Evolution and the Family

Good parents love and take care of their children. Good children love and respect their parents. Why? What does a mother owe to young whiny short people whom she already carried for nine months only to have them tear out of her and grow up to spend all her money? Why does a father bail his sons out of jail every time they get caught smashing windows at the old library?

                The evolutionary reason for parents putting up with their children is known as the theory of kin selection. In his article about family love and impartiality, Yong Li notes that Confucian teachings allow a man to cover-up his son’s crimes, even though it is usually immoral to cover-up a person’s crime, because “recently more and more scholars of Confucianism advocate evolutionary theory to understand the family-oriented ethics in the Confucianist tradition” (Li 243).  He refers to kin selection as “the process by which behavior of individuals decreases their own fitness but increases that of their kin” because “kin selection assumes that organisms are vehicles for copying of genes” (243). So by this theory, people care for their children because these offspring carry parts of themselves, and without their children, their legacy would die. Every person is like the monarch of great country, making sure the heirs are skilled enough to obtain the throne. If they merely banished disappointing princes and princesses, then no one is left to take over the kingdom once the ruling king or queen die, and everything they created during their rule falls to ruin and chaos.

This family has low fitness and most likely 

will not live to carry on their genetic heritage

 to future generations.

                However, there is more to family than carrying a legacy of good genes. Family members are supposed to empathize with each other, and “empathy is an evolved, biological capacity of the human species, and probably of other mammalian species, such as the apes” (Li 247). On top of that, “The cultivation of this capacity involves inter-subjective interaction, which may or may not require the presence of the family” (247). The ability to empathize makes a person more fit in human populations. How many times have people watched the news where some young man or woman has committed an atrocity, fallen from social graces, and thereby ruined their lives? How many times has the news explained that the person came from a broken home with ill-fitted or absent parents?

                Parents have a duty to raise their children properly because they need to give those children the means of developing empathy so they will be fit to survive socially in human society. Parents also have the incentive to put in the effort and make the necessary sacrifices to raise them right, because then their genes will be passed on by these descendants.

Word Count: 451

Li, Yong. "Evolution, Care, and Partiality." Asian Philosophy. 21.3 (2011): 241-249. Print.

evolving the smiles and frowns

Selection for Universal Facial Emotion

Alex Hilser

                With all of our faces looking so different, it is hard to imagine that humans have a similar set of facial patterns that are universal to expressing emotion. Additionally, the knowledge that not all people share similar facial muscles and that an individual can even have asymmetric muscle expressions, makes it seem even more far-fetched of an idea. But despite the assumed improbability, researchers out of Duquesne University and University of Pittsburgh have identified essential muscles present in everyone that help code for the most basic of human emotions. This helps to show the universality of emotions and how facial muscles have evolved to correspond with such feelings.

                Using 19 cadavers (7 males and 11 females, between 61 and 100 years old) the scientists went about the study by dissecting the facial muscles and categorizing the musculature. They categorized them using Table 1, which divides muscles into emotional groups. These groups are: Happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, and disgust. These muscles are listed in Figure 1 and serve to show how lighter colored muscles are more universal (serve to exhibit all basic emotions), while the darker musculature is used to give each person their own complex “signature” to an emotional expression.

                In the subjects, the large determiner of basic vs. complex was their prevalence and inclination toward asymmetry. The basic subset had no variation in existence of muscles and those muscles were very unlikely asymmetrical. The complex subset, on the other hand, contained many muscles that only few people had and in many cases there were great variations in symmetrical exhibition of the musculature. The basic sub group, as per their description, had at least one type of muscle recruited for each basic emotion expressed (very universal) and it was the complex subgroups job to add the individualism because they varied from person to person (highly variable).

So how does this affect you? And how does this tie in to evolution?

                With a verification of a basic subgroup of facial musculature, that means that humans have evolved along the premise that “I feel this, I will activate this muscles”. This means that there is an innate sense of emotion and there is a very universal display at the most basic level. This is where evolution comes into play. With everyone expressing basic emotions, there has to be a way that people can express emotions that are more beneficial to mating. This means as individual variances occur to facial expressions in the population, there can be increased desire for a trait and then that musculature will only be present and developed in that lineage. This is made more complicated by the different desires of women in the human population, meaning many different types of musculature variations can find a way of being up-regulated in the gene pool. Showing how evolution has helped humans to evolve our basic subset, and natural selection has continued to shape the face of emotion.

