視讀進(jìn)化心理學(xué)

出版時(shí)間:2009-1  出版社:安徽文藝出版社  作者:(英)迪蘭·伊文斯,(英)奧斯卡·扎拉特  頁數(shù):180  譯者:劉建鴻  
Tag標(biāo)簽:無  

內(nèi)容概要

心智是如何進(jìn)化而來的?人類的心智為何不同于祖先的心智以及親緣最近的物種——猿類的心智?如果我們是由自私的基因建構(gòu)而成的,為什么我們又會表現(xiàn)出合作的行為?男性和女性的心理差異是否能用進(jìn)化論的觀點(diǎn)加以解釋?上述問題都是進(jìn)化心理學(xué)的核心,而進(jìn)化心理學(xué)又是近些年來興起的一種新的研究學(xué)科?! ∫揽窟M(jìn)化生物學(xué)和認(rèn)知心理學(xué)的發(fā)展,同時(shí)借助人類學(xué)、靈長類動(dòng)物學(xué)和考古學(xué)的研究數(shù)據(jù),進(jìn)化心理學(xué)家逐漸拼貼出一幅完整的有關(guān)人類本性的科學(xué)圖景。  《視讀進(jìn)化心理學(xué)》是幫助讀者了解這一領(lǐng)域的最佳入門圖書。迪蘭-伊文斯生動(dòng)簡練的撰文,配以獲獎(jiǎng)藝術(shù)家奧斯卡·扎拉特的插圖,帶領(lǐng)讀者輕松走入心智研究的歷史。

書籍目錄

譯者序什么是進(jìn)化心理學(xué)?認(rèn)知心理學(xué)行為由一系列心理的信息加工過程所引發(fā)行為主義心理學(xué)人的大腦就是一臺計(jì)算機(jī)心理的隱喻一個(gè)可檢驗(yàn)的模式進(jìn)化生物學(xué)遺傳和突變基因遺傳突變適者生存和自然選擇有用的設(shè)計(jì)關(guān)于設(shè)計(jì)論的爭論絕非偶然自然沒有飛躍建立在偶然變化基礎(chǔ)上的進(jìn)化眼睛的進(jìn)化盲眼鐘表匠組合拼圖的兩塊拼塊通用的問題解決程序?qū)W習(xí)語言語言習(xí)得視覺模塊多模塊理論沒有中央處理器模塊和適應(yīng)適應(yīng)和環(huán)境進(jìn)化而來的模塊共有的模塊和特有的模塊走出非洲社會環(huán)境適應(yīng)問題躲避食肉動(dòng)物攻擊的心理模塊發(fā)現(xiàn)食肉動(dòng)物錯(cuò)誤報(bào)警兩種神經(jīng)通路食物傾向性模塊脂肪和糖環(huán)境的不相稱惡心建立同盟的模塊生活在群體中同盟和聯(lián)合人數(shù)激增的群體互惠的利他主義搭便車問題合作的進(jìn)化針鋒相對社會交換的認(rèn)知適應(yīng)幫助孩子和其他親戚的模塊親緣選擇你們有多少的親緣關(guān)系?漢密爾頓公式裙帶關(guān)系的進(jìn)化灰姑娘的事實(shí)給后代分配資源資源分配模塊父母一子女沖突我那一份有多少?斷奶斷奶的益處讀懂他人心理的模塊群體規(guī)模和社會智力馬基雅弗利心理理論通俗心理學(xué)賽利一安測驗(yàn)心理理論和自閉癥  說謊和策略性的欺騙語言模塊語言獲得機(jī)制語言的進(jìn)化再論互惠的利他主義流言蜚語間接的互惠名聲的重要性配偶一選擇模塊配對游戲選擇中的基因漂亮的重要性身體的對稱性有沒有證明對稱性偏好的證據(jù)?美的生物學(xué)意義能生育的因素選擇一個(gè)能照料孩子的配偶人類的夫妻制父母照料和人類的腦容量你會是一位好父親或好母親嗎?配偶選擇的性別差異父親和花花公子兩性沖突還是進(jìn)化的軍備競賽?一夫一妻制的女性的神話女性的非固定性伴侶什么是最佳策略?資源豐富的男人有關(guān)配偶傾向性的測驗(yàn)魅力與年齡年齡與生育忠誠:性欲和情感男性的妒忌和女性的妒忌心智圖譜對進(jìn)化心理學(xué)的批評泛適應(yīng)論副作用和副產(chǎn)品并非都是模塊假設(shè)和證明好像是在講故事?邏輯是副產(chǎn)品嗎?華生選擇任務(wù)找出欺騙者心理模塊的兩大屬性重提模塊性簡化論最簡單的精確理論基因決定論是否過于看重基因的影響呢?先天VS后天行為遺傳學(xué)人類的不同以及人類的本性人類的行為是不能改變的嗎?  。為現(xiàn)狀辯護(hù)?自然主義謬誤錯(cuò)誤的批評和誤解歷史遺留問題達(dá)爾文派的左翼分子?達(dá)爾文的革命心理學(xué)的未來拓展閱讀附錄

章節(jié)摘錄

  什么是進(jìn)化心理學(xué)?  進(jìn)化心理學(xué)由兩門科學(xué)交叉融合而成,這兩門科學(xué)即進(jìn)化生物學(xué)和認(rèn)知心理學(xué)。如果我們想要拼出人類行為的完整圖譜,那么這兩門學(xué)科就是這幅拼圖的兩塊拼塊,缺一不可?! ∥覀兿葋韱为?dú)看看這兩門科學(xué),然后我們再去了解一下進(jìn)化心理學(xué)是如何把二者糅合在一起并最終達(dá)到科學(xué)理解人類本質(zhì)的目的的。

編輯推薦

  自1991年問世以來,先后以三十余種文字出版 行,銷量達(dá)2.4億冊。  中國作家協(xié)會主席鐵凝聯(lián)袂國內(nèi)著名專家、學(xué)者、作家鼎力推薦,世界經(jīng)典科普巨作——INTRODUCING(介紹叢書)?! ∶媳袊鴳騽〖覅f(xié)會副主席:它是一粒種子,可以埋進(jìn)青少年的心田……  楊宜音,中國社會科學(xué)院社會學(xué)研究所研究員:如果你想走進(jìn)世界,那么就請打開它吧!  你的內(nèi)心世界是他人的心外世界,他人的內(nèi)心世界是你的心外世界,心理學(xué)是溝通心里與心外的一扇窗。如果你想走進(jìn)內(nèi)心世界,那么就請你打開它吧!

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    視讀進(jìn)化心理學(xué) PDF格式下載


用戶評論 (總計(jì)34條)

 
 

  •   這本書很精煉,對于了解進(jìn)化心理學(xué)的初學(xué)者特別適合。作者用簡練的文字向讀者展示了一個(gè)宏大的人類進(jìn)化歷史進(jìn)程,讀了讓人收益良多。慎重推薦!
  •   進(jìn)化心理學(xué)很有趣,配的圖片倒是不太能在家長面前看……
    如果想要看看人類的本能反應(yīng)源頭買這本很適合。
  •   用圖畫來解釋進(jìn)化心理學(xué),適合普通人閱讀,好書,呵呵
  •   關(guān)于認(rèn)知的種系發(fā)展心理學(xué),很不錯(cuò)的書
  •   以前沒有接觸過這個(gè)主題,但是這本書讓我一下子看到這門個(gè)(知識的)世界,好。
  •   該書將深?yuàn)W的理論圖片化,再配以簡短的文字。輕松中不乏睿智。值得推薦
  •   挺好玩的一本書,跟想的差不多,而且送貨很及時(shí),不錯(cuò)
  •   正經(jīng)事兒,系列叢書
  •   不錯(cuò)~值得一看~通俗易懂
  •   通俗易懂好書
  •   劃算,很好的
  •   不錯(cuò)的書,送給小朋友的
  •   不管內(nèi)容如何,簡筆速描看上去很過癮而且直觀?。?/li>
  •   itisawonderfulandterrificbookforreaderswhoareinterestedinevolutionarypsychology!!!
  •   里面都是圖片看起來很有意思 書都沒有損壞 看起來 挺好的
  •   文字結(jié)合圖片,道理說得淺顯易懂,是本好書

