OK – if Darwin really had lessons for today’s college graduates, he’d probably have a lot to say. In coming up with the most thorough, thoughtful, and data-filled work ever completed on questions regarding the nature of life, Darwin did, in fact, come up with a set of ideas that bear on every single aspect of what it means to be human (or cat, or dog, or robin, or goldfish, or moth, or field mouse). Other intellectual approaches that try to address broad ranges of phenomena using some set of principles tend to come up relatively short.

Consider how a Darwinian approach can benefit the area of applied psychology:

Imagine, for a moment, a mental health client who’s a young adult male complaining of social problems, general frustration, and anxiety in social contexts.

A traditionally trained mental health counseling approach might, for instance, pertain to how a client’s frustrations, recent confrontational history, and social problems need to be understood in a specific family context. The client’s familial relationship history would likely be recorded and analyzed with an eye toward helping this client. Taking the cultural norms of that family into account is broad and such an approach has the capacity to help a lot of people with diverse situations. However, I must say that, devoid of evolutionary principles, this theory is a bit narrow.

Evolutionary mental health counseling would go a step farther – perhaps a great leap further. Evolutionary mental health counseling focuses on how some behavioral problem would have functioned under ancestral conditions – with a goal of possibly seeing if said behavioral problem would have had the effect of increasing reproductive success under ancestral conditions.

Such an analysis differs from the prior in that it is rooted in Darwinism. Thus, it thinks about problems in terms of Darwinian questions, to help understand (a) why the behavioral pattern evolved under ancestral conditions, (b) what factors in the situation encourage such behavior – and, perhaps, (c) what factors mobilize actions in a way that they would increase reproductive success.

An EP counselor, looking at this situation, sees things very differently from a traditionally trained counselor. The client is a single man of reproductive age – and is, at 20-some years, a prime candidate for young male syndrome (Daly & Wilson, 1983) – a time in the life of every man when he’s willing to take particularly high risks to unconsciously gain access to mates. Confrontational, risky behavior is typical from individuals in this demographic – and its ultimate goal is to try to attract mates – just as efforts among adult male caribou during mating season are designed to defeat competitors and gain access to females. The counselor works, thus, to help the client develop non-dangerous skills that are attractive to others and that help build social connections.

These two explanations for the client’s frustration and aggressive outbursts are not particularly incongruous. To some extent, they explain the behavior at different levels, with the non-EP version focusing on proximate causes (such as the immediate familial context) and the EP version focusing on distal, ultimate causes, such as how the pattern may bear on reproductive success.

Given the unmatched power of Evolutionary Theory as a tool in unlocking the mysteries of the world, it makes exquisite sense to apply evolutionary theory to academic fields with stated goals of helping others (Keller & Nesse, 2006). To the extent that the goal (helping others) is important and valued and that the evolutionary explanation opens new insights into how to move toward the goal – including implications of specific actions that can be taken, the evolutionary approach has merit.

Thus, Darwin’s lesson to the graduates is this: Don’t be afraid to apply a new way of thinking to an old problem – even if people in the field are saying “oh no, that’s not needed – really – no – really – I mean it!” In a chapter on the power of evolution, Wilson (2007) talks about “teaching the experts” – essentially arguing that students with a strong background in EvoS have cognitive skills used to make important contributions in all kinds of fields – simply because evolution often provides a new and profoundly useful way of thinking about problems. When Daly and Wilson (1988) decided to examine differential filicide rates as a function of status as a step versus biological parent, the data sorted themselves out – nearly diving like lemmings into the appropriate and predicted statistical cells. Evolutionary theory was brought in to address this issue – and the light was turned on in the room as a result.

Graduate, you’ve learned many new skills during your time in college. You’ve learned different perspectives – and you’ve learned that these perspectives don’t always go well with one another (e.g., Geher & Gambacorta, 2010). That’s fine – and I’m glad you saw that in your education. But each perspective you learned about gave you a toolbox. A unique set of ways of thinking about some set of phenomena.

Using evolutionary psychology to understand counseling psychology makes so much sense to me as I’m in a department with a strong counseling program and I’m personally very focused on EP. So I’ve recently become intrigued by applied evolutionary psychology and am currently doing a bunch of scholarship to progress the work of this field.

