I imagine that it’s unnerving to hear that a parent should instruct their child with some distance, touching her very little, and as the American Behaviorist John Watson (1928) said, “If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight.” Chances are, this last bit of advice seems odd to you – perhaps appalling – who would refuse affection to a young child? But then, you are probably, like me, a product of a culture that has since been re-educated by John Bowlby, a British Psychoanalyst, and Harry Harlow, an American Experimentalist (though you may not know it J).

In the early 20th century, Behaviorism was on the rise in Europe and the U.S., as psychology attempted to make its image more “scientific.” John Watson was of the belief that he could make a child into anything by a series of paired associations, also known as classical conditioning. His legacy includes Little Albert, the baby who was trained to fear rats by a pairing of a rat with a loud, alarming sound. He also believed that affection was not necessary in a parent-child relationship, and indeed, it would spoil the child and produce negative effects.

Two researchers, working separately and continents apart, came to be particularly distressed by this approach to psychology and parenting. They developed two separate, yet eventually intersecting, lines of research to combat the approach. The first is John Bowlby, who observed many children in his psychoanalytic practice, including those orphaned after World War II, and began to develop his theory of attachment. He proposed that children who are separated from a primary caregiver (and in his view, the mother specifically) developed social and behavioral problems as a result of the separation. His work, steeped in ethology (the study of natural behavior, with reflection to evolutionary function), pointed strongly to the need for a child to attach to the mother – beginning with physical contact in infancy.

The second person was Harry Harlow, who trained as an experimentalist in animal behavior and performed all of his early research on rats. Once beginning a professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he found himself short a rat-research lab and had to think quickly about another test subject. He ended up developing an extensive primate center (Harlow Primate Laboratory) to research rhesus macaques. While breeding a local population of these monkeys on whom he could perform his learning and motivation experiments, the monkeys were isolated from one another to avoid spread of infection. These monkeys, reared without a mother, were then noted as having major difficulties interacting socially with other monkeys when the opportunities arose. His ensuing research ultimately showed that monkeys reared without mothers have severe and lasting deficits to social behavior – indeed, his isolated monkeys could not be rehabilitated despite his efforts to do so.

Meanwhile, there’s Watson whose advice regarding the need to limit parental affection was far reaching – consider Lucille Ball’s character in I Love Lucy, happy to have a son, who was most often tucked away in a crib somewhere as she went about her day. We don’t see Lucy doting over little Ricky and being affectionate. This view was beginning to spread into homes; Watson is notorious for influencing popular American culture of his time.

Why the huge difference in opinion? The easiest answer seems to be bias. All three men produced research that is still influential today, but it also shows their own biases. Bowlby and Harlow were adamant that the prevailing views of the psychological world as influenced by Watson was wrong, and they came to the conclusion that infants (human and monkey) need to have an attachment figure to develop normally. Such advice echoes today with current research.

However, there are also some biases that are starting to be overturned from these scholars. Bowlby was so certain that the infant need attach to the mother, that the father (and extended relatives) was practically washed away with the bathwater. Such a perspective has far-reaching implications – such as a judicial bias to grant parental custody to the mother in case of a divorce, even if the mother is the less desirable parent. Research has since shown that children thrive with more – not fewer – attachment figures, something that is overlooked by biasing the mother as the main figure in the child’s life. Further, anthropological evidence indicates that in most cultures, children interact quite frequently with a plethora of relatives and develop an attachment relationship with each. The idea of “it takes a village to raise a child” is so fundamental, that we really must take notice of it and begin to raise children within this context.

Harlow is rightfully well-remembered for his groundbreaking work on attachment in monkeys, but he hardly referred to the concept as attachment. He was steadfast in his beliefs about love – a word that caused him the rebuke of other scholars at the time. Even today, some psychologists have a hard time with the four-letter-word, asking questions such as – How do we define love, scientifically? How could we possibly measure love? Harlow’s own biased views about love, and his sometimes failed pursuits at finding love in his own life, shaped his own research questions and interpretations. He believed that love first occurs between mother and infant, but barring the failure of that love, people may never learn to love at all. This approach is well supported by current work on adult attachment relationships, which borrow more from Bowlby’s concept of inner working models – that the style of attachment we form with a caregiver provides the style that we form as adults in intimate relationships. However, there is still argument from people studying adult romantic relationships about whether the “love” we experience as parents is the same as the “love” we experience as lovers.