    對進(jìn)化心理學(xué)有一點(diǎn)點(diǎn)興趣的人,可以買這本書來入門——了解一些基礎(chǔ)的知識
  •   視讀系列都不錯(cuò)的。不會令人失望。
  •   進(jìn)化論是最偉大的科學(xué)...因?yàn)樗梢越忉尩胶芏嗪芏嗟默F(xiàn)象!
  •   配圖很可愛,成人孩子讀都可以。
    可以學(xué)習(xí)到很多淺顯易懂的知識呢!
  •   深入淺出,可讀性強(qiáng),對于想簡單了解該知識的人是一本快速讀物!
  •   一到手就翻了幾頁,是插圖的,文字很少。。。
  •   還沒讀呢,拆開了包裝覺得其實(shí)很一般紙質(zhì)什么的
  •   消遣類的書,閑來無事翻翻看的,還不錯(cuò),可惜是黑白版,要是彩版就好了。
  •   很適合非專業(yè)者閱讀,很有意思
  •   畫面不太舒服,學(xué)術(shù)性有待提高
  •   很淺顯易懂,就是老舊了點(diǎn)
  •   理論普及的好讀本,視讀形式閱覽稱得上輕快,圖畫似乎太濃重,亂糟糟的
  •     1.進(jìn)化心理學(xué)是建立在進(jìn)化生物學(xué)和認(rèn)知心理學(xué)這兩個(gè)成熟學(xué)科上的一個(gè)相對新的學(xué)科。
      2.認(rèn)知心理學(xué)的兩個(gè)基本觀點(diǎn):行為是由一系列心理的信息加工過程所引發(fā)的;大腦就是一臺計(jì)算機(jī);
      3.進(jìn)化的原因:遺傳、突變、自然選擇。
      3.語言能力是我們與生俱來的,是自然選擇讓我們獲得的心智能力之一。
      4.人類與大猩猩600萬年前分道揚(yáng)鑣,之后就生活在東非的熱帶大草原上,大約10萬年前開始,人類走出非洲并最終占據(jù)了世界各地。人類的文明史,也就是從1萬年前的農(nóng)業(yè)社會開始,對我們心智的進(jìn)化都是沒有太大作用的。
      5.社會環(huán)境影響我們的心智:食物匱乏,造就了我們隊(duì)高熱量食物的食欲;腐敗變質(zhì)食物帶來的疾病使我們對對這些食物沒有胃口;
      6.社會性動(dòng)物需要解決的幾大問題也是對應(yīng)的幾個(gè)心理模塊:(通過基因傳遞給下一代的能力,當(dāng)然也是通過自然選擇來實(shí)現(xiàn)的)
     ?、?躲避肉食動(dòng)物的攻擊;a.即使會誤報(bào),報(bào)警機(jī)制也要非常靈敏;兩條神經(jīng)通路:感覺丘腦-杏仁體(靈敏但不夠精確)、感覺丘腦-大腦皮層-杏仁體(緩慢但精確)
     ?、?食用正確的食物
      ③ 建立聯(lián)盟和朋友關(guān)系:a.解決“搭便車”問題:某些個(gè)體經(jīng)常碰到一起;個(gè)體能夠認(rèn)出之前的個(gè)體并把他們和其他陌生人相區(qū)別;個(gè)體能記住之前的個(gè)體如何對待自己
     ?、?為孩子和親朋好友提供幫助(親戚之間是特殊的社會交換問題);a.基因決定了我們是自私的;孩子希望得到的資源總是比母親平均分配的資源多一些;
      ⑤ 讀懂其他個(gè)體的心理;通俗心理學(xué),塞利-安測驗(yàn)
      7.語言模塊:利他注意,要區(qū)分出欺騙者和合作者;間接互惠;流言蜚語;名聲;
      8.配偶選擇模塊
      ① 審美對稱偏好:將優(yōu)良基因傳遞給下一代;能生育,愿意為培養(yǎng)下一代付出心血和努力;
      ② 人類一夫一妻制,共同照料孩子,對幾百萬年前腦容量激增起到重要作用
     ?、?鑒于共同撫養(yǎng)后代,所以選擇配偶的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)與選擇合作伙伴一樣:從行為中判斷是否友善、有耐心、慷慨和值得信任;
     ?、?性別差異,長期配偶策略兩性相同,但短期配偶策略上男性占優(yōu)勢(短期策略的男性可以逃之夭夭,短期策略的女性被識別并拋棄后需要獨(dú)自撫養(yǎng)后代)
       為辨別男性是長期配偶策略還是短期配偶策略,女性形成拖延策略,女人比男人更加謹(jǐn)慎。
     ?、?女性生育年齡:生育能力20歲達(dá)到頂峰,30歲后急速下降;由于失誤營養(yǎng)原因,現(xiàn)代生育能力能往后推遲一些;
      ⑥ 男性更嫉妒女性的感情出軌,女性更嫉妒男性的性出軌。完全符合進(jìn)化論的觀點(diǎn)。
  •     先談下這本書。
      
      書不錯(cuò),思路清晰,簡明扼要,不失原創(chuàng)性。
      
      至于進(jìn)化心理學(xué)這個(gè)概念,原來是生物學(xué)(進(jìn)化論)與認(rèn)知心理學(xué)交融而成的一個(gè)概念。應(yīng)該說,這種交合是很有意義的。心理學(xué)不能只是局限于心理學(xué)的范疇,也不能囿于生物生理學(xué),既便是加上哲學(xué)也還不夠。心理學(xué)是研究人的心理的學(xué)科,那就離不了談人,要談人,就離不了與人有關(guān)的歷史與環(huán)境,所以,可以想象,心理學(xué)是有關(guān)所有學(xué)科的科學(xué)。心理學(xué)必須整合所有的學(xué)科。而進(jìn)化心理學(xué)在這個(gè)方向上算是向前邁了一步。(至于此點(diǎn),我在《重新認(rèn)識心理學(xué)》一文有比較詳細(xì)的描述:http://1160404007.blog.163.com/blog/static/11774958320094215924216/ )
      
      進(jìn)化心理學(xué)從人類的進(jìn)化過程來談人的心理的進(jìn)化,這種研究方法就撇開了個(gè)體性,而主要來研究群體心理特征(也就是現(xiàn)在所說的集體意識),又因?yàn)檠芯奎c(diǎn)是建立在既往的人類歷史上的,所以,在此基礎(chǔ)上的人類心理就成了人類的共同的心理,并且更重要的是人類潛意識的群體心理特征(就是榮格所說的社會原型,或集體潛意識)。本書在最后很明確地表達(dá)了自己的觀點(diǎn):“進(jìn)化心理學(xué)本來就是為了研究人類行為的相似性?!薄斑M(jìn)化心理學(xué)家感興趣的是所有人類共享的、基本的心理特點(diǎn),即人類先天的共同點(diǎn)?!盤158
      
      需要指出的是,進(jìn)化心理學(xué)可以作為一條心理學(xué)的研究思路,一個(gè)方向,但絕不是心理學(xué)的全部,此書作者就有以偏概全的傾向,認(rèn)為未來進(jìn)化心理學(xué)一定會成為心理學(xué),那就犯了一葉遮目不見泰山的錯(cuò)誤。
      
      不管怎樣,就此書而言,值得推薦。
      
      
      
      
      下面的文字,是看此書時(shí)的些思考,卻并不是全部建立在此書的基礎(chǔ)之上。感興趣的朋友可以一起探討。
      
      
      
      在開始這個(gè)話題之前,我首先要對這個(gè)標(biāo)題作一說明。我把一些行為稱為自我傷害行為,在這里,我有意的想與自虐作一區(qū)分。應(yīng)該說,自虐包括在自我傷害行為之中,但自我傷害行為不等于自虐。自我傷害行為在這里是一個(gè)更為寬泛的概念。我把那些對自我不利——包括身體,精神,以及個(gè)體在社會中的地位等等——都叫作自我傷害行為。舉例子來說,比如自虐(這是比較典型的),抽煙,肥胖,自殺,各種癮,手淫,失眠,貧窮等等,這些行為都在我所談的自我傷害行為之內(nèi)??赡艽蠹視ω毟F感到意外,這怎么會是自我傷害行為呢?這又怎么會是因?yàn)閮?nèi)在的心理動(dòng)力引起的呢?在后面,我們探討電影《心靈捕手》男主人公威爾時(shí)會談到這點(diǎn)。另外,意外事故也是自我傷害行為,甚至疾病也同樣如此。關(guān)于這點(diǎn),露易絲?海在她的著作《生命的重建》中描述得很詳細(xì),甚至在最后還列了一個(gè)表,把一些疾病與心理動(dòng)力對應(yīng)起來。
      
      我想,這在一開始可能是較難理解的一個(gè)概念,會出乎許多的人意料,在我較深入地思考這個(gè)問題后,我發(fā)現(xiàn),自我傷害行為雖然表現(xiàn)形式不同,但在這不同背后卻有一些相同的東西。就如前面提到的,第一個(gè)相同之處就是,這些行為都是對當(dāng)事人不利或有害的。我發(fā)現(xiàn)另外一個(gè)相同點(diǎn),那就是:這些行為的精神動(dòng)因都是恨。而由恨引發(fā)的情緒是憤怒。(我這樣說多少有些概括了,實(shí)際上,我們有很多詞來描述那種負(fù)能量的精神動(dòng)力,王鳳儀仙長在他的著作《化性談》中,把惱、怒、怨、恨、煩稱為五毒,是造成各種疾病的原因,在《黃帝內(nèi)經(jīng)》中亦有類似的描述。)
      
      我們來繼續(xù)把這個(gè)問題引向深處,當(dāng)事人在恨誰?誰是他的憤怒的對象?結(jié)果我發(fā)現(xiàn),恨誰、對誰憤怒并不重要,重要的,有自我傷害行為的人,他把對另一個(gè)人的恨與憤怒移情到了自己身上,也就是說,他把自己當(dāng)成是他所恨的對象,因此,現(xiàn)在你可以理解,具有自我傷害行為的人在實(shí)施自我傷害時(shí),實(shí)際上是對另一個(gè)人的懲罰。當(dāng)然,這是屬于潛意識的行為,當(dāng)事人是很難意識到的,這也正是我有必要在這里進(jìn)行討論的原因。
      
      當(dāng)事人之所以把對另一個(gè)人的懲罰轉(zhuǎn)變成是對自我的傷害,一個(gè)重要的原因是,在現(xiàn)實(shí)生活中,當(dāng)事人無法對另一個(gè)人表達(dá)憤怒,更別說是對另一個(gè)人進(jìn)行懲罰,換句話說,當(dāng)事人把對另一個(gè)人的憤怒壓抑起來了。比如說,當(dāng)事人憤怒的對象是一位已經(jīng)過世的人,或者,是自己的父母,或者,是自己的愛人,或者,是自己的上司,總之,當(dāng)事人無法對憤怒對象表達(dá)自己的憤怒,于是,自我傷害行為就產(chǎn)生了。我突然想起了那句話,“別拿別人的過錯(cuò)懲罰自己”,講的真的是太對了。當(dāng)然,當(dāng)事人如果能夠真接對憤怒對象表達(dá)自己的憤怒,自我傷害的行為就不會產(chǎn)生。然而,這又會引發(fā)另一種情況,那就是會受到道德、良心的懲罰。比如,直接對父母表達(dá)憤怒,那就成了不尊重老人,直接對愛人表達(dá)憤怒,那就有可能威脅到正常的家庭關(guān)系的穩(wěn)定,直接對上司表達(dá)憤怒,那就意味著可能自己炒自己的魷魚。所以,從這里我們可以明白,自我傷害行為的背后,是自我生存與發(fā)展與社會道德之間的沖突與矛盾。而在這二者的關(guān)系中,社會道德是處在第一位的,個(gè)人利益是處在第二位的,所以,恨與憤怒的壓抑就更為常見些。另外,比較而言,把自己當(dāng)作憤怒對象進(jìn)行懲罰似乎比直接懲罰憤怒對象來得更為容易些,這也是為什么大多數(shù)的人會采取自我傷害作為懲罰所恨的人的一種途徑。需要再次說明的是,當(dāng)事人是意識不到這些的,當(dāng)事人一旦意識到他自我傷害行為的真正動(dòng)力,他就不會再這樣做了,這正是我想來談這個(gè)問題的原因。
      