But I’m not that special. You can do the same. Learn about the principles of evolutionary theory. For instance, think how these ideas may help us understanding democracy – understanding how people vote and for whom they vote. Understand what kind of issues people take on. Understand what kinds of things lead to moral outrage – and why? And what is the function of moral outrage? And how common is it? And what triggers it? And what function does this behavioral pattern serve – either for individuals or, perhaps, for the broader group? This is, of course, just a sample of questions that follow from thinking like an evolutionist. Once you learn to think like an evolutionist, the number of questions to ask is endless!

I’m focusing on how evolutionary principles can help us yield new insights into different areas of inquiry – but you can progress along a different path – other intellectual paths surely have merit. How can social constructionism help explain the pieces of your world? How can hypothesis testing, learned in boring-old-stats class, help you understand the behavior of people at a small bar on a Saturday night?

How can learning about the history of the social sciences help you predict what your future might look like 10 years from now?

Thus, this post isn’t really about how Darwinism can help you better understand the world (not fully, anyway) – it’s, rather, about how the many wonderful (and even less-than-wonderful) sets of ideas you’ve been exposed to during your tenure as a student can help you understand the world beyond how you might imagine.

Darwin’s lessons to the graduates are, thus, in my mind, considerably beyond the lessons of evolution. Here is a sample of Darwin’s lessons:
1. Keep an open mind – Darwin did – and he changed the world forever as a result.
2. Collect data – don’t accept premises that have no substance behind them.
3. Realize that all the sciences and humanities are strongly interconnected.
4. A set of ideas originally designed to explain X, may well provide an exceptional explanation of Y and Z.
5. If you like intellectual approach Q, and see its predictive merit, don’t be afraid to apply Q in new domains – you may stumble upon something that no one ever dreamed of.
6. Finally, a specific implication of Darwinism for college graduates is this: Hear that robin singing in the morning? Smell the white blossoms on the natural rose bushes near the woods? See the turkey vultures soaring high – in communicative harmony with one another? Note this: The same forces accounting for these examples account for everything you see when you look in a mirror. You are part of this magnificent natural world. This insight is, for my money, what makes Darwinism a truly spiritual approach to the world. “There is grandeur in this view of life” (Darwin, 1859).

Congratulations graduates. Along with my professorial brethren, I wish you the very best in your future. Make us proud. And remember, your success is our success.

And for more information about the exciting new field of “Applied Evolutionary Psychology,” check out the Applied Evolutionary Psychology Society (AEPS – yes, from APES to AEPS)!

References:

Darwin, C (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1st ed.). London: John Murray.

Geher, G., & Gambacorta, D. (2010). Evolution is not relevant to sex differences in humans because I want it that way! Evidence for the politicization of human evolutionary psychology. EvoS Journal: The Journal of the Evolutionary Studies Consortium, 2, 32-47.

Keller, M. C., & Nesse, R. M. (2006). The evolutionary significance of depressive symptoms:
Different life events lead to different depressive symptom patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 316-330.

Wilson, D. S. (2007). Evolution for Everyone. New York: Delacorte Press.

Wilson M, Daly M (1993) Lethal confrontational violence among young men. Pp. 84-106 in NJ Bell & RW Bell, eds., Adolescent risk taking. Newbury Park CA: Sage Press.

Wilson M, Daly M (1998) Sexual rivalry and sexual conflict: recurring themes in fatal conflicts. Theoretical Criminology. 2: 291-310.

There are buzz words in academia – and if you’ve been around long enough, you’ve grown tired of many of them. “Collaborative Research” – “Student Focused Learning” – “Experiential Learning” – and, among them, “Interdisciplinarity.” OK, I’ll admit, I really love most of these things – even if they may be cliches. But in the past few years, I’ve become hugely impressed with the pedagogical benefits of interdisciplinarity in particular.

In a (hopefully) forthcoming article* titled “The Interdisciplnary Context of Evolutionary Psychology: A Key to Survival in the Ivory Archipelago,” Justin Garcia, Ben Crosier, Gad Saad, Dan Gambacorta, Laura Johnsen, Elissa Pranckitas, and I explored (a) just how interdisciplinary evolutionary psychology (EP) is relative to other fields in the discipline, and (b) the issue of positive effects of interdisciplinary scholarship. In a nutshell, by systematically content coding the departmental affiliations of authors of major journals in EP along with several other important perspective-based areas of psych (e.g., cognitive neuroscience and the psychodynamic perspective), we were able to document that EP journals (specifically, Evolution and Human Behavior along with Evolutionary Psychology) were much more likely to include first authors from outside psychology departments, including scholars as first authors from such diverse academic disciplines as biology, anthropology, philosophy, and literature, among others. Further, the total number of non-psychology disciplines ran deeper for the EP journals, including a broader assortment of academic fields.