Word Count: 488

Waller, B.M. & Cray Jr, J.J. (2008). Selection for Universal Facial Emotion. Emotion. American Psychological Association, Volume 8, pp. 435-439. DOI: 10.1037/1528-3542.8.3.435

Mechanisms of Emotions

Mechanisms of Emotions

Ben Kavalec

Over the past couple of decades, scientists have used a wide range of disciplines to advance our understanding of the mechanisms of emotion. In a review by Derryberry and Tucker, they attempt to condense all recent findings on the neural substrates of emotion into a single resource. Their paper, Neural Mechanisms of Emotion (1992) explores the neural mechanisms of emotion from an evolutionary perspective. The authors conclude that these mechanisms are distributed across four main regions: the brainstem, limbic, paralimbic, and neocortical regions. Within these regions, the authors discuss descending and ascending connections that are critical to peripheral effects on patterned bodily responses, central effects on cognitive processing, and subjective emotional experience.

            The most primitive brainstem structures regulate the autonomic, endocrine, and motor activities of the body. In this regard, these structures are fundamental to the function of emotion. As evolution progressed, additional structures differentiated, leading to the limbic system, which provided greater sensitivity to emotional signals in the environment. When cortical structures evolved, primitive paralimbic regions began to surround the limbic system, and eventually progressed towards modern neocortical fields. It is the authors’ conclusion that the brain’s architecture is best understood through an evolutionary light, with certain primitive control systems overlaid by more complex networks, as described above.

            An evolutionary analysis is required for an analysis of the human brain’s emotional control system. For example, the most recently differentiated neocortical networks work to control sensory and motor processes. In contrast, the paralimbic networks represent bodily states and motor dispositions. It is through these sensory fields, activated by signals or inputs from the body, that feelings of emotions arise.

            This paper explores in great detail how each region described has an effect on different bodily functions. However, the authors never focus on the actual mechanisms of evolution that new structures arose from, which would be of interest to an evolutionist. In this light, what general characteristics of brain structure do you think would be important to carry on through generations, eventually ending with humans?

Word count: 334

Derryberry, D., Tucker, D. (1992) Neural Mechanisms of Emotion. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 60(3), 329-338.

Evolution, Emotions, and Emotional Disorders

Evolution, Emotions, and Emotional Disorders

Fatima Alvi

In an attempt to condense the abstract nature of emotions into a definable entity suitable for objective study, researchers have traditionally limited their view of emotions to depend on aspects like physiology, experience, and facial expression (Nesse & Ellsworth, 2009). These generic categories have failed to achieve a satisfying definition, as has been well noted, that encompasses the complexity observed in emotional responses. Examining human emotion from an evolutionary standpoint provides a broader base of understanding that attains a more workable definition by asking the question of “how” rather than “what” – how did emotions evolve into their present forms? How, by various factors throughout evolutionary history, were our current emotional habits selected for? In the paper Evolution, Emotions, and Emotional Disorders, by Randolph Nesse and Phoebe Ellsworth, the authors explore the evolutionary background behind emotion, what it implies in the field of emotions research, and how that information provides insight into the realm of emotional disorders.

A key point in the evolutionary study of emotions is to emphasize that “emotions would not exist unless they were useful,” (Nesse & Ellsworth, 2009). Declaring a certain emotion “useful” in a situation appears more subjective than would seem constructive for our purposes, but the fact that the usefulness of an emotional response shifts between individuals helps to explain the sustained diversity of sentiments expressed by humans.  The complexity of emotion also stresses that no single event or circumstance necessarily elicits a single particular response.  Rather, an emotional reaction is a composite, organized response resulting from the coordination of multiple processes to engage with the adaptive tasks presented by a situation (Nesse & Ellsworth, 2009). Thus, emotions can be explained as states that confer fitness advantages in situations repeated throughout evolutionary history. While attempts have been made by numerous researchers to categorize emotions into distinct, finite divisions, this evolutionary view blurs the boundaries between sentiments to yield more personal responses with overlapping functions and qualities. To truly understand an individual’s emotions, argue the authors, one must not only observe the “objective situation,” but must also reflect on how that individual appraises that situation, or perceives and processes it. Appraisal is based on both genes and personal experience (Nesse & Ellsworth, 2009).