      我之所以會得出這樣的結(jié)果,我的依據(jù)是,自我保護(hù)是人的最重要的本能(也可稱之為生存本能)。這種本能的特征是使自身強(qiáng)大且不受傷害。而這也是萬物最基本的特征。不管是在動(dòng)物界、植物界、生物界,甚至是物理界也都是如此。我們知道,物質(zhì)的形成是由于引力的作用,而引力的作用又形成了各種星體,這就是牛頓發(fā)現(xiàn)的萬有引力。引而伸之,生物的形成也是引力作用的結(jié)果,因?yàn)樯锏膹?fù)雜性(比如人),用引力來解釋就顯得有點(diǎn)困難,所以,就只好借用另一個(gè)詞了,那就是“生命力”。生命力在本質(zhì)上具有引力同樣的特征。引力使物質(zhì)凝聚一起并不斷變大,生命力則使得人不斷強(qiáng)大而不受外界傷害。好了,這個(gè)問題就此打住吧,要想把這個(gè)問題說清楚,用一本書的文字都有點(diǎn)困難??傊?,我得出的結(jié)論是,自我保護(hù)是人的最重要的本能,這種本能的特征是使自身強(qiáng)大且不受傷害。因此,自我傷害行為顯然與這一本能相矛盾,當(dāng)事人對自我的傷害絕非本意,他要傷害的對象絕非自己,一定是他弄錯(cuò)了,他把自己當(dāng)成了他想要傷害的對象(這是潛意識,他很難意識到)。
      
      實(shí)際上,從另一個(gè)層面來講,恨本身也是一種自我保護(hù)行為,這是一種情感標(biāo)志。之所以當(dāng)事人會恨,是因?yàn)楫?dāng)事人曾被所恨對象傷害過,當(dāng)事人為了不再繼續(xù)受到傷害,于是,他豎立了一個(gè)情感標(biāo)志,就是恨,因?yàn)橛泻?,?dāng)事人就對所恨對象保持一種高度的警惕狀態(tài),避免再受傷害。當(dāng)然,如果可能的話,當(dāng)事人會采取報(bào)復(fù)與打擊行為,如果被恨對象受創(chuàng)傷被“鎮(zhèn)壓”下去,受傷害的危險(xiǎn)就解除了。不過,人們往往忽視了一點(diǎn),那就是,敵對狀態(tài)對當(dāng)事人是害大于利的,在敵對的狀態(tài)中實(shí)際上是消耗了當(dāng)事人的能量。而當(dāng)事人心中的恨與憤怒如果不能排解,最后就會形成自我傷害行為。
      
      我想還是先舉個(gè)例子來講可能會比較好些,不然的話可能會有些太抽象了。有一位網(wǎng)友,有一次和她聊天,談到哲學(xué),她說我不懂哲學(xué),但我覺得我對哲學(xué)還是有一點(diǎn)了解的,所以,我就完全借用儒、釋、道幾家的原話回復(fù)她,她后來很生氣,一連寫了十幾個(gè)“你不懂,你不懂!”讓我去好好學(xué)學(xué)哲學(xué)。我對此并不生氣,只是感到奇怪,覺得她這樣聊天很失態(tài),她為什么會是這樣呢?后來了解到,她與父親關(guān)系不好,父親對她要求很恪刻,她的一篇文章在一家報(bào)紙發(fā)表,父親卻打擊她,有本事就發(fā)表到更大的那家報(bào)紙上。在前天的聊天中,她告訴我她想自殺。當(dāng)然,這次想自殺與她父親無關(guān),她寫了幾封信給教她命理的老師,但那老師沒回她。也是從她身上,我開始思考自我傷害行為的。她的自殺的想法就是自我傷害行為,很明顯,背后的動(dòng)力就是恨與憤怒,她所恨與憤怒的對象就是她的老師,她因?yàn)槔蠋熚椿貜?fù)她而感到受到傷害,她無法表達(dá)她的憤怒,無法傷害老師,所以,她采取了自我傷害行為(雖然還只是想法)。
      
      不過,從她身上我又發(fā)現(xiàn)了另一個(gè)重要的信息,象她老師未回復(fù)她信這樣的事應(yīng)該算不上什么大事,卻使她憤怒并產(chǎn)生自殺的念頭,這應(yīng)該只是表面的現(xiàn)象,只是個(gè)誘因,而不是內(nèi)在根本的動(dòng)力。真正的動(dòng)力我想應(yīng)該與她父親有關(guān)。她真正恨的是她父親。她從父親那里沒有感受到父愛,因此,她不知道什么是愛,如何去愛。她心中缺乏愛,渴望愛,但又總對愛存有質(zhì)疑。事實(shí)上,她眼下也的確在感情問題上存有困惑。有位心理咨詢師說她有同性戀的傾向,而她當(dāng)晚告訴我,她最近聊天的90%的都是女性。我想,這種傾向是可能的,她與父親的隔閡使她對來自男性的愛持有質(zhì)疑與排斥,從而有可能把這種愛轉(zhuǎn)移向女性。
      
      總結(jié)一下,具有自我傷害行為的人大多都與童年缺乏愛或受到傷害有關(guān),他們具有以下特點(diǎn):猜忌,以自我為中心,相信權(quán)力或能力,追求完美,有控制欲。因?yàn)樗麄儧]有得到真正的愛,所以不知道什么是真正的愛,從而對所有的愛、所有的人都不相信。因?yàn)閷χ車娜瞬幌嘈?,那?一能相信的,就只有自己了,所以,這些人大多都是以自我為中心。他們對權(quán)力或能力有一種非常強(qiáng)烈的欲望,因?yàn)?,他們認(rèn)為,他們之所以不被愛,是自己還不夠好,不夠強(qiáng)大,當(dāng)他們夠好夠強(qiáng)大時(shí),他們就會得到愛,就不會被傷害。當(dāng)然,這樣會使得他們比其他人更容易獲得某方面的成就,比較典型的代表人物算是音樂天王邁克?杰克遜了,他因?yàn)槿狈Ω笎?,因此,激發(fā)了他超人的音樂表現(xiàn)力,讓他在音樂方面取得了超人的成就。他把希望從父親那里得到愛轉(zhuǎn)移到了他的歌迷身上,他不惜為了博得歌迷的愛而整容(這就是自我傷害行為,這表面上看是對愛的渴求造成的,而對愛的渴求正表明愛的缺乏,而愛的缺乏則反映了父親的暴力與杰克遜的內(nèi)心的傷害,而這必然會造成恨與憤怒。這是更深一層的原因。),最后,當(dāng)歌迷不再愛他,開始抵毀他時(shí),他甚至不惜以死為代價(jià)以重新喚得歌迷的愛。類似的事例在歷史上并不少見。因?yàn)楹ε率?,所以就會極力想要控制。只有在自己的控制下才會有安全感。就比如那位網(wǎng)友,她多次給老師發(fā)信,這在潛意識里是想對老師有所控制,當(dāng)老師未回復(fù)她,她感到失去了控制,因此也就失去了安全感。她之前與我聊天,說我不懂哲學(xué),言辭激烈,這也是一種控制,如果我表現(xiàn)得很好,她就會有受傷害的威脅,所以她要打擊我,我被打擊下去了,受傷害的威脅也就解除了。很明顯,她的這種行為已經(jīng)無意識地繼承了她的父親,因此,可以判斷出,他父親也是曾經(jīng)頗受打擊的人。
      
      另一個(gè)比較典型的案例是電影《心靈捕手》?!缎撵`捕手》講述了一位年輕的數(shù)學(xué)奇才卻甘愿做麻省理工學(xué)院的清潔工,與幾個(gè)死黨混在一起,后來接受心理專家的治療,心理專家終于打開了他的心門,發(fā)現(xiàn)了他的心結(jié),原來,小時(shí)候父親經(jīng)常酒后對他施行暴力。這使他成年后不相信真愛,不敢把自己完全呈現(xiàn)給別人,使他盡管懷有超人的天份,卻甘愿做一個(gè)清潔工(這就是自我傷害行為,有意使自己陷入困境。)
      
      具有自我傷害行為的人在治療時(shí)會有一種抗拒心理,這種抗拒心理可以說是對他人的不信任,但從本質(zhì)上來講,是持續(xù)的恨與憤怒,不愿意釋放。就象《心靈捕手》中,主人公對于心理治療的抵制。對于那位網(wǎng)友,當(dāng)我嘗試和她一起尋找問題的原因時(shí),她卻表現(xiàn)出抵制狀態(tài),她說她就是這樣,她就是想死。
      
      然而,真正的解決之道就是釋放,釋放掉心中的恨與憤怒,原諒與接受那個(gè)所恨的人,學(xué)著去愛他,當(dāng)做到這點(diǎn)時(shí),當(dāng)事人就不會再有自我傷害的行為,同時(shí),當(dāng)事人會從之前所恨的人那里獲得有用的能量。
      
      最后想要說明一點(diǎn)的是,這里談的是影響人的兩大內(nèi)在動(dòng)力——愛與恨,并不具體,實(shí)際上,每一具體的行為都有一個(gè)具體的精神動(dòng)力。我只想探討一下最基本的動(dòng)力問題。
      
      
      
      
      另:對心理學(xué)及解夢感興趣的朋友可加入我建的“夢&解夢”小組:http://www.douban.com/group/89937/
  •     個(gè)人邊看邊用鍵盤敲的,如有錯(cuò)誤見諒吧!開頭部分,開看時(shí)還沒想到敲;后面內(nèi)容,打得太累就沒堅(jiān)持。非?;㈩^蛇尾,有興趣的就將就著看吧!還是挺淺顯易懂的。
      
      ……
      
      Not by Coincidence…
      Paley was right about one thing.Complex machines like watches and eyes are extremely improbable arrangements of matter.To claim that they could have come into existence in one single cosmic coincidence would be ludicrous.That would be about as likely as a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747 out of the scrap metal.
      
