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Notes to Evol Psych, Evol Dev Biol, & Behav Genetics in Clinical Practice
James Brody · 12/11/02 at 1:37 PM ET
Evolutionary Psychology, Evolutionary-Developmental Biology, and Behavior Genetics in Clinical Practice James Brody, Ph.D., 610-948-5444, jbrody@compuserve.com. Rebels, Deviants, and Individualists... Darwinism parallels Thorndike's Law of Effect: we repeat whatever works, either across generations or within a conditioning session. Thus, we already practice evolutionary psychology and behavior genetics without realizing it: the contribution of both disciplines at this time is to provide a different narrative, a single coat rack for the many things that we do. Copyright 2002, James Brody, all rights reserved.
Human behavior is a function of our genes and our environments. No surprise. The surprise is that many environments, historical or current, enforce similarities but, genes, once thought to have uniform outcomes and, therefore, thought to be irrelevant to social science, weave individual differences. We, also surprisingly, select from options in current settings and make a unique, "nonshared," environment (NSE), one that supports our being different. Although we can obey constraints, we often attempt to escape them. Evolutionary psychology investigates how nature forced us to be in order to live and to leave children. Behavior genetics investigates how we build individual worlds (Gerhart & Kirschner, 1997). The former is about compliance, the latter is about liberty. As Allport put it in 1955, we are "all rebels, deviants, and individualists.
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Refs& Notes:
Lewontin is cited in Gerhart and Kirschner, p. 595: "...evolution is best viewed as a history of organisms finding devious routs around constraints." Gerhart, John and Kirschner, Marc (1997) Cells, Embryos, and Evolution. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
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