So in that article, we argue that EP’s interdisciplinary nature has, in fact, come of age – and that fostering this interdisciplinary identity will help the field connect with academic areas in the broadest sense, allowing its seeds to disseminate widely. In a world that is hostile to evolutionary psychology (See Geher, 2006), anything that can effectively disseminate EP should be taken seriously. Interdisciplinary scholarship is the kind of thing needed to facilitate this process.

Sometimes, my teaching and my scholarship match perfectly – and such an instance is upon me now. I’m glad to say that, for the third straight year in a row, I’ll be teaching a section of Evolutionary Studies Seminar as part of our school’s Evolutionary Studies Seminar Series. This speaker series, currently funded by the NSF and hosting such biggies as Niles Eldredge, Richard Wrangham, and Marlene Zuk, is the centerpiece of the work I do at New Paltz. It’s the centerpiece of the EvoS program – and it’s exactly what gets people so excited about the program.

Each year, the interest in the program increases – this year, we’re offering 4 sections of this course – each of which seems to be filling up without a problem during pre-registration. There will be a lot of students taking this course in spring – and we’re lucky to have such stellar instructors, Alice Andrews, Alex Bartholomew, and Mike Camargo, teach sections concurrent with my own.

During many course meetings, all the sections get together – along with others in the community, and we attend free lectures given by our speakers. We then continue the conversation with the speakers at a pizza reception. It’s the kind of education that immediately goes well beyond the textbook (in many cases, it’s “that person who WROTE the textbook”) and goes way beyond typical undergraduate education. This simply is the most dynamic and intrinsically motivated class that’s, in my opinion, offered at our fine school.

And interdsiciplinarity raises its head more than once regarding this class. First, consider the various academic fields represented by our speakers: http://www.newpaltz.edu/evos/seminar.html

We have geologists, anthropologists, biologists, and psychologists – spanning topics as disparate as epi-genetics to Darwin’s insights about botanical adaptations to the origins of sexual reproduction in garlic. The series is beautiful – and it tells the story of Darwin’s ideas applied across various academic disciplines remarkably well. The EvoS Seminar Series has the capacity to build those needed bridges across the islands of the academic archipelago.

In looking at my roster for next semester, I’m excited to say that EvoS is hitting us with another blast of interdisciplinarity. This time, it comes from the students. When I first started teaching this course in Fall 2007, my students were mostly psychology or biology majors with a few anthropology majors thrown in for some fun and giggles. No more. EvoS is truly taking on the interdiscinplinary form it was meant to take. My current roster of 20 includes students from the following majors:

Cell Biology
Theatre Arts
Undeclared
Psychology
Childhood Education
Psychobiology
Philosophy
Adolescent Education: Social Studies
Organismic Biology
Computer Science
Anthropology

Diversity of the majors of students interested in EvoS strikes me as a great marker of interdisciplinarity.

Note that this class is not a lower level general education course – it’s an upper level course that fills no general education requirement, other than the “writing intensive” requirement, which is met by courses within most majors.

Then who are these students – and what do they want? If It’s anything like last year, I think I have a good sense. About half these students are likely already enrolled in the EvoS minor on campus. These tend to be bright, hard-working students who care about learning more than about things like grades or future job prospects. These are the intrinsically motivated students who are on a journey for self-knowledge – and with its focus on human affairs, self-knowledge comes to all EvoS students in many different ways. The other students are just downright interested – interested in evolution – interested in who people are – interested in what life is – and interested in why things are the way they are. I’ve never had a class bring out such genuine learning desires on the part of college students – there’s something special to this course.

And the fact that students represent all these different academic fields is HUGE. Learning increases as a result. As the instructor of the course, I learn so much by being surrounded by these bright young and motivated students. When anthropology students chime in on a topic about a particular tool used by a particular hominid – or when a biology student chimes in with a comment about new molecular dating technique to provide an index of phylogenetic overlap between species, etc., I LEARN! I learn just as much from the students in this class each year as I do from the world-renowned speakers we bring in.