      Natura non facit saltum (nature does not make leaps.自然界并不進(jìn)行突變式發(fā)展)
      But Paley was wrong in thinking that the only alternative to such a ludicrous scenario was that eyes and other adaptations had been desingned by God.Darwin’s theory of natural selection provides another alternative.Darwin argued that complex machines like the eye could evolve by a completely natural process,without the aid of any super-naural being.
      
      Improvement by accident
      This is how evolutionary biology explains the evolution of complex desings like the eye.Adaptations do not come about all in one go,by a single large mutation,but evolve gradually by accumulation hundreds of very small mutations.The mutations occur at random,with no plan in mind.
      
      The evolution of the eye
      In the case of the eye,for example,the first small change was probaly a slight increase in the sensitivity to light of a small piece of skin.All skin is slightly sensitive to light anyway,and it is not difficult to imagine that the offspring of one of our eyeless ancestors happened to be born with a bit of skin slightly more sensitive to light than normal.This was just an acident,of course.
      It also just happened that this particular accident was a lucky accident,because it allowed the mutant baby to detect the shadow of a predator more quickly,and thus escape faster than its eyeless parents and siblings could do.
      Of course,there were many other accidents that weren’t quite so lucky—many other mutant babies whose unusual features were disadvantageous rather than beneficial.These mutants did not have any offspring.
      But the lucky mutant was more successful and had lots of offspring.Moreover,it passed the new gene for light-sensitive skin-bits on to its offspring,so the new gene spread through the population and eventually everyone had the light-sensitive skin patches.Later on,there were other mutations,some of which were also beneficial.The light-sensitive skin patches became light-sensitive concave dips,which were then filled in with transparent fluid and finally covered over with a lens.The eye had evolved by a process of natural selection.
      
      The blind watchmaker
      Natural selection,then,builds adaptations by accumulating many small accidental changes.The British biologist Richard Dawkins has compared natural selection to a “blind watchmaker”.It is a watchmaker because it produces complex desingns,but it is blind because it doesn’t produce these designs by conscious foresight,but simply by accumulating a series of random accidents.
      This concludes our brief survey of evolutionary biology.Now it is time to fit the two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together.
      
      Fitting the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together
      Evolutionary psychology is the combination of cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology.But why should we combine these two sciences?What have they got to do with each other?The answer is simple.
      Cognitive psychology tells us that the mind exhibits a very complex design.Evolutionary biology tells us that complax designs in mature can only come about by natural selection.Therefore,the design of the mind must have evolved by a process of natural selection.What is meant by saying that the mind is a “complex design”? Just how complex is the mind?
      
      General-Purpose Problem-Solver?
      When cognitive psychologists first began to investigate the mind,they thought that it would be a very simple kind of program.
      We thought that it would be an abstract,general-purpose problem-solver.All that the mental software required was a few general procedures that could be applied to any information.
      When they set out to test this hypothesis,however,the cognitive psychologists found that they were wrong.They wrote some very simple programs that could sovle very abstract problems,but they found that these programs were unable to do many of the things that humans do easily.
      
      Learning a language
      One of these things that humans do easily is learning a language.In the late 1950s,the American linguist Noam Chomsky showed that a general-purpose learning program simply could not learn a language under the same conditions as normal human children.
      In order for children to learn a language,they must first hear adults speaking it.But adult speech contans lots of errors,and no indication of what is correct and incorrect.
      The technical term for this faulty data is “the poverty of the stimulus”.Learning a language based on this information alone would be like trying to figure out the rules of chess just by observing a few chess games in which some of the moves were illegal (but without knowing which moves were illegal).This would be impossible unless you already knew what information to look for.
      
      Language Acquisition
      So the only program that could learn a human language is a specific one that has been pre-programmed with specific information relevant just to language learning.Chomsky concluded that there is an innate “l(fā)anguage accquisition device”(LAD) in the mind which knows what kinds of rules human languages can have.Human languages have a limited number of structures,which are collectively known as “Universal Grammar”.
      When a child learns its first language,he or she doesn’t start from scratch.They simply select from their innate knowleged of universal grammer the rules that they hear being used around them.
      In sense,language isn’t something that is learned;it is more appropriate to say that it just develops naturally,like a biological organ or an instinct.
      
      Vision
      Chomsky’s pioneering work on language was followed by similar discoveries in other areas of psychology.David Marr showed how another apparently simple task-seeing-was also very complex.Writing a program that could enable a robot to recognize even simple objects proved incredibly difficult.
      So I found that vision required special software for seeing,with specific rules for detecting edges,motion,colour and depth.
      David Marr’s theory of vision:We reconstruct three-dimensional images by building them up from simpler shapes like cylinders. (Hand-forearm-arm-human)
      
      Modularity
      Cognitive psychologists began to realize that the mind was far more complex than they had first imagined.In 1983,the American philosopher and psychologist Jerry Fodor reached a stunning conclusion.
      The mind could not possibly be a single,general-purpose program.Instead,it has to be a collection of many special-purpose programs,each with its own rules.
      Fodor called these special-purpose program“modules”.
      The modular theory of mind is still quite new,and is not yet accepted by all cognitive psychologists,but it is becoming more influential.Although it is very new idea,in a way it is also a return to a very old idea.For hundreds of years,people have divided the mind into“faculties”.In the 19th century,Franz Joseph Gall divided the mind into dozens of distinct capacities.
      Just as the older universities were divided into different “faculties”…
      Faculty psychology was largely abandoned at the beginning of the 20th century,but now,with the modular theory of mind,it is regaining prominence.
      
      Massive Modularity
      John Tooby and Leda Cosmides,two American psychologists who have pioneered many developments in evolutionary psychology,argue that there are hundreds,perhaps even thousands,of these special-purpose modules in the human mind.
      We compare the mind to a Swiss-Army knife with lots of different gadgets.Each one is designed for a specific task.
      This view is sometimes called the “massive modularity”thesis to distinguish it from a more limited view of modularity.
      When Fodor proposed a return to the tradition of “faculty psychology”in his 1983 book,The Modularity of Mind,he didn’t envisage hundreds of modules.He proposed that there were only a few of them.There were modules for processing sensory input(vision,sound,taste,touch,smell and language),but no more.Fodor claimed that these “input processes”fed information into general-purpose programs called “central processes”.The central processes were not modular in Fodor’s account.Fodor thinks evolutionary psychology has gone too far.
      
      No Central Processes
      Evolutionary psychologists are opposed to Fodor’s idea of “general-purpose central processes”for the same reason as they are opposed to the idea that the whole mind is a general-purpose program.
      General-purpose problem solvers don’t work because there are no “general problems”,only specific ones.
      If this input systems are modular,why not the central processes too?
      
      Modules and Adaptations
      A modular mind is clearly far more complex than a single general-purpose program.It has lots of interlocking parts that function smoothly together to process information.It has an innate structure that develops naturally,like a biological organ.According to evolutionary biology,these characteristics occur only as a result of natural selection.
      We can therefore ask how the different bits of the mind evolved.Evolutionary psychology is the research program that attempts to answer this question.
      
      Adaptations and environments
      According to evolutionary psychology,the various mental modules are adaptations designed by natural selection.Every adaptation is designed to solve an adaptive problem.An adaptive problem is something that an organism needs to solve in order to survive and reproduce.
      For example,one important adaptive problem faced by many animals is the problem of staying warm.Some animals solve this problem by developing coats of fur.Others solve it by thick layers of blubber.
      
      Evolving Modules
      Different environments pose different adaptive problems and so require different adaptations.There is not much point in having eyes if you live deep underground,where there is no light.If you want to understand any adaptation,therefore,you must know something about the envrionment in which in evolved.
      What was the environment in which the various modules in the human mind evolved?This is a tricky question,because the modules did not all evolve at the same time,so they did not all evolve in the same envrionment.
      Some modules evolved relatively recently,after the human species split from that of our closest relative,the chimpanzee.These modules are unique to humans.
      
      Shared and Unique Modules
      Other modules evolved a long time ago,when the commom ancestor of humans and reptiles was alive.These modules are not unique to humans.There are similar modules in the minds of reptiles.This does not mean that we have a “reptilian”bit in our mind,however.Mental modules,like all adaptations,do not stop evolving once they have appeared.They keep changing along with the environment.So,for example,both humans and crocodiles have eyes because they are descended from the same ancestral species in which eyes first evolved.But this does not mean that humans have reptilian eyes.
      Human and crocodiles have slightly different kinds of eye.Because our eyes have evolved in different ways since the human lineage diverged from the reptilian lineage.
      If we want to investigate the most distinctively human modules,the ones we don’t share with any other animals,we will have to look at the environment in which our ancestors lived after the human lineage split from that of the chimpanzee.
      