I think it is a mistake of researchers to assume that their work is not biased by underlying assumptions. We all run the same risk of mistaking what we believe should be with what we research as it is. By admitting these biases and values we hold, we can more easily move beyond them to unbiased research. To that end, I freely admit that I don’t believe mothers should raise children alone. I think those that are forced to (or opt to) do so are doing a disservice to themselves and their children. Now, lets see how that has shaped and continues to shape my research…..

So, should a parent cuddle their child or not? Is it a matter of degree rather than absolutes – a little cuddling is good, but otherwise tough love? Before you turn to parenting literature for this, or any question, it is a good idea to consider from where the person offering advice is coming.

Some great resources:

Blum, D. (2002). Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the science of affection. New York: Basic Books.

Bowlby, J. (1958). The nature of the child’s tie to his mother. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 39, 350–373. Available online at: http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1988/A1988N971700001.pdf

Harlow, H. F. (1958). The nature of love. American Psychologist, 13, 673-685. Available online: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Harlow/love.htm

Hazan, C. & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511-524.

van der Horst, F. C. P., LeRoy, H. A., & van der Veer, R. (2008). “When strangers meet”: John Bowlby and Harry Harlow on attachment behavior. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 42, 370-388.

Watson, J. B. (1928). Psychological care of infant and child. New York: W. W. Norton.

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.

NEEPS 2010, Return to New Paltz. What a whirlwind weekend! How amazing to return to where it all started, just four years ago, and see how far we’ve come. We topped the previous conferences in total numbers of attendees, the talks seemed to be even more stellar than in past years, and we saw the first workshop meeting of the Feminist Evolutionary Psychology Society (FEPS). I am sorry to have moved on, but excited to already be co-planning my first conference as President.

One theme to come out of this conference was that of the obstacles we, as evolutionary scholars, have to face. An obvious source of contention comes from Creationists, who believe that evolutionary theory is scientifically disputable – but that is old news. One area about which we might not usually think was addressed by Robert Deaner of Grand Valley State University. He analyzed textbooks from the social sciences not for the authors’ animosity towards evolutionary theory – but the errors presented in the name of evolution. All 17 major textbooks at which he looked misrepresented the facts of evolutionary theory, and some argued against the theory based on these misunderstandings. Not only are we facing dispute from a non-scientific sector, but our own colleagues who are teaching the same students as are we.

Similarly, Kilian Garvey of University of New England, spoke of the existential threat evolutionary theory poses. People don’t question any other scientific theory in the way that they do evolutionary theory – though most people don’t understand all the details of the other theories either (such as relativity, gravity, or geophysics). Most people don’t contest that dinosaurs existed, but for the existence of evolution by natural selection – that is clearly not the case.

Leslie Heywood, from Binghamton University, gave an inspiring talk about evolution and feminism. She contended that evolutionary psychologists are not everywhere accepted, or even understood – and so too is the challenge for academic feminists, who are separate from the political feminists more often portrayed in media (and likewise separate from the political straw-woman against which some EPists apparently stand). She presented the quotes seen on another EvoS Blog, by NEEPS President Glenn Geher – Kramare and Treichler (1996): “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people,” and Geher (2009): “Evolutionary psychology is the radical notion that human behavior is part of the natural world.” These notions are not incompatible, even in a scientific setting.

To these challenges, NEEPS 2010 also offered hope. David Sloan Wilson reported on the Binghamton Project, which employs evolutionary theory to improving the community life of the citizens of Binghamton. If evolutionary theory can be used positively to improve public policy (emphasizing that humans do, indeed, have a rich (pre)history of prosocial behavior!), then we stand to benefit as a field of scholars. Much like the Civil Rights movement, change often comes by first instating behavioral changes, only then does attitude change follow. By the time people realize they are already using evolutionary theory in their everyday lives, it may be too late – they may already accept evolutionary theory!

