If the savanna hypothesis were true, what would explain why so many people prefer the beach or water? It stated that humans are evolutionary wired to avoid environments posing risks to survival. Wouldn't oceans have posed a risk to survival to our ancestors when compared to savannas? It isn't like our ancestors could get water from beaches because of its saltiness.
I understand why fear has arisen, but I don't understand why there are phobias. We are all wired to fear certain things, like snakes and spiders, more than things that aren't as dangerous, like flowers. However, what is the reasoning behind phobias and what is its evolutionary advantage?
I find it interesting that both snakes and spiders, which both evoke very strong and specific fear responses, are very differently shaped than most other predators our ancestors would have encountered. I wonder if it was easier to evolve a "popping out" and fear responses for spiders because they has such a unique number of legs and mode of locomotion compared to other animals. The skittering, crawling motion of a spider and the sinuous winding of a snake is much different than a four legged animal's gait. Maybe it would have been more difficult to develop a specific fear response for a predatory cat, because our ancestors encountered animals that were similar (had 4 legs and were furry) but were not a predatory threat?
Additionally, there studies mentioned comparing snakes to frogs in fear reactions, but I wonder if there was any studies comparing fear responses to snakes and lizards exist. Both snakes and lizards share essentially the same body shape (plus or minus legs) and are covered in scales. But perhaps due to the greater abundance of poisonous snakes our we evolved to fear specifically snakes rather than all reptiles.
After reading the section on most common human fears I started to wonder about our descendants' innate fears. The book points out that we are predisposed to quickly learn a fear of snakes and spiders because of our ancestors, but we don't have that same fear for cars or guns. Over time will natural selection play a role in creating more innate fears of contemporary dangers? Will future generations have more fears than we do or will the fear of snakes and spiders not be relevant to city dwellers and not be passed on any longer?
I believe that our fears could change to more in line with the modern environment, but obviously such changes would take centuries to truly manifest. However, I wonder if it will be possible for such phobias to truly go away, because spiders, for example, continue to appear in massive numbers in all forms of environment, even modern cities. I think as long as snakes and spiders continue to exist, it will be near impossible for the fear to go away. But would the animals have to completely disappear for the fear to go away, or would fewer and fewer sightings simply reduce the fear?
I think that our fear of spiders and snakes have evolved over thousands of years and continues to affect humans now because spiders and snakes are natural threats. By natural, I mean that they pose a danger to our survival in such a way that we have no control over. If by chance a man is jogging near a snake, the snake may perceive his approach as a threat and in turn, it might bite him and possibly kill him. This series of events occurs spontaneously and unfortunately the man has no control over his own survival unless he spotted the snake before running past it. Thus, I believe that phobias of snakes and spiders arise from a fear of death of which we have little to no control over. On the other hand, I don't think that human beings will ever develop phobias for contemporary dangers such as cars or guns even though many people die due to car crashes and gunshots. My reasoning is that cars and guns are inanimate objects that, by themselves, are not life-threatening. Cars and guns are not responsible for killing people, the human beings driving the car or firing the guns are the actual culprits. When we see a car, we don't feel threatened because we have control over whether or not that car ends up killing us (look both ways before crossing roads, cross only when the light is green, etc). The same logic can be applied to guns -- unless guns suddenly start firing themselves, I don't see why a phobia for guns would ever develop.
There seems to be a difference between biologically evolved mechanisms (like the release of epinephrine in reaction to fearful situations) and evolved mechanisms that require humans to make a behavioral choice. Might this difference be one of the fundamental differences that separates humans from animals?
Other than fever and disgust at possibly dangerous items, what might be some biological adaptations that help humans fight against disease? Could having a sore throat when sick help to prevent you from eating other possibly contaminated foods? What about the role of pain - typically pain acts in such a way to tell you to stop doing the thing that's causing you harm, but in terms of pain from illness, what purpose does that serve? Or is it just a byproduct of adaptations such as fever?
I thought that the section on suicide was particularly interesting. I think that Buss made a compelling argument which connects the differences in reasons for why men and women commit suicide as to the particular time in which they kill themselves. While it would have been interesting for Buss to add in statistics on how much people have suicidal idealizations and maybe the rates of men vs. women on that, I liked that he was able to differentiate the reason for why men want to kill themselves and the reasons for why women kill themselves. Men are more likely to kill themselves earlier in their lives because of their failure to mate or to create a life for them for which they can provide for a mate. Women on the other hand are more likely to kill themselves later in life when they are less useful to a family unit and most likely to contract disease.
I have a few questions on suicidal ideations. The first is that Buss does not really give a good answer which justifies why people life long lives. Of course living long enough to set up a family and reproduce are great reasons to live long, but why don't people just die or have a higher chance of suicide right after their reproduction system stops working? Also, I see suicidal ideation as a kind of species wide altruism, which does not really go along with evolution. In my mind, and with the evidence that Buss provides, it seems like there is a higher likelihood that once a human (woman) fulfills her evolutionary duties, she kills herself to be less of a burden on families. Is this a bad connection to make?
I think that our fear of spiders and snakes can be said to be an evolved mechanism for survival, but I'm not sure that this would apply to all of the fears the book lists. For example, the fear of disease seems like something that would need to be learned, not something we are born with a predisposition towards. Wouldn't you need to either get sick or see someone who is sick to develop a fear of disease? To me this seems similar to the fear of modern threats like syringes and knives. Unless a person is exposed to the threat (in a way that frightens them), they will not be as quick to identify it as something they should avoid. It just seems to me that while people may have adapted to identify certain figures as threatening, that it takes more conditioning than anything to make someone have a real phobia.