      Out of Africa
      Around 100,000 years ago,some of our ancestors began to emigrate out of Africa,and eventurally colonized the whole world.But 100,000 years is only about 5,000 generations—too short a time for evolution to produce any major changes.Human haven’t changed much in that time,so we can ignore it when discussing the evolutin of the mind.This means that all the history of human civilization and culture,from the birth of agriculture some 10,000 years ago until the present,is irrelevant to understanding the design of the human mind.
      Our minds did not evolve in a world of cities and cars,nor even in a world of ploughs and farming.We are all “stone-agers living in the fast lane”.
      
      The Social Environment
      What was life like on the African savannahs?The climate was hot and sunny,and the flat plains were covered in long grass dotted with trees,some of which were rich in high-quality food like fruit and nuts.This was the physical environment in which the human mind evolved.However,when we are considering the evolution of the human mind,it is just as important—perhaps even more important—to consider the social envrionment.
      The social environment refers to the orther minds around you.
      Like most primates,our ancestors lived in tightly-knit groups with a complex social structure.Interacting with the other people in the group was just as important for their survival as bing able to detect and escape from predators.
      
      Adaptive Problems
      Now that we know a little bit about the environment in which our most recent ancestors lived,we can ask what adaptive problems they faced.When we know what adaptive problems they faced,we can make some educated guesses about the kinds of mental adaptations(mental modules)that natural selection might have produced to solve them.Then,as with any other scinece,we can try to find evidence to see whether these guesses are right or wrong.
      So what were the adaptive problems faced by our hominid ancestors?Various considerations drawn from biology,primatology, archaeology and anthropology suggest what the most important adaptive problems would have been.
      Avoiding predators—eating the right food—forming alliances and friendships—providing help to children and other relatives—
      Reading other people’s minds—communicating with other people—selecting mates.
      All of these things are crucial for passing on your genes.So we should expect natural selection to have designed mental modules that enabled our ancestors to achieve these objectives in the ancestral envrionment.In the next part of this book we will examine these modules in more detial,beginning with predator avoidance.
      
      Predator-Avoidance Modules
      Avoiding predators is a very important problem from the genes’ point of view.Genes cannot get themeselves passed on to the next generation if their owner is eaten.Any genes that tend to make their owners avoid predators will therefore spread throughout the population.
      But genes do not cause behaviour directly.Rather,they help to build mental modules,and the mental modules cause behaviour. Gense for predator-avoidance work by building a predator-avoidance module.
      What would a predator-avoidance module look like?It would have to be able to detect possible predators,distinguish those that were real dangers from those that weren’t,and—in the case of real danger—trigger avoidant or defensive behavious.
      In fact,each of these tasks might be carried out by a separate module.So the task of predator-avoidance might be subserved by a group of modules rather than a single module.
      
      Detecting predators
      The first module in the predator-avoidance system would detect possible predators.With any detection system,however,there is a trade-off between accuracy and speed.Think of a burglar alarm.On the one hand,you want the alarm to be accurate—you don’t want it to be triggered by stray cats.You don’t want false alarms.On the other hand,you also want an alarm that goes off immediately a burglar attempts to break in.It’s not much use having a burgalr alarm that rings five minutes after the burglar has left the house.
      The problem is that it takes time to figure out whether the animal entering the house is a burglar or a cat.
      The more accurate the alarm is,the slower it is.Conversely,if you want a faster alarm,you will have to put up with a higher rate of false alarms.
      Which is more costly—a false alarm or a slow detector?If it is a question of detecing predators,a false alarm causes you to waste energy by running away from something that is not in fact a danger.A slow detector,however,can cause you to be eaten.So it is better to have a fast system that occasinonally gives false alarms than a slow system that is always accurate.So we should expect the predator-detection module to be fast and inaccurate rahter than slow and precise.
      
      False Alarms
      While you are reacting to the alarm given off by the predator-detection module,another module can then take a bit more time to decide whether of not the alarm was triggered by a genuine danger.If it was,then the avoidance behaviours are maintained.If the second module decides that the first module gave a false alarm,however,it can override the avoidance behaviour.
      
      Two Neural Pathways
      There is some evidence that this is in fact the case.The American neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux has shown that the emotion of fear—which prepares us to flee from predators or freeze to avoid being seen—is subserved by two neural mechanisms.One “fast and dirty”mechanism is,as the name suggests,very quick but not very accurate.It often gives false alarms.The other mechanism is much more accurate but slower.
      For example,suppose you are walking in the jungle.You look down and see a long,thin object.You freeze,because the fast and dirty mechanism thinks it’s a snake.Then,milliseconds later,you relax,because the slower,more accurate mechanism realizes that the object is in fact a stick.Having both of these machanisms is a bonus.
      The fast and dirty mechanism gets you out of trouble quickly but gives off some false alarms.The slow and clean mechanism tells you when the alarms are false,and so stops you wasting too much energy in reacting to them.Sometimes the slow and clean mechanism doesn’t kick in,and we continue reacting to false alarms.This may be what happens in some phobias.
      
      Food Preference Modules
      Avoiding predators is vital for survival,but so is consuming the right food.Of all the potentially edible things around you,some are very nutritious,some are poisonous,and some are neither.
      Genes that predisposed their owners to consume nutritious food and avoid poisonous food would spread through the population. As with predator-avoidance,however,genes do not cause this behaviour directly.They build mental mechanisms that lead us to desire some foods and dislike others.
      
      Fat and Sugar
      Animal fat and sugar are highly nutritious,but they were relatively scarce in the African savannah where our ancestors lived.To get animal fat it was necessary to kill an animal or scavenge one that had already been killed.To get sugar it was necessary to find ripe fruit.Both of these were complicated—and something dangerous—tasks.In a situation like this,it would have been highly adaptive to have strong desires for fat and sugar.
      Those who have such strong desires will be more likely to seek out fat and sugar.Despite the attendant difficulties and dangers.
      On balance,they would tend to consume more of these nutritious foods,and so they would be more likely to pass on their genes—including their genes for liking fat and sugar.
      
      Environmental Mismatch
      Fat and sugar are bad for you if you eat too much of them,but in ancestral envrionments these resources were scarce,so there wasn’t much chance of consuming too much.Today,however,we have supermarkets and fast-food resaurants to cater for our evolved tastes.Fat and sugar are no longer difficult to find.
      We were desinged to live in such a different envrionment,and this “envrionmental mismatch”is the source of many current problems.
      
      Disgust
      Eating the right food does not just involve seeking out nutritious food.It is also important to avoid poisonous food.Just as natural selection has desingned modules that make us prefer fat and sugar,so it has also designed modules that make us avoid eating rotting flesh and faeces.
      These poison-detector modules work by means of the emotion of disgust.
      In other words,when the module detects a food that it thinks is poisonous,it activates the feeling of disgust,and it is this feeling—not any conscious deliberation—that makes us avoid the food.
      
      Alliance-Formation Modules
      The two adaptive problems we have just examined—avoing predators and eating the right food—are problems posed by the physical envrionment.Howver,as we have already seen,when considering the evolution of the mind,it is just as important to consider the problems posed by the social envrionment.
      The social envrionment refers to the other conspecifics (animals of the same species)with whom you live.For many animals,the social envrionment is virtually non-existent,because they live solitary lives.
      Toad:I live on my own.I only meet other toads when I want to mate.
      
      Living in Groups
      Primates are unusual in that they live in tightly-knit social groups with complex hierarchies and alliances.
      Living in groups benefits primates because it provides extra defences against predators.
      It is harder for a predator to catch an animal in a group than an isolated animal because groups have more eyes to detect predators,and because other group memebers can come to the aid of one who is being attacked.
      
      Alliances and Coalitions
      But group living poses adaptive problems for primates.With lots of other consepecifics around you,all with the same food preferences,competition becomes more intense.Squabbles for scarce resources become common.
      The way we tend to solve this problem is by forming alliances between small numbers.Two or three of us form a coalition to provide mutual support against the other members of the group.
      
      Increasing the Group
      Our ancestors continued and extended this primate lifestyle.After the human lineage split from the chimpanzee lineage some six million years ago,the size of human groups began to increase.
      The increase in group-size meant that forming alliances became even more important for survival.
      For our ancestors,forming alliances and friendships was just as vital as eating the right food.Those who lacked the ability to form alliances and friendships were in as much danger as those who lacked the ability to detect predators.
      
      Reciprocal Altruism
      But forming alliances is not an easy task.The main problem is the risk of defection.An alliance is an “I’ll help you if you help me”arrangement.It is all about exchanging favours—which biologists call “reciprocal altruism”.But there is a problem with any such arrangement.
      There is always a risk that one of the members of the alliance may take the benefits without paying the costs. “I may accept favours from the other members of the alliance and never return them.”
      This is known as the “free-rider”problem and it is the fundamental adaptive problem posed by group living.
      
      The Free-Rider Problem
      Those animals that cannot solve the free-rider problme cannot live in groups.To see why,imagine a group of animals that strikes up an alliance in which one of the members is a free-rider.Whenever the free-rider is in danger,or hungry,the other members of the alliance come to his aid.The other members pay a cost for helping the free-rider,by riking their lives for him or by giving him some of their precious food.The free-rider enjoys these benefits,but never pays the costs of returning the favours.
      Undetected,the free-rider will obviously be more successufl at surviving and reproducing than the public-spirited suckers.So genes for free-riding will become more frequent in the gene pool.Eventually,everyone will be a free-rider.
      But then,no one will be helping anyone else.Alliances will disintegrate and group-living will no longer be possible.S
      
      The Evolution of Cooperation
      All animals that live in groups have found ways of solving the free-rider problem.Different species solve the problem in different ways,but there are some fundamental conditions that any solution must meet.These conditions were worked out by an American political scientist called Robert Axelrod in the early 1980s.Axelrod showed that the free-rider problem can only be solved if the following three conditions are satisfied.
      1. Organisms encounter the same organisms repeatedly.
      2. Organisms can recognise those they have met before and distinguish them from strangers.
      3. Organisms can remember how those they have met before have treated them on previous encounters.
      “I discovered these three conditions by organizing a tournament in which different computer programs competed against each other.”
      
