Knowledge and Utility

• Welcome to the BOL Forum on Evolutionary Psychology by John Grohol, 3/19/97
  • About Evolutionary Psychology by Behavior OnLine Editor, 12/28/96
    
    

"I have not found psychiatry residents particularly interested in evolutionary perspectives on psychiatric disorders. I believe that clinicians will only embrace evolutionary perspectives when it is shown to them to be clinically more useful than their current perspective." (1,2,3)

Likely true.

Sociobiology is momentarily akin to the liberal arts a few decades ago. The 33 and 1/3rd engineering students in the Scholars Program balked mightily when required to study Socrates. They wanted practicality and would not have been engineering students otherwise. Likewise for the Business Administration group. We liberal arts majors complained not about the content but wanted it with more flair. (3)

I once appended the words "Clinical Sociobiology" (4) in a dawn interlude, perhaps of madness. A year later, I still believe in the combination's accuracy, that SB provides the only rational underpinning to medicine and to psychology. A reductionist strategy to define a useful platform is common in science. SB does exactly that for the life sciences and for psych- ology/iatry.

Positive motivations for psychiatric residents: (5)

- The alpha believes in it, therefore, it's good to mimic the faith - Someone is making a heck of a lot of money - Patients understand it and accept/manipulate their own conduct better (especially child rearing, marital, affective disorders) - The naturopaths will take all our business - It gives a great continuity to our self-understanding, including of our place within nature rather than above it. - It's fun - It works

The relevance of Clinical Sociobiology is that of standing in the middle of an airport hub and every spoke radiates adventure, understanding, predictability, and sometimes a bit of control. (6) For example, some of the spokes are:

- "Evolutionary" awareness might have avoided some of the poor decisions lately in national policy, particularly the resultant surprises that vigorous, hyperactive males (and females, even some bomber pilots) abandon the rules and go into rut. It should be no surprise that reproductive activity may actually increase in combat situations. (There may be some data surrounding the total birthrate as well as that for males and females for London during WWII?)

- Our little sons usually opt for different toys from our daughters; many of our children used to prefer the washing machine carton to commercial toys. Randy Nesse and Kent Berridge (1997) suggest that video games stimulate pleasure centers that were once reserved for other activities, perhaps hunting or combat but do so more often, with less physical cost and therefore, drive out competing activities.

- It's tempting to apply "Evolutionary Stable Strategy" casually to the tactics of enabler ("sucker") or control freak ("defector" or "cheater"). My clients readily see themselves in one role or the other, or sometimes change tactics when they shift partners or situations with the same partner. Enablers may be simpler to understand if you consider the power gains that some of them accrue by manipulating a domineering partner. A thorough analysis may suggest that the "enabler" may often have, despite their day to day whining, the balance of long term power in the relationship.

- A substantial literature unfolds about deceit as an adaptive tool. An evolutionary label makes it easier to suggest to an errant wife that "she's lying" even when she herself believes her cover tale.

- The concept of Psychological Adaptations and the detail that springs forward should be a powerful tool for understanding individual differences between our clients and and the clients' managing those differences for their own benefit.

- Behavioral genetics is becoming more specific, just as genetic analysis of physical diseases is. Familial behavior patterns were curiosities or ignored a decade ago. Yet, my clients routinely see specific behavior sequences repeated in grandchildren, sequences that may appear to jump a generation. Or they see highly similar behavior in adjacent generations, behavior that can elicit love and nurturing or can be intensely annoying. A daughter may hear, "You're acting just like your father and I divorced him!" but the same child hears from her father, "You're acting just like your mother, cut it out." We still don't know if the child switches modes or if there is a perceptual bias from either parent. The mosaic analysis of behavior traits may allow significant individual predictive power as well as a more ready definition of individual, rather than individualized, treatments whether social or chemical. A detailed behavioral family history becomes essential, not the trivial one of kinship diagnoses and hospital admissions, but one that includes information about the same behavioral sequences that currently elicit distress for the client.

- Concepts that describe the rococo twists of phylogeny and ontogeny may apply equally to the unfolding of adult psychiatric syndromes such as bipolar disorders, anxiety disorders, and ADHD.

I'm getting scrambled. Enough!

NOTES:

1) According to an anonymous source, one in a position to know such things and relayed to me via email. I'm grateful for the reminder it offered. There could also be a "Darwinian" notion operating beyond issues of practicality. Psychiatrists, psychologists, evolutionists, and other religious groups usually display a united front (as do natural families) against competing sects. Within the sect, there are often subsections of orthodox or reformed, analytic or biological. My correspondent is still correct in that utility may be the motive that gets them to steal ideas from one another, just as chimps change troops perhaps with a boost for heterozygosity.

2) Margulis (1995) has a more cynical outlook. "The only way behavior changes in science is that certain people die and differently behaving people take their places." Lately, I learned that Max Planck commented, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents but rather because its opponents die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." You can have a lot of fun juxtaposing a remark from Haldane that a successful hybrid always does the evolutionarily correct thing - it kills its parents and grandparents!

3) "... it is shown to them..." Somewhere in the coming generation there are still "natural learners," who pursue ideas and mutate them in a personal, driven quest and do so regardless of external constraints. I'm looking for those minds; I have visions and data (although of a case study nature) to share with them.

3) Centennial Scholars Program, Denver University, Denver, Colorado, 9/60

4) Russ Gardner (email) believes the term "sociophysiology" is the foundation discipline for psychiatry. I'm a bit more inclusive with respect to an audience.

5) Psychology interns were traditionally more defiant and nonconformist. Generally if alpha was a deist, the students adopted atheism. The situation may have changed for us, given the overproduction of psychologists. Competition drives diversity; natural selection, conformity.

6) This list suggests that I've become a crusader and, therefore, my reasoning will betray me. I've had a genetic bent even before I chose my son's mother. (Her genteel manner, intelligence, and social grace, a pattern that ran 3 generations on both sides of her family, balanced my awkwardness. I wanted a child with her looks and temperament but my creativity and skepticism. He generally came out that way but with too much of my temperament.) My interests incubated, similar to a batch of kefir, and discovered focus and structure in the past several years. Sagan & Druyan and then Dawkins, were catalysts that made Wilson digestible.

REFERENCES

Dawkins R (1989) The Selfish Gene. NY: Oxford.

Haldane JBS (1990) Causes of Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.

Margulis L. (1995) "Gaia is a tough bitch" in 3rd Culture, John Brockman, p. 136. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 129-140.

Nesse R & Berridge K (1997) Psychoactive drug use in evolutionary perspective. Science,278, 63-66.

Planck M quoted in "ASCAP," 1,(5), April 1988, p.1. Russ Gardner kept his quote on the mast head for perhaps 6 months.

Sagan C & Druyan A (1992) Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. NY: Ballentine

Wilson E. (1980) Sociobiology (abridged) Cambridge MA: Belknap Harvard Univ. Press.

• The Source Not Mentioned by Mike Hall, Ph.D., 2/9/98