Evolutionary Psychology: An Elegant Solution

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

--Baruch Spinoza

Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology assumes that the human animal

Split over 4,000,000 years ago from a common ancestor of the chimpanzee, bonobo, and gorilla (the "apes")
Adapted to a relatively stable ancestral environment, the "environment of evolutionary adaptedness" (EEA), over a period of at least 100,000 years
Evolved mental mechanisms to cope with life's challenges, and those hard-wired instincts are still with us today, even though in recent times (the past ten thousand years) the environment has changed rapidly.

Period (years BCE) Species

100 thousand Modern Homo Sapiens

28 - 200 thousand Neanderthal

0.1 - 0.8 million Archaic Homo Sapiens

0.1 - 1.8 million Homo Erectus

1.2 - 2 million Australopithecus Robustus

1.6 - 2.5 million Homo Habilis

1 - 2.6 million Australopithecus TD

2.3 - 3 million Australopithecus Africanus

3 - 3.5 million Australopithecus Bahrelghazili

3 - 3.9 million Australopithecusc Afarensis

3.9 - 4.2 million Australopithecus Anamensis

4.4 million Hominids emerge from apes

Period (years BCE)	Species
100 thousand	Modern Homo Sapiens
28 - 200 thousand	Neanderthal
0.1 - 0.8 million	Archaic Homo Sapiens
0.1 - 1.8 million	Homo Erectus
1.2 - 2 million	Australopithecus Robustus
1.6 - 2.5 million	Homo Habilis
1 - 2.6 million	Australopithecus TD
2.3 - 3 million	Australopithecus Africanus
3 - 3.5 million	Australopithecus Bahrelghazili
3 - 3.9 million	Australopithecusc Afarensis
3.9 - 4.2 million	Australopithecus Anamensis
4.4 million	Hominids emerge from apes

This latter point is key, and contrasts with the view prevailing in the 20th century that the human animal has evolved beyond the influence of animal instinct, that a newborn baby is a tabula rasa ready for cultural imprinting. Understanding our built-in, hard-wired mental mechanisms is critical to understanding human motivation and the most likely sources of and solutions to society's urgent problems.

The period of time over which the human animal evolved is staggering, beyond our intuitive understanding. Though the human animal has been around for such a long time, only quite recently did things begin to get interesting. Until the end of the last ice age, only ten thousand years ago, we were still a purely hunter-gatherer species, with fire, stone, and wood as our only technologies.

Period (years BCE)	Human Activity
1200	Iron Age
3000	Bronze Age
6500	Copper Age
8500	Domestication of plants and animals
10,000	Neolithic Period: most recent ice age ended
1 million	Earliest use of controlled fire
2.6 million	Earliest stone tools

Suddenly (instantaneously, on an evolutionary timescale), human beings find themselves cast from their small hunter-gatherer bands of the EEA into the office environment, in which such behavior as overt sexual displays and chewing raw animal flesh with an open mouth are not merely gauche, but can land one in prison, or at least in sensitivity training. For better or worse, we remain genetically virtually unchanged since our EEA days, and retain the same set of coping strategies.

Challenges in the EEA and Evolved Mental Mechanisms

Our noble savage ancestors in the EEA faced a relatively simple set of challenges, e.g.

Food--how to hunt and gather it
Clothing, shelter, tools--how to find materials and make them
Defense--how to defend against animals and external enemies
Mating--how to select, attract, retain, and replace a mate

Some of those problems pitted human against animal or inanimate object, and so would not have been very challenging, while others pitted human against human. The mating game in particular generates complex strategies. Depending on a combination of variables, including

Sex--male or female
Status--high or low
Personality--using the Five Factor Model: Surgency/Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, and Intellect/Openness
Environment--stable and cooperative or unstable and hostile
Time-frame--short-term or long-term

he or she will tend to choose different strategies to solve the mating problems. Some combinations of problems and circumstances will tend to result in courtly love and cooperative behavior, while others...won't.