      Tit-for-Tat
      Why are Axelrod’s three conditions necessary for solving the free-rider problem?The answer has to do with punishment and reward.When these three conditions are satisfied,free-riders can be punished and cooperators can be rewarded.Free-riders who have refused to do return favours can be punished by refusing to do any more favours for them.Cooperators can be rewarded by continuing to help them when they need it.
      The simple strategy is called “tit-for-tat”.When a group of organisms interact on the basis of tit-for-tat,free-riders no longer have the advantage.Cooperation can evolve and group cohesion can be maintained.
      All three conditins for using tit-for-tat were present in our hominid ancestors.In the small,tightly-knit groups of fifty to a hundred people in which they lived,the frist condition was easily satisfied.Day after day,we ineract with the same people.The second condition is satisfied by the evolution of sophisticated face-recognition module.The third condition is met by the evolution of a sophisticated memory of recording social interaction.
      For each acquaintance,we keep a mental tally of how much they have done for us and how much we have done for them.If the tally shows that someone has consistently done less for us than we have done for them,then the next time they ask for help,we will be less inclined to give it.We punish free-riding by refusing to cooperate.
      
      Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange
      In order to keep a mental tally,we must have some way of woring out the value of the favours that others do for us.These must be some way of comparing this with the value of the favours that we do for others.
      Leda Cosmides and John Tooby have argued that humans evolved special modules for calculating these things.They propose that these cognitive adaptations are the basis of all human behaviour involving exchange—from trading favours to trading stocks and shares.
      The calculations performed by these “social accounting”modules must take into account a whole range of variables when working out the value of a favour.The value of a favour depends both on the cost to the donor and the benefit to the recipient.A favour that costs the donor a lot is worth more than a favour that costs the donor little.A favour that benefits the recipient a lot is worth more than a favour that benefits the recipient a little.The value of favour is the product of the cost to the donor and the benefit to the recipient.
      The costs and benefits of any kind of favour are not fixed in advance,but depend on the context.
      “—If you hand over your last piece of bread to a friend,this favour costs you a lot if you are on the verge of starvation.But it costs you little if you have just had a big meal.The same favour beniefits your friend a lot if he is on the verge of starvation.
      —But doesn’t benefit me very much if I’ve just been to a banquet.”
      The social accounting modules must consider all these details.
      
      Modules for Helping Children and Other Relatives
      All this talk about social accounting and tit-for-tat suggests that altruism and cooperation can only evolve on a strictly reciprocal basis.If this were true,no animal would ever help another animal unless there was a good chance of receiving an equally valuable favour in return.But this is clearly not the case.
      Nature is full of examples of animals that provide help to other animals from whom they cannot expect any repayment.And humans are no exception.
      Parenting is the most obvious example of such non-reciprocal altruism.In all species that care for their young,parents provide help that they never expect their offsping to repay.Humans provide more intensive and long-lasting care for their offspring than any other species,and this is entirely non-reciprocal.So there must be another element that enters into the social-cooperation modules besides the social accounting already described.What is it?
      
      Kin Selection
      The example of parenting providing a clue to what this element is.When biologists examined the examples of non-reciprocal altruism in the animal kingdom,they noticed that they all had one feature in common.This kind of altruism is directed exclusively towards genetic relatives.In 1964,the British biologist William Hamiton came up with a theory to explain why this was the case.He argued that the fundamental unit of evolution was not the organism but the individual gene.
      Close relatives share many genes,so genes which predispose their bearers to help close kin are in effect helping copies of themselves.A gene might be able to assist replicas of itself that are sitting in other bodies.If so,this would appear as individual altruism but it would be brought about by gene selfishness.
      Non-reciprocal altruism at the level of the organism,such as the care that parents provide for their children,is the result of “selfishness”at the level of the gene.In 1975,the British biologist Richard Dawkins popularized Hamilton’s ideas in his famous book,The Selfish Gene.
      
      How Related Are You?
      Hamilton showed that non-reciprocal altruism could evolve whenever organism had some means of estimating their “degree of relatedness”to other organisms.The degree of relatedness is the chance that a randomly chosen gene in one organism will be shared by another organism as a result of common descent.The British geneticist Sewall Wright had already coined the symbol r in 1922 for this concept which he called the “coefficient of relatedness”.
      “I calculated the following values for r.” :
      Type of relative/examples/value of r
      First-degree relatives/Parents,children,full siblings/50%
      Second-degree relatives/Grandparents,grandchildren,half siblings,uncles,aunts,nephews,nieces/25%
      Third-degree relatives/First cousins/12.5%
      
      Hamilton’s Rule
      Hamilton showed that non-reciprocal altruism can evolve whenever there are mechanisms that ensure that the coefficient of relatedness will tend to exceed the cost-benefit ratio of the altruistic act.This can be written as the following equation.
      r>c/b
      “c”stands for the cost of the favour to the donor,and“b”stands for the benefit of the favour to the recipient.This is known as “Humilton’s rule”.
      
      The Evolution of Nepotism
      What mental mechanisms evolved to help our ancestors follow Hamilton’s rule?Clearly,they must have some mechanism for distinguishing kin from non-kin,and assessing the degree of relatedness—a kin-recognition module.This must have played a vital part in the system of modules governing the provision of favours and help to others.
      Suppose the chance of being repaid were low or nil?Then the social-cooperation modules might consult the kin-recognition modules to see whether the potential beneficiary was a relative or not.If they were,then help could be provided without any expectation that it would be returned.
      Alliances and cooperation would therefore have been more likely to develop between close relatives than between unrelated individuals.In other words,evolutionary psychology predicts that humans should have instinctual tendencies towards nepotism.
      
      The Truth About Cinderella
      In the 198os,two Canadian psychologists,Martin Daly and Moargo Wilson,set out to test this Darwinian prediction.In one study,they conpared the childcare provided by natural parents and by step-parents.Step-parents are in a very unusual situation from an evolutionary point of view.They are caring for a child tho they know is not their own.Even though they may care for the child conscientiously,evolutionary theory predicts that the childcare modules will not be activate in the same way was in biological parents.But is this true?
      Looking for a way to compare the parental love shown by biologcila parents and step-parents,Daly and Wilson reasoned that,since love inhibits violence,those with greater love would show,on average,lower levles of violence.
      Child abuse by step-parents is rare.But we predict that child abuse by biological parents will be even rarer.
      When Daly and Wilson looked at statistics of child abuse in North America,they found a striking confirmation of the Darwinian prediction.In the USA,they found that a child living with one or more substiute parents was about 100 times as likely to be fatally abused as a child living with natural parents only.A similar pattern was observed in Canada,where statistics showed that, for children of two or younger,the risk of being killed by a step-parent was about 70 times that from a natural parent.These data provide strong support for the existence of childcare modules in humans that help parents to recognize their own children and to channel parental investment preferentially towards them.
      
      Allocating Resources to Offspring
      Another problem that parents face,besides that of distinguishing their own children from those of others,is the problem of resource allocation.Parents have limited time,energy and food,and they must decided how much of these precious resources to give to each of their children,and how much to use for their own survival.
      Parents who allocate minimal resources to their children will survive for longer than more generous parents.But the children of the stingy parents will have less chance of surviving,and so less chance of passing on the parents’ genes.So it pays parents to be generous to their children.
      On the other hand,parents who are so generous that they compromise their own survival risk dying and having no more offspring.There is a trade-off,then between parental generousity,which raise the survival chances of actual offspring,and parents withholding,which raises the survival chances of future offspring.
      
      The Resource-Allocation Module
      We should expect natural selection to have designed special mental machinery for calculating the optimal amount of resources to allocate to each child at any given moment.This resource-allocation module will have to take into account a number of decisive factors.
      The age of the children.The health of the children.Sick children need more care unless they are so sick that it’s better to let them die.Older children are more capable of fending for themselves,and so need fewer resources to be provided by their parents.And hwo many more children you can reasonably expect to have in the future.
      
      Parent-Offspring Conflict
      The problem of allocating resources to children is made mre complicated by the fact that the children themselves may disagree with their parents about how much they should be given.Children may want more than their parents are prepared to give.The evolutionary basis for this was set out by the American biologist Robert Trivers in 1974,in a famous paper on “Parent-Offspring Conflict”.
      Trivers argued that the crux of the matter lies with the fact that a child is twice as related to itself as it is to its siblings.Everyone is 100% generically related to himself, but only 50% related to his brothers and sisters.
      So,even though you care about your brothers and sisters,you care about yourself even more.From the parents’ point of view, though,things are somewhat different.Parents have the same degree of relatedness to all their children,and so value them all equally.This is the source of parent-offspring conflict.
      
      How Much For Me?
      To illustrate the problem,imagine a mother who wants to divide a cake between her two children.The children are equally realted to her,so, other things being equal,she should cut the cake in half.But now think of it from the point of view of each child.Each child has a genetic stake in the welfare of the other child.
      Each child is 100% related to itself,but only 50% related to its sibling,so(other things being equal)each child should want twice as much cake for iteself as for its sibling.If the child chould divide the cake up,it should give a third to the sibling,and keep two thirds for itself.
      
      Weaning
      This simplified example illustrates the general principle behind the evolutionary theory of parent-offspring confilct.The conficts arise because children always want slightly more than what their parents think is their “fair share”.Take weaning,for example. No child wants to breast-feed forever.
      There comes a time when the benefit that a child derives from the mother’s milk is less than half the benefit that a younger sibling would gain from the same milk.
      
      The Benefit of Weaning
      So a pint does come when it is in the child’s genetic interest to seek alternative sources of nourishment,and let a younger sibling have the mother’s milk to itself.The problem is that this point in time is always later than the point at which the mother comes to the same conclusion.The mother wants to wean the child when the benefit it gains from breastfeeding is less than the benefit that a younger sibling would gian.
      So the mother always wants to wean the child before the child wants to wean itself.
      