Along with our respected speakers (http://www.newpaltz.edu/evos/seminar.html), a great group of collegial faculty, a supportive administration, and students that impress the heck out of me every time I turn around, I think I’m ready for the 2010 EvoS Seminar Series course – bring it on!

References

*manuscript still under review

Geher, G. (2006). Evolutionary psychology is not evil! … and here’s why … Psihologijske Teme (Psychological Topics); Special Issue on Evolutionary Psychology, 15, 181-202.

Mixed-age learning is something that came naturally to our ancestors but must be rediscovered in modern education. Even though children from all cultures have much to learn, formal schooling didn’t exist until recently. Moreover, there is often little adult instruction of any sort. Instead, children spend most of their time in mixed age groups and learn from each other. Not only do younger children learn from older children, but older children learn by teaching younger children, just as all professors know that the best way to learn new material is to teach it.

Against this background, segregating children into same-age groups is pathological. Peter Gray, who wrote the first introductory psychology textbook from an evolutionary perspective (now in its fifth edition: Gray 2007), has become passionate about this point based on the experience of his own son, who became a rebel in public school and then thrived at an alternative school that (without intending to) recreated the learning environment of hunter-gatherer society. Peter has conducted research and written eloquently about this subject. His academic articles (Gray and Chanoff 1986, Gray and Feldman 2004) and Psychology Today blog (http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn) should be read by everyone interested in childhood education. A video presentation by Peter is available at http://evolution.binghamton.edu/evos/MiamiWorkshop.html.

The importance of mixed-age learning does not stop at childhood.  When my daughter started taking karate lessons, I decided to join her rather than sitting on the sidelines. I was amazed at how well the dojo worked as a learning system in which everyone, from white belt to black belt, simultaneously functioned as both student and teacher.

Graduate education functions much the same way. Most of what graduate students learn comes not from formal classes, but from informal interactions with peers of different skill levels. It never stops. I was trained as an aquatic ecologist but now I am studying human evolution. Most of my colleagues have also switched organisms and research topics, all by learning from more experienced peers.

Once I began to appreciate the importance of mixed-age learning, I realized that it might partially account for the success of our EvoS program, especially the “Current Topics” course built around the EvoS seminar series. As I have described in more detail elsewhere (Wilson 2005, 2007), the EvoS seminar series brings approximately ten distinguished speakers to campus every semester.  Students in the 2-credit “Current Topics” course read one or more articles in preparation, write a commentary, attend the seminar, and attend a light dinner and continuing discussion after the seminar, which is also open to the rest of the EvoS community.  The course is restricted to students in the EvoS program and must be taken twice to earn the certificate, which means that the experience is repeated twenty times, for subjects ranging from molecular biology to moral psychology, providing a vivid demonstration of the breadth of evolutionary theory.

I now realize that the dinner and continuing discussion provides a learning environment like a martial arts dojo. The audience includes the full spectrum, from freshmen just entering the program (white belts) to graduate students and faculty (black belts). Everyone has prepared by reading, writing, and listening to the seminar, and now they are directing questions to the speaker in a convivial unthreatening atmosphere.  Novices who are hesitant to speak can listen and compare themselves to their more advanced peers, who in turn can explain their points in public discussion or private conversation. There is also a convention of choosing some students at random to speak. Everyone must be prepared to ask a question and those who are mortified to be chosen are usually relieved to discover that their question was a perfectly good one.

The “Current Topics” course is one of the most popular components of the EvoS program and is frequently described by the students as their best intellectual experience at college.  It is also an impressive experience for the EvoS speakers. After all, when most scientists are invited to give a talk, it is usually a departmental seminar attended by a few dozen faculty and graduate students, followed by a small reception or dinner with a small group. EvoS seminars are attended by a large audience of undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty from all disciplines. The dinner and continuing discussion takes place in a large room in the University Union. The discussion can last an hour, can achieve a very high level of discourse, and usually ends with loud spontaneous applause. Many of our EvoS speakers are amazed that most of the people in the audience who are asking such sophisticated questions are undergraduate students.

The “Current Topics” course is just one example of how an EvoS program can take advantage of mixed-age learning.  Among its other virtues, mixed-age learning can be simple, enjoyable, and inexpensive—emerging spontaneously, much as it did before the days of formal education. 

Literature Cited

Gray, P. (2007). Psychology (5th ed.). New York: Worth.