An evolutionary study of emotional disorders can reveal much about the susceptibilities that selection has produced. By understanding the reasoning for the existence of normal emotions (that, when severely expressed, are considered disorders) we may find a deeper and more thorough comprehension of the mechanisms at work. Viewing emotional disorders from their adaptive origins can be useful for determining medicinal therapies as well. If an emotion (or emotional disorder) is an adaptation, then “no single genetic polymorphism accounts for more than a small percentage of [its] variance” – and thus, multiple “locations” exist at which the mediating system for a disorder can be disrupted (Nesse & Ellsworth, 2009). In so complex a field as emotions, I feel that an evolutionary explanation – which considers the advantages and reasoning behind the development and continuance of our diverse range of emotions – is preferable to and more useful than a narrow, proximate definition that attempts to confine the inherent intricacies of emotion into convenient but limited classifications.

Word Count: 529

Nesse, R., & Ellsworth, P. (2009) Evolution, Emotions, and Emotional Disorders. American Psychologist, 64(2), 129-139.

The Nature of Emotions

The Nature of Emotions

By Nathan Alhalel

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At some point in all our lives, most of us have wished we could read people’s minds. The reason for this is rather simple: emotions are complicated. People have a hard time both deciphering other people’s emotions and explaining their own. It is actually so complicated that psychologists, neuroscientists, and therapists have yet to agree on a single definition. Not only that, but over 90 definitions of “emotion” were proposed during the 20^th century alone. Despite the overwhelming odds, Robert Plutchik believes that evolutionary theory may provide a way of unifying many of the already proposed theories of emotion. In his article “The Nature of Emotions”, he claims that the best way to do this is to pull together information from many different species, define emotions in terms of what their adaptive functions are, and find the biological basis and connections between them using those functions. He calls this the “psychoevolutionary theory of emotion”.

Examples of these adaptive functions Plutchik sought to define are found in abundance in our everyday lives. Fear and anxiety, for example, can be paralleled to the heightened arousal of an animal that notices a predator or threat nearby. Love and emotional attachment promotes pair bonding, reproduction, and parental investment, which are all essential for evolutionary fitness in many species. He compared other emotions in animals using Darwin’s conclusion that expressive behavior (emotions) are used to communicate information from one animal to another about things that have occurred or will occur in the near future. This communication, in turn, improves the chances of survival of the individual both demonstrating and receiving the cues. Plutchik then extends this idea by elaborating that these interactions and emotions are “an attempt to reduce the disequilibrium caused by an unusual event and reestablish a state of comparative rest”.

He also believes that “feeling states tend to be followed by impulses to action that can be seen from an evolutionary prospective”. For example, at a young age, many species need food, protection, and transportation. Crying is the perfect action to display the emotion of discomfort to get all of these things from parents. Fear protects the individual physically through “fight or flight” and shame leads to a decrease in the probability of repeating the shameful act. Emotions are also seen as a form of communication that can substitute more risky behavior such as fighting. Taking all of this into account, it is quite obvious that emotions are valuable both in communication and in increasing the individual’s chance of survival. In other words, “emotions represent proximate methods to achieve evolutionary fitness”.

Plutchik’s psychoevolutionary theory assumes that “evolutionary fitness” has lead to eight basic emotion dimension arranged in pairs and all other emotions that one can experience are formed by a combination of these eight. Although Plutchik doesn’t go into detail about how these eight became the essential emotional dimension, one can assume that species, including humans, have undergone natural selection to create a population of individuals with the ability to both “feel and express all emotions in appropriate settings”. This adaptation then led to the eight basic dimensions we now see today. 

 

(Word Count: 520)

Plutchik, Robert (2001). "The Nature of Emotions". American Scientist, Vol. 89, No. 4 (July-August 2001), pp. 344-350.

Evolution of Happiness

The Evolution of Happiness

(Blog post by Angela Chun)

              

                Man has always been romantically portrayed as in the pursuit of happiness, and as more and more self-help books pop up on store shelves today, we could even say that we have become obsessed with the idea of happiness. However, in his paper The Evolution of Happiness, Buss (2000) suggests that evolution has created impediments to achieving happiness in today’s society. He points to three main modern barriers to happiness.

               Firstly, we’re ill-equipped to deal with the discrepancies between modern and ancestral environments, and these modern psychological environments cause damage. For example, ancestral humans evolved in the context of small groups, but modern humans live in huge cities surrounded by thousands of other humans, which, on the upside, means thousands of potential mates. However we’re still dissatisfied since unrealistic media images of attractive models lead to unreasonable expectations and to lower self-esteem of viewers, resulting in the interference with the quality of close relationships. Similarly, erroneous comparisons to unattainable fantasy lives result from mass communications that make us all one competitive group while destroying our intimate social networks (Facebook, anyone?). This can lead to feelings of envy, depression, and self-perceived failure. These factors are further exacerbated by the fact that “modern living conditions of relative anonymity and isolated nuclear families deprive people of the intimate social support that would have characterized ancestral social conditions” (Nesse & Williams, 1994, p. 221).