      Mind-reading Modules
      We have seen that the various modules for social exchange evolved to help our primate ancestors solve the free-rider problem.This enabled them to form the stable alliances that hold together the social groups in which all higher primates live.But the increasing size of these groups posed a problem in itself—a problem which was solved by learning how to “mind-read”.
      Of course,we don’t read other people’s minds by direct telepathy.This is not what evolutionary psychologists mean by “mind-reading”.Mind-reading involves guessing what people are thinking on the basis of observing their actions and their words.
      
      Group Size and Social Intelligence
      The size of the groups in which our ancestors lived increased dramatically during the course of hominid evolution.Around six million years ago,when our ancestors resembled modern chimpanzees,the average group size was about 50.By three million years ago,our “australopithecine”ancestors were living in groups of about 70.A million years later,our “habline”(tool-making) ancestors were living in groups of about 80.The first true humans(Homo sapiens sapiens),who emerged around 150,000 years ago,probably lived in groups of around 150.
      As groups got bigger,the problems posed by group living got more complex.Not only did our ancestors need bigger memories to keep track of the fast-changing pattern of alliances in the group,but they also needed more sophisticated social reasoning capacities to maintain a delicate balance between their conflicting loyalties.
      In order to play the political games vital to survival in a larger group of primates,we have to become amateur psychologists.
      
      Enter Machiavelli
      This idea is known as the “Machiavellian intelligence”hypothesis,after Niccolo Machiavelli,the infamous Italian political theorist.Machiavelli’s book The Prince outlines some of the dirty tricks that successful politicians use obtain and maintain power.The Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis starts from the idea that these dirty tricks are not just the preserve of politicians.
      “We all use them in our everyday life,as we help our friends and attempt to outsmart out enemies,make (and break)promises, and tell lies. ”
      Even this“everyday politics”requires a fairly sophisticated understanding of human psychology—in particular,a special mental module for “reading other people’s minds”.
      
      Theory of Mind
      This “mind-reading modules”is usually referred to by evolutionary psychologists as the “Theory of Mind”module.This is because it seems to operate on the basis of a theory of how the human mind words.The theory that the module uses is, apparently,the very same theory that we find in “folk psychology”and in cognitive science—the “belief/desire”theory which states that actions are caused by mental processes like beliefs and desires.
      
      Folk Psychology
      In other words,folk psychology is not just a cultural invention.It is an innate part of the human mind.Adults do not teach children to understand human behaviour in terms of beliefs and desires.Rather,children instinctively develop the ability to do this,because they are genetically programmed to do so.
      The Theory of Mind module develops during the first years of life,and is usually complet by the age of four-and-a-half.At that age,children can pass “false-belief tests”.
      
      The Sally-Ann Test
      A classic fale-belief test is the so-called “Sally-Ann”test.A psychologist introduces a child to two dolls called Sally and Ann.Then the child watches while Sally puts some sweets dunder a cushion and leaves the room.While Saly is out of the room, Ann takes the sweets from under the cushion and puts them in her pocket.When Sally comes back into the room,the psychologist questions the child.
      “Where does Sally think the sweets are?” “In Ann’s pocket!”
      Before the age of four-and-a-half,this is what children usually say.Lacking a fully-developed Theory of Mind,they cannot comprehend the notion that other people can hold beliefs that are different from their own.They assume that everyone believes what they believe.
      
      Theory of Mind and Autism
      After the age of four-and-a-half,children respond very differently to the Sally-Ann test.When asked where Sally thinks the sweets are,they now replay, “Under the cushion”.
      They know the sweets are in Ann’s pockets,but they now have a fully-developed Theory of Mind,so they understand that beliefs that differ from their own.Then also understand that these beliefs can be false.Autism occurs when children fail to develop a properly functioning Theory of Mind module.
      According to the British psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen,autistic people are “mindblind”.
      
      Lying and Tactical Deception
      Without a theory of Mind,it would be very difficult to play the political games necessary for living in human society.For one thing,it would be impossible to lie.
      In order to lie,you must first understand that other people can hold different beliefs from yours.And those beliefs can be false.
      Only then can you attempt to manipulate another person into holding a false belief.This is why children under the age of three cannot lie convincingly.
      
      Language Modules
      All animals that regularly interact with other memebers of their own species face the problem of communicating with each other.Different species solve this problem in different ways,but many use sounds because,unlike visual signals,sounds can be perceived at night and over long distances.All primates use their vocal cords to produce different kinds of signals to convey different kinds of information.Humans,however,have evolved the most sophisticated communication system in the animal kingdom—language.
      Vervet monkey gives alarm calls to warn other vervets about snakes.Bees dance to tell other bees where the flowers are.
      
      The Language Acquisition Device
      Special mental machinery is required in order to learn and use a human language.We have already seen how Chomsky’s work in the 1950s and 60s showed that it would be impossible for children to learn a language as quickly as they do unless they were pre-programmed to do so.In other words,all children must be born with a special-purpose language-learning program,or Language Acquisition Device.
      The Language Acquisition Deviec is unique to humans.
      Some primatologists argue tha tchimpanzees also have the capacity to acquire language.But most linguists reject this view.Is that all he can say-ask for a banana?
      Despite valliant attempts to teach them to use English and sign language,chimpanzees have never succeeded in learning more than a few dozen words and producing a few very simple sentences.Human children,on the other hand,learn thousands of words and master the most complex rules of grammer by the age of five.
      
      The Evolution of language
      No one knows when our ancestors acquired the ccapacity to use language,but it must have been before they moved out of Africa,some 100,000 years ago.After that time,different human groups became separated from each other for thousands of years.If the language modules evolved after the emigration from Africa,it would mean that exactly the same mental machinery had evolved independently in all the different human groups.This is extremely unlikely.
      Anatomical studies suggest that the capacity to use language evolved between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago.It was then that the position of the larynx changed to its current position,which is much lower down than the larynx of other primates.The lower larynx of humans enables them to produce a muc wider range of sounds.The lower tracheal opening is also responsible for the human capacity for choking.Our ability to speak was only purchased at the price of an increased risk of asphyxiating on our food.
      Why did our ancestors evolve such a sophisticated communication system?One theory is that it enabled them to hunt more effectively.According to this view,the primary function of language was to exchange information about the physical and ecologcial environment.In 1993,the British anthropologist,Robin Dunbar,challenged this theory.Dunbar suggested that the primary function of language was to exchange information about the social environment.
      
      Reciprocal Altruism Again
      Dunbar’s agument was based on the observation that,some time between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago,our ancestors began to live in much larger groups than before.Dunbar estimated that group size increased to about 150 individuals.We have already seen how primate groups are held together by networks of alliances formed by reciprocal altruism.
      But for reciprocal alruism to work,you need informaiton about who you can trust and who you can’t.You need to be able to distinguish the cheats from the cooperators.
      Chimps gain this information by direct personal interaction,especially grooming.They spend large amounts of time removing fleas and dirt from each other’s backs,and this mutual grooming is the social cement that holds their alliances together.Achimp in trouble is far more likely to receive help from a grooming partner than any other chimp.
      Since reciprocal altruism depends on having direct interactions with others,there are limits to the size of the group that can be held together by this mechanism.There is a limit to the number of people you can meet and interact with on a regular enough basis to get information about how likely they are to cooperate.
      
      Gossip
      Dunbar argued that language evolved to provide our ancestors with another way to get the valuable social information about who you can trust.Instead of discovering whether someone is a cheat the hard way—by being cheated—our ancestors were able to find this out by talking to other people.In Dunbar’s view,the first function of language was gossip.This might explain why humans are so fascinated by gossip about other people’s behaviour.
      
      Indirect Reciprocity
      By facilitating the exchange of social information,language enabled humans to reap the rewards of living in larger groups. Reciprocal enalbed humans to reap the rewards of living in larger groups.Reciprocal altruism could hold these larger groups together because it no longer needed to be direct.
      Direct reciprocity is when you give something to someone in the hope that they will return the favour later on. “I’ll scratch you back if you scratch mine.”Indirect reciprocity is when you give something to someone in the hope that someone elase will return the favour.It works because of a crucial thing-reputation.And this will cause others to be generous to you.
      
      The importance of Reputation
      If other poeople see or hear about your acts of generosity,and if other people tend to be generous to those with a good reputation,then it pays you to be generous.Even if the recipient of a favour never returns the favour directly,it will get you a good reputation.And this will ccause others to be generous to you.On the other hand,if you are not generous,you will acquire a reputation for stinginess.And others will punish you for this by being stingy to you.I won’t scratch your back if you don’t scratch others.
      
      Mate-Selection Modules
      Most of the adaptive problems that we have discussed so far—avoiding predators,eating the right food,forming alliances,reading other people’s minds and communicating with other people—relate to the fundamental problem of survival. But while an organism’s survival is vitally important from the genes’ point of view,there is something even more important.
      The most important thing of all is reproduction.This ensures that the genes are passed on to the next generation.An organism is just the genes’ way of making more copies of themselves.
      From the gene’s point of view,the survival of the organism is merely a means to this end.If an organism lives for a hundred years,but has no offspring,this is no use to be the genes.
      
      The Mating Game
      Some species reproduce by diving into two parts,each of which becomes a separate individual.In these “asexual”species,there is no need to find a mate,since you can reproduce without one.Most species,however,reproduce sexually.This involves finding a mate and swapping genes with them.Biologists still disagree about why sex evolved.Most argue that sexual reproduction confers some advantage to the individual organism,but there is no consensus about what this advantage is.
      Humans are a sexually-reproducing species.In order for us to reproduce,we must fist find a mate.
      Finding a mate is not an easy task.First,you must choose a suitable candidate from among the many possible mates available.Second,you must persuade at least one of them to choose you.
      We should expect natural selection to have designed special mental mechanisms that enabled our ancestors to solve the problems specific to choosing and obtaining a suitable mate.Selecting a suitable mate is very important because mates provide two things on which the survival of your offspring depends:genes and parental care.The survival chances of offspring depend on the quality of these two resources.We will now look ate each of them in more detail.
      
