Darwin's evolutionary social psychology

While reading the chapter 5 of Darwin's The Descent of Man, I noticed that Darwin reconstruct Human evolutionary history as--forgive the anachronism--a gene-culture co-evolution. Of course, there was no concept of gene in Darwin's time, so the correct label would be "nature-culture co-evolution", but I was amazed to see how his intuitions are closed to current theories. Basically, he described our evolution as an evolutionary arms race (another anachronism) between social life and intelligence. The process goes trough 3 phases: social instinct, social intelligence, and social reasoning:

1. Social instincts: learning and sympathy

General intelligence

• It deserves notice that, as soon as the progenitors of man became social (and this probably occurred at a very early period), the principle of imitation, and reason, and experience would have increased, and much modified the intellectual powers in a way, of which we see only traces in the lower animals.

Social instincts: sympathy, fidelity, and courage

• In order that primeval men, or the apelike progenitors of man, should become social, they must have acquired the same instinctive feelings, which impel other animals to live in a body; and they no doubt exhibited the same general disposition. They would have felt uneasy when separated from their comrades, for whom they would have felt some degree of love; they would have warned each other of danger, and have given mutual aid in attack or defence. All this implies some degree of sympathy, fidelity, and courage.

2. Social intelligence--reciprocity and approbation

Reciprocity:

• as the reasoning powers and foresight of the members became improved, each man would soon learn that if he aided his fellow-men, he would commonly receive aid in return. From this low motive he might acquire the habit of aiding his fellows; and the habit of performing benevolent actions certainly strengthens the feeling of sympathy which gives the first impulse to benevolent actions. Habits, moreover, followed during many generations probably tend to be inherited.

Approbation

• [a] powerful stimulus to the development of the social virtues, is afforded by the praise and the blame of our fellow-men. primeval man, at a very remote period, was influenced by the praise and blame of his fellows. It is obvious, that the members of the same tribe would approve of conduct which appeared to them to be for the general good, and would reprobate that which appeared evil.

3. Social reasoning--norms, rules and morality

• With increased experience and reason, man perceives the more remote consequences of his actions, and the self-regarding virtues, such as temperance, chastity, &c., which during early times are, as we have before seen, utterly disregarded, come to be highly esteemed or even held sacred.

Dual Inheritance Theory (over)simplified

According to Dual Inheritance Theory, or Gene-Culture Coevolution, cultural evolution and cultural learning mechanisms co-evolved; our innate psychology is biased toward social learning and cultural evolution is modulated by psychological mechanisms. Culture is a population process where innovations are gradually accumulated. Cognition is geared toward imitation thanks to many biases. First, we have content biases, i.e. biases that "cause us to more readily acquire certain beliefs, ideas or behaviors because some aspect of their content makes them more appealing" (Henrich & McElreath, 2007); some food preferences (e.g., cookies) for instance may be acquired partly because we have an innate preferences for sugar. Second, we have context biases, i.e., a sensibility to exploit cues not from "things being learned" but from "individuals who are being learned from" (Ibid.,), or "models" We are sensible to successful and prestigious models and to what other people do (conformist bias). Sometimes we change our beliefs (informational conformity), and sometimes we change our behavior in order to go along with a group (normative conformity). Others like Castro & Toro (2004) suggest that the capacity to approve or disapprove their offspring's learned behavior is as important as imitation.

References

• Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1985). Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (2005). The Origin and Evolution of Cultures Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Castro, L., & Toro, M. A. (2004). The evolution of culture: From primate social learning to human culture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(27), 10235-10240.
  
• Henrich, J. and R. McElreath (2007) Dual Inheritance Theory: The Evolution of Human Cultural Capacities and Cultural Evolution. Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, R. Dunbar and L. Barrett, eds., Ch. 38. Oxford: Oxford Univ Press.

Why Evolutionary Psychology?

An undergrad recently contacted me and asked me how I got interested by evolutionary psychology. Here is my answer, if that can be of any use for anybody. The ideas my apply to academic research more generally.

As an undergrad philosophy student, my interest in evolutionary psychology was triggered by one of my teacher, a great scholar who was able to integrate biology, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, anthropology, etc, in his reflexion. That is really what drove me in the field: someome who showed me how any question about the cognition and rationality can be approached in a darwinian perspective. Reading Dennett's "Darwin's dangerous ideas" also had the same effect on me. Hence to be honest, at first, it's because it was just so cool see things this way, and exciting to know that research may involve knowledge in many different fields. If that is cause, that is not, however, the reason. The reason, I think, was a deep commitment to materialism (the world is made of matter, period), naturalism (all facts are natural fact, there is no other realm of fact) and experimentalism in general (we should back any claim with scientific, experimental data). All that naturally leads to an evolutionary approach of anything. At your age (god I sound old when I say that! ), I was determined to do philosophy; to do my BA, MA, PhD, postodoc, and everything that was necessary to, one day, have a job in a university (I am not quite there, as I am still postdoc, but I hope one day I'll get one). So evolutionary psychology and other related fields appeared to me as a great opportunity to develop my "academic niche", to have my own speciality, and to do something interdisciplinary. So if I can give you an advice, it will be a very simple one: do something you really like. If just thinking about evolutionary psychology evokes a lot of ideas of questions, if you are thrilled by every paper or book you read about it, go ! It's easy to go through a thesis and all the other academic stuff when you like it. My second advice is that if you really like it, then read everything about it, from the classics to ongoing research to popular books; explore the connections between evolutionary psychology and other field (how it's related to economics? neuroscience? sociology?). Browse, dowload, print everything you can. Use RSS to syndicate important journals. Find those journals (Evolution and Human Behavior, Human Nature, etc.). Don't forget the holy trilogy: Nature, Science and PNAS. Be up-to-date and aware of the field's common knowledge.

If you like it, it will be easy for you to master the field. Try to find a supervisor that knows evolutionary psychology, who already published in the field. Make contact with other people, or students, interested by these topics. Try organizing reading groups, attend to conferences, become a member of scientific societies, etc. Don't miss encyclopedia entries.

What I like best about theis field? everything. What I like least? Nothing. Except maybe people who will try to show you that evolution is "just a theory", that evolutionary psychology is an evil attempt to eliminate "meanings" in our lives, blah blah blah, all that stuff is sometimes anoying. Don't take it too seriously, but you may consider sometimes trying to argue with them, it is always useful to test the foundations of your scientific conviction.

hope this will help,
B.