead. They are cheaper, cuter and have funny little curly tails.
Avoid bitter tasting foods when foraging, they may contain toxins.
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