Has the way we think changed recently (on an evolutionary timescale)? Marlene Zuk suggests that as change is constant, the way we think will also have changed. This conflicts with evolutionary psychologists. They assume human brains are products of adaptation to the distant past. In one sense the evolutionary psychologists’ assumption is wrong. Like any model it is at best an approximation of reality. Its usefulness, therefore, depends upon how significantly “wrong” it is is. I was hoping to see Zuk give evidence more relevant to human thinking. Still I didn’t find it. (Her evidence from crickets was interesting but hardly conclusive for humans). I think she shows the problem of engaging with other disciplines.
Dismissing Evolutionary Pschology
Zuk dismisses the assumptions of evolutionary psychology. Yet, she does not give any alternative assumptions about the past. Assumptions are needed because you can’t consider how the past explains the present without explaining what you mean by the past. Indeed this becomes obvious in the book. Ironically, Zuk does what she complains about. She specifies a past environment humans evolved in when discussing adaptation to living at altitude.
Human beings evolved more or less at sea level.
Zuk 2013, page 260
Zuk says she sees no need for a model like the ancestral environment. This is the model of the “past” that evolutionary psychologists use. Her alternative is that we should imagine “that populations and their genes could be viewed as if they were in a three-dimensional landscape, with hills and valleys” (page 65). The model she recommends may be great. It seems very useful for teaching evolutionary theory. Still, it doesn’t have “you were here” or “you are here” marked. As such it doesn’t help to answer psychological questions. It can’t help answer why we tend to think in some ways but not others.
Failing When Engaging With Other Disciplines
The best illustration of failing to engage beyond her discipline is near the book’s end. She says humans think in ways that are excessively fearful. She finds this uninteresting because we share this approach with chickens. “..real chickens do, indeed, behave as though danger lurks in every corner”, (page 271). Psychologists compare their findings with prior psychological models. To them discovering whether humans are biased towards being fearful is interesting. This is not because fearfulness is a uniquely human trait. Instead, it is when compared to the model of humans as optimizing machines. To a biologist, fear might be like water to a fish, not worth remarking upon. Still, if you are contrasting thinking with some optimal baseline excessive fear is interesting.
If evolutionary thinking can explain human decision-making foibles that is a major advance in psychology even if it doesn’t matter to Zuk’s research.
While I enjoyed much of her book ultimately I think Zuk missed the opportunity to effectively critique evolutionary psychology by not fully engaging with other disciplines.
For more on evolutionary thinking see here.
Read: Marlene Zuk, 2013, Paleo-Fantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet and How We Live, W.W.Norton