Gray, P., & Chanoff, D. (1986). Democratic Schooling: What happens to young people who have charge of their own education? American Journal of Education, 94, 182-213.

Gray, P., & Feldman, J. (2004). Playing in the zone of proximal development: qualities of self-directed age mixing between adolescents and young children at a democratic school. American Journal of Education, 110, 108-145.

Wilson, D. S. (2005). Evolution for Everyone: How to increase acceptance of, interest in, and knowledge about evolution. Public Libarary of Science (PLoS) Biology, 3, 1001-1008.

Wilson, D. S. (2007). Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives. New York: Delacorte.

I type on a plane that just left Los Angeles – bound for the East Coast – where I will need to switch from my HBES (Human Behavior and Evolution Society) identity to my identity as husband, dad, dog owner, New Paltz faculty member, vice president of the Friends of the Plattekill Public Library, etc. Back to the real world.

HBES is decidedly not the real world. And I mean that in a good way. HBES is something of a Mecca for evolutionists – and this year’s meeting in LA – my fourth HBES meeting – was as great as ever. Surrounded by such luminaries in the field as David Buss, Steve Gangestad, Pete Richerson, and, of course, the driving force behind the EvoS movement, David Sloan Wilson, attending this conference is sort of like being immersed in the Major League All-Star game – and even being allowed to swing the bat a few times. Being surrounded by so many important minds – each with an understanding of the shared principles that comprise evolutionary theory – is simply awesome.

This year, we were fortunate to have an HBES symposium dedicated to the single most important idea that I’ve come across in higher education: EvoS. I’ve done a good bit in my career – and am pleased with many of the courses I teach, papers and books I’ve published, students I’ve sent into the real world with their own wings, etc. – but it is without question that starting the EvoS program at New Paltz is, in my mind, the singular most important accomplishment of my career. I was totally honored to be part of the EvoS symposium at HBES – along with such academic rock stars as Rosemarie Chang, Dan O’Brien, and David Sloan Wilson. In this blog, I hope to continue where our symposium left off, elaborating on the pedagogical excitement that is unique to EvoS.

Before the advent of EvoS-New Paltz, as a member of a psychology department teaching evolutionary psychology, I just felt that my passion for teaching this stuff was stifled – and that was disappointing. While students would just line up to take the class – fill all the seats within hours of pre-registration – and rave about its impact on their thinking afterward – my position as the sole evolutionary psychologist on campus sort of made my evolutionary psychology course a curricular dead-end. They would take it, tell me how much they loved it, ask why it was “only an elective” in the psychology major (don’t ask – long and unpleasant story on that!), and ask and ask and ask for more related courses.

The second I heard about David Wilson’s groundbreaking work with EvoS-Binghamton, I immediately saw the potential of this program for our campus. In fact, it struck me as such a great idea that I almost felt like a nit-wit for not thinking of it myself. Of course! Students with interests in my evolutionary psychology course SHOULD take a course with Tom Nolen in evolutionary biology. They should take a course in genetics with Jeff Reinking or Jen Waldo. They should take a course about bugs with Aaron Haselton. They should take Ken Nystrom’s human evolution course in anthropology. They should take a course with Alex Bartholomew in paleontology. They should hike into the Gunks – our local mountains – and learn about the evolutionary stories told by both the fossil-laden rocks and the rich biodiversity found in the forest – just minutes from our campus. Think about how much that would embellish their education! And we should bring in speakers on various topics related to evolution – to help students make connections across these courses – using the famously powerful nature of evolutionary theory – as a map that would allow for the building of intellectual bridges across different academic disciplines (AKA, “the islands of the ivory archipelago” (Wilson, 2007)).

Post-script: The EvoS program at SUNY New Paltz, about to enter its third year of existence, has exceeded any and all expectations I had when I worked to help launch it just a few years back. I really can’t overstate the excitement associated with this program in our community. Keep an eye out for updates to “Building Darwin’s Bridges” for details regarding EvoS-New Paltz as well as commentary on the EvoS Consortium. I’m fully convinced that the EvoS Consortium has potential to be the event that successfully (and finally) leads to the integration of Darwinism across all scholarly areas.

Post-post-script: Thanks to EvoS webmaster and journal editor, Rosemarie Chang, a true inspiration, for giving me the nudge I needed to start this blog!