I thought that the Pleiotropy theory of senescence was very interesting, and makes sense, but I think that Buss did not fairly address some counter arguments. Even after an organism is finished reproducing, it can still have an effect on the spreading of its genes by helping its relatives, a fact that Buss does not mention. Also, Buss claims that the fact that men die sooner than women is evidence for Pleiotropy, because men face greater competition in youth. He ignores the fact that men can continue having children throughout their lives, which seems to me to be a good reason why evolution should tend to support longer lives in men.
Evolutionary psychology seems to assign men to the role of hunter and women to the role of gatherer. These roles seem to logically stem to the husband's more traditional role of breadwinner and wife's traditional role of homemaker. Is it possible that the hunting and gathering hypotheses were the first indicators of traditional gender roles?
I was interested in the analysis surrounding suicide and the longevity of males vs females. I understand and agree with most of it but I do agree with Laine and find it a little counterintuitive when you consider the fact that men can reproduce far longer than women. Although it makes sense that women would have evolved to live longer considering they are more involved with the raising of a child.
I also started considering menopause from an evolutionary standpoint, and it would make a lot of sense considering the time it takes for a child to develop and the time needed to invest in its upbringing to ensure survival. Wouldn't be the best if women were having children close enough to the end of their lives such that they might die before the child reached adolescence? Also I'm sure having women around in a community that were older but not bearing children anymore could be beneficial (in terms of caring for children) to a village/the older women's children or grandchildren?
How are the freeze and fright defenses differentiated? They seem fairly similar and difficult to separate.
Also the chapter said that people who are sick tend to avoid eating eggs and ham spontaneously. Have people said why they are less inclined to eat these foods? I know that I dislike the smell of eggs when I'm feeling sick so I tend to avoid them. I was wondering if this could be the reason for that reaction.
The theory of senescence was hard to understand and was not very well supported in the chapter. However I may be missing something, as the explanation was difficult for me to follow. I cannot tell if the theory is not described here or if it is lacking in some sense.
If humans really do prefer natural environments, then why didn't we choose to continue to live in them? Is it possible that the images or idea of natural environments are appealing because they were once where our ancestors lived, but have become foreign to us now, rather than actually being preferred to man-made habitats?
In response to Adam, women who are no longer of reproductive age are not necessarily burdensome to their families. Women can still help their children succeed in life and have a better chance of passing on your genes. We want our genes to be passed on but we are able to still function in helping our children and grandchildren and deriving pleasure from seeing them succeed.
If all people committed suicide after they could no longer reproduce for only that reason they would be dying for no reason. People who have suicidal idealizations believe they are helping their close relatives by not being a waste of resources. If they believe they have no chance to succeed or help others to carry on the genes they begin to value their lives less and by removing themselves hope to increase the survival of others with similar genes.
While it seems crazy now, I could see us eventually evolving fears of cars and guns and the like. Those modern humans who have phobias of them likely will not die, and their children will receive those phobias (I'm assuming that these fears are genetic; how else would we all have these fears of snakes and spiders?). Those children will not die, etc. etc. Do I think this is very likely? Not at all, as the rest of humanity derives too much usefulness from them.
As to the environment question, I think people see suburbia as the savannah with amenities. People don't really like living in the city; this could stem from the idea that we can't see dangers as well. We also don't quite like living out on our own as much, as that lacks a community of support. Someone also mentioned oceans; I'm very curious what made our ancestors decide to set out on those long voyages that took them to places like Australia and Hawaii. Was there an evolutionary reason, or was it historical/cultural?
I had a fear of men up until I was about 4 or 5 years old - when I was a baby, I would start crying whenever a male family friend held me, and when I found out that my swim instructor was a male I would cry until I was switched to another class with a female instructor. For a while I thought maybe this was due to some sort of trauma that happened to me when I was a baby, but now through an EP perspective I can attribute my fear to "stranger anxiety."
What I was wondering though, is the varying degrees of fears for different things between people - are some people just genetically superior (or even inferior) if they do not have a fear of heights? The absence of fear leads to more compromising situations/activities where people put their lives at risk - so would this kind of "bravery" or fearlessness be considered evolutionary inferior?
When I was reading about the most common human fears, I noticed that social anxiety could stem from the adaptive problem of a loss of status or ostracism from the group. This type of fear seems to be one that we most commonly come in contact with in the modern day-the possibility of being ostracized from a group is much more common now than being bitten by a snake or spider. As humans progress through time, do we evolve or develop a hierarchy for our fears? Is this ever affected by the way we construct our environment (i.e social groups and their standards)?
What causes people to react in different ways to our fears? For example, why do some people scream and run away from spiders, while others fight and kill it?
I understand that fear exists probably to help people survive, but I'm wondering why phobias exist because some phobias are just kind of weird that it doesn't seem like it serves any purposes.
The Watson & Burlingame finding (flowers help hospital patients recover) is exciting and invites further exploration. Maybe this effect could be built upon. Offhand I'm imagining some kind of 'flower therapy' designed to realistically mimic the blooming of plants in springtime by gradually adding flowers and other plants, though I'm sure the effect wouldn't really stack up like that. My point is that the various, really specific conclusions scattered throughout the book seem like they could have interesting applications.