      The Genes are in the Selection
      The first way in which yourmate affects the survival chances of your offspring is by providing—or falling to provide—good genes.In a sexually-reproducing species,offspring inherit 50%of their genes from each parent.If you mate with someone who has bad genes(“bad”in the sense that they lower your chances of surving and reproducing),your offspring will probably inherit some of these bad genes.That will lower their chances of surviving and reproducing.
      That will raise their chances of surviving and reproducing,and so raise the chances of your genes getting passed on to future generations.
      
      The Importance of Looking Good
      How did our ancestors solve the problem of selecting mates with good genes and avoiding those with bad genes?Obviously,we weren’t born with DNA testing-kits,so we evolved more indirect measures.Sensitivity to small differences in physical appearance is one such measure.Physical appearances provide important clues to the quality of one’s genes.
      
      Body Symmetry
      For example,the more symmetrical your body is,the better on average your genes are.This is because less robust genes are more likely to get knocked off course by environmental setbacks such as physical injuries and parasites.
      If the left and right sides of the body are very similar,then the more likely it is that the genes are quite robust.
      Anyone who was sensitive to small differences in bodily symmetry,and who preferred to mate with more symmetrical people, would tend to have children with better genes.So we would expect natural selection to have designed a mate-seleciton module that was geared to detect and prefer more symmerical mates.
      
      What’s the Evidence for Symmetry?
      Is there any evidence to show that humans do,in fact,prefer more symmetrical mates?There is.The psychologist Steve Gangestad and the biologist Randy Thornhill measured various features,from foot breadth and hand breath to ear length and ear breadth,and combined these measurements to produce an overall index of bodily symmetry for each person in their study.
      “We then asked volunteers to evaluate these same people for attractiveness,and compared the results.We found that these was a close correlation between the attractiveness-rating and the degree of symmetry.”
      More symmetry people were seen as more attractive.
      
      The Biology of Beauty
      Many people today think that standards of beauty are entirely cultural artefacts.But in the past few decades,evidence has increasingly emerged to show that there are many aesthetic preferences that are both universal and innate.Preferences for more symmetrical people,for example,are universal.
      Another universal preference is the male preference for the classic “Hourglass”figure.
      The psychologist Devendra Singh has found that while cultures vary in their view of he ideal weight for women,the ideal waist-hip ratio is always the same—people everywhere rate a waist-hip ratio of 0.7 as the most attractive.This is the classic “hourglass figure”.
      
      The Fertility Factor
      Why has natural selection endowed men with a preference for the hourglass figure?Because the waist-hip ratio is a good indicator of fertility.Women with a 0.7 waist-hip ratio tend to be more fertile than those who have a higher or lower waist-hip ratio. This is a clear example of the way that natural selection has sculpted.
      Ancestral men who preferred women with this figure tended to mate with more fertile women,and so had more children.Our preference were passed on to our offspring.
      Just as natural selection endowed us with appetites to make us seek out the most nutritious food, so it endowed us with a sense of beauty to make us seek out mates with high-quality genes.
      
      Selecting a Mate for Parental Care
      The other way in which your mate affects the survival chances of your offspring is by providing—or failing to provide—parental care.Not all sexually-reproducing species care for their young.In some species,the offspring are left to fend for themselves as soon as they are born.Of the species that do care for their young,most leave the task entirely to the mother.
      With humans,it is much more common for fathers to take an active role in providing protection and resources for their children.
      In the jargon of evolutionary biology,the human species shows an unusually high level of “male parental investment”.
      
      Human Pair Bonds
      Human children,then,are typically cared for not just by a single mother,but by a mother and father together.
      Unlike other primates,human parents from stable “pair-bonds”—long-lasting monogamous relationships—to care for their children.And we have been doing this for millions of years.
      
      Parental Care and Human Brain Size
      This probably played an important part in the massive increase in brain size that took place during the past few million years of human evolution.Big brains are expensive organs that take time to develop.
      During this time,the infant cannot take care of itself and must be looked after by others.Humans have bigger brains,relateve to the size of their bodies,than any other animal.Human infants thus take longer to become independent than the offspring of any other species.
      The time and energy required to care for a growing human infant cannot be provided by a single parent acting alone.
      
      Will You Make a Good Parent?
      When choosing a mate,therefore,our ancestors had to consider not just the quality of the mate’s genes,but also the mate’s capacity and willingness to invest time and energy in helping to bring up the children.
      This poses a different problem.Physical appearances do not provide any clues to a person’s capacity and willingness to invest in parenting.
      If you want to get information about whether someone will make a good parent or not,you have to pay attention to their behaviour,not their physical appearance.
      What behavioural clues indicate that someone will make a good parent?Parenting is a cooperative venture,a particular kind of alliance,so the same criteria that allow us to decide who will be a good ally in general can be used to determine if someone will make a good parent for one’s own children.
      Anything that indicates kindness,patience,generosity and trustworthiness will be a useful clue to parenting ability.So natural selection should have favoured the incorporation of these criteria in the mate-selection module.
      And there is evidence that this is indeed the case.All over the world,people of both sexes say that these are the characteristics they most desire in a long-term partner.
      
      Sex Difference in Mate Preferences
      The minds of men and women are largely identical,because most of the adaptive problems faced by our ancestors were the same for men and women.The problem of avoiding predators was largely the same for both sexes,as was the problem of eating the right food,the problem of forming alliances,and the problem of mind-reading.
      So we should expect the modules concerned with these tasks to be largely identical in both sexes.Fine.But when it comes to choosing a partner—what then?What about the mate-selection modules?Do men and women differ in their mate preferences? Many of the problems involved in choosing a long-term mate were identical for both sexes.
      We both want parteners who can contribute good genes and parental care of their offspring.But these are other problems involved in choosing a mate that differ for men and women.
      These different problems required different solutions,and so we should expect the mate-selection modules of men and women to reflect these differences.
      
      Dads and Cads
      Choosing a mate poses different problems for men and women because the same reproductive strategies are not available to both sexes.Both sexes can look for a long-term partner and establish a pair-bond with them to rear children together.Biologists refer to this as a “l(fā)ong-term mating strategy”,and it is the same for both men and women.The alternative is the “short-term mating strategy”.This option is also available to both sexes,but not in the same way.
      “For us,the short-term mating strategy involves having sex with a woman and then abandoning her to look after the baby. Clearly,this is not a viable option for us,because it is women,not men,who get pregnant. ”
      This difference between men and women posed an adative problem for ancestral women.They had to be able to tell the difference between a man who was pursuing a long-term mating strategy and a man who was pursuing a short-term mating strategy.Women who could not tell the difference ran the risk of becoming single mothers,which lowered their child’s chances of survival.Natural selection endowed women with various mental mechanisms to help them avoid this fate.One such mechanism lies behind the delaying tactics of women.Women tend to be more cautious then man about having sex.
      “We’re more willing to delay the moment to have sex with someone we like.” “During this waiting period,she may try to extract material resources from me as proof of my commitment to her.”
      In ancestral environments,this was a way of making sure that the man was interested in a long-term relationship and was not simply looking for a one-night stand.
      
      Battle of the Sexes—or Evolutionary Arms Race?
      However,if ancestral women had never agreed to have sex without looking for signs of commitment from the man,then natural selection would have eliminated those men who could not show signs of commitment.
      “We would never have been able to have sex—so our genes would have quickly died out.Perhaps some of us would have become good at tricking women into having sex by feigning commitment and then deserting.But then natural selection would have favoured those us who were good at detecting liars—and the liars would have been eliminated.”
      
      The Myth of the Monogamous Female
      Since the male tendency to pursue casual sex has clearly not died out,this must be because ancestral women were not completely monogamous either.T
  •   個(gè)人思考:自我傷害行為是源于對個(gè)人早期經(jīng)驗(yàn)的投射、宣泄或轉(zhuǎn)移的一種形式化手段,是負(fù)性能量的釋放,如果現(xiàn)實(shí)生活中沒有正性能量的攝入,那么當(dāng)事人就不得不選擇負(fù)性能量的釋放,否則心理平衡稱就無法和諧的適應(yīng)社會生活。但有時(shí)候,即使當(dāng)事人知道心理問題及心理疾病的潛意識原因,依舊無法走出內(nèi)心負(fù)性能量場。認(rèn)知心理學(xué)所強(qiáng)調(diào)的ABC理論如果略去弗洛伊德的移情,真的能夠相信人有完善自我的信心和動(dòng)力嗎?就像人們說的:人類是急功近利,目光短淺的動(dòng)物,猶如有些人明知吸煙有害健康還是會僥幸為之,有些人明知KFC影響人體免疫代謝依舊拖家?guī)Э诔缘媒蚪蛴形?。。??v觀歷史現(xiàn)實(shí)比比皆是。
  •   我們在食物傾向性上的選擇也同樣讓我們看到基因的遺傳寫入與人類理智心智的PK較量:由于原始社會環(huán)境下食物匱乏,造就了我們對高熱量食物的食欲;腐敗變質(zhì)食物帶來的疾病使我們對這些食物沒有胃口;然而,面對已經(jīng)改變的社會環(huán)境,得到高熱量食物已經(jīng)變得越來越容易、低廉,但是我們的DNA進(jìn)化速度卻來不及適應(yīng)變化迅猛的科技社會,隨之而來的是全民代謝性疾病蔓延,終身疾病時(shí)代的到來。即使現(xiàn)今的文化人都知道這一切的始作俑者,然而又有幾個(gè)人能拒絕這些垃圾美食對人類DNA的誘惑?我們的情緒大腦果然無法打敗口腹之欲嗎?
  •   真像科學(xué)家
  •   LZ辛苦~
 

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