               A second challenge is the evolution of psychological mechanisms that cause subjective distress under certain circumstances. In order to succeed evolutionarily, we must experience risk-averse unhappiness. In other words, “human anguish in modern minds is tethered to the events that would have caused fitness failure in ancestral times” (Buss, 2000, p. 18). For example, jealousy is suggested to have evolved to guard against the specific adaptive problem of spousal infidelity. Experiencing psychological distress in these contexts is not only normal but beneficial and inevitable.

               Lastly, we have evolved to become overly-competitive. In an environment in which it’s beneficial to get ahead at the expense of others, humans “have evolved psychological mechanisms designed to inflict costs on others, to gain advantage at the expense of others, to delight in the downfall of others, and to envy those who are more successful at achieving the goals toward which they aspire” (Buss, 2000, p. 18). This leads to the paradoxical, modern situation of trying to design lives improving the quality of all, in a world in which one’s happiness depends on another’s misery and failure.

               On the positive side, people also possess evolved mechanisms that produce deep sources of happiness: those for mating bonds, deep friendship, close kinship, and cooperative coalitions. Buss concludes that understanding the selective design process, evolved function, and activating contexts of our emotions will allow us to selectively repress and activate evolved mechanisms to ultimately increase our happiness. However, I found his practical tips for increasing happiness to be underwhelming and vague. Tips such as developing deep friendships, promoting cooperation, and reducing incest are not ground-breaking.

               Furthermore, it’s easy to misinterpret the conclusions of this paper. It may seem that our evolved psychological mechanisms are ill-adapted to the modern environment, or that we seem almost evolutionarily unfit for happiness. However, I think that the entire basis of the paper is off. Happiness does not improve an individual’s fitness. Therefore, evolution should not care about increasing happiness. In conclusion, although I find Buss’s insights interesting, I don’t think that evolutionary psychology holds the key to happiness. What do you think?

Word Count: 560

Buss, D. (2000). The evolution of happiness. American psychologist, 55(1), 15-23.

Nesse, R., & Williams, G. (1994). Why we get sick. (pp. 220-221). New York: New York Times Books.

Selection and Emotional Attunement

Selection and Emotional Attunement                  

by Daniel Johnson                                       

In the book, Nonverbal Communication: Where Nature Meets Culture, I ran across an interesting research paper by Jonathan Turner, discussing the evolution of emotions as the nonverbal basis of human social organization. Of particular interest to me in this paper by Turner was the discussion of selective forces towards increased emotional attunement in our hominid ancestors.

In this paper, Turner hypothesizes that selection would have favored high degrees of emotional differentiation among organisms with large neocortexes and that were inherently individualistic, such as the hominoids that homo sapiens evolved from. Without having the genetic propensity to form rigid social structures, a wide array of emotions would facilitate attunement, or the harmonious relationship between apelike hominids, and the formation of adaptive group structures. In a study conducted by (Kempner 1987) that was presented in this paper, the argument was made that selection operated to differentiate primary emotions, then variations on these, and finally combinations of these primary emotions and their variations. It is hypothesized that expansion of the hominid neocortex from Austrolopithecus through homo habilis through homo sapiens was not just the result of selection for more cognitive capacity to symbolize and use language (Turner 1988). Selection was also taking place to expand the range of emotions, so that signaling and communication could be nonverbal, partially conscious, and fast and efficient, allowing interpersonal attunement to not overload conscious verbal communication which can at times be slow and inefficient (Turner 1988).

This paper by Turner shows that the evolution of emotions as well as the ability to quickly detect and read other people’s emotion were massive evolutionary achievements, driven by selective forces toward fast and efficient nonverbal communication. It led to increased group fitness among our hominid ancestors in environments ridden with predators and where the competition for resources with others primates was fierce. The complex array of emotions that our species display is what truly makes us unique, and the development of these emotions was driven by selective forces towards increased emotional attunement.

Word Count: 369

Turner, J.H. (1988) A Theory of Social Interaction. Stanford, Ca: Stanford University Press

Kempner, T.D. (1987). How many emotions are there? Wedding the social and the automatic components. American Journal of Sociology, 93, 263-289