Likewise, the inaugural meeting of FEPS provides hope to a new generation of scholars. While some people are put off by our use of the F word, our uniting message was clear: we are interested in examining the active role women have played in evolution, not to the exclusion, but in addition to the well-studied roles that men have played. We are a diverse bunch that cannot be pigeonholed, as our forthcoming title and mission statement will present. And if along the way, we help share evolutionary theory with some fields that might initially be unreceptive, then I can’t see the harm in that!

NEEPS has yet again shown that science is collaborative, and highlighted the best of that assertion. We are a tight knit group that is critical in thought, but not in interaction. From this, we produce positive scientific collaborations and research – made richer by the feedback we receive from these meetings.

On a final note, we also raised money for the National Center for Science Education. This organization promotes the accurate teaching of evolutionary theory in our public schools, and certainly, if our incoming students have been presented a fair and truthful representation, we stand against one less obstacle to the lay (and scholarly!) understanding of evolutionary theory.

References

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

Kramare, C., & Treichler, P. A. (1996).  A Feminist Dictionary. Illinois: University of Illinois Press.

This July I attended the International Society for Human Ethology Summer Institute in Orono, ME. Besides meeting some extraordinary people (and having an amazing time!), I also discovered how important ethology is for evolution.

At the heart of ethology is observation. Some of the most important ideas in evolution were found by ethologists or evolutionary scientists using ethological methodology.  Darwin himself began his inquiries into natural selection by observing animals, the most famous being finches. Human ethologists generally focus on observing human behavior using methodology from biology and behavioral sciences.

At the ISHE summer institute I saw amazing research done by scientists in many different fields like Elizabeth Oberzaucher, Daniel Povinelli, Karl Grammer and Glenn Weisfeld, just to name a few.  The most important thing I learned from this institute was that observing animal behavior (human or other animals) could lead to many discoveries not found inside a laboratory.

So, what does this have to do with evolution in higher education? Quite simply, we should encourage our students to become human ethologists and observe the world around them. In your next course, think of how easy it would be to assign students to go out in the real world and observe human behavior. They could observe facial expressions, interactions between people at bars or coffee shops, or local customs (which many colleges have).  Instruct students how to take field notes and then have students report back about the behavior, describing the behavior in detail.

There is something to be said for learning how to observe, learning what details to pay attention to, how to not interfere with the targets, and looking at the things one looks at everyday in a new light.  Most students learn about research in evolutionary psychology by handing out questionnaires, or conducting experiments, but very few get the opportunity to do observational research. For your assignment, you might ask students to apply evolutionary theory to their observations, but really just the act of observing will help students not only in their evolutionary careers, but also in their daily lives.

For some interesting reads on human ethology I suggest:

Human Ethology (2007) by Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt

The Ethological Approach to the Study of Human Behavior by Zdenek Klein (2000) available at: http://www.nel.edu/21_6/NEL21062000X001_Klein_.pdf

New Aspects of Human Ethology (Recent Advances in Phytochemistry) (1997) Editors: Klaus Atzwanger, Karl Grammer, Katrin Schäfer and Alain Schmitt.

“The great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.“

Thomas H. Huxley (1825 – 1895)

English biologist; supporter of Darwin;
father of Aldous & Julian Huxley.

Missed Opportunities

In the lead up to this, the 200th anniversary year of Darwin’s birth, I’ve attended my fair share of evolutionary research seminars. Surprisingly, few presented alternative hypotheses, or better yet, multiple alternative hypotheses. In fact, rarely was a specific evolutionary hypothesis enunciated. And when one was, the speaker usually failed to point out what critical experiment or observation could falsify it. Admittedly, these talks were directed toward a general, non-specialist audience. But many of those in attendance were students and this “omission” seemed like a missed didactic opportunity. Moreover, Evolutionary Theory is championed (all too often in courthouses in the United States) as a true science (as opposed to Creation “science”) because its hypotheses are falsifiable. So where are all these falsifiable hypotheses????

My undergraduate Invertebrate Zoology professor, Demerest Davenport emphasized (i.e. drummed it into our skulls) that adaptive questions can be addressed using “Strong Inference”. He had us all read the 1964 SCIENCE article of that name, by John R Platt1. At the time I was not especially impressed because it sounded like what we had been taught in General Biology and General Chemistry and had already accepted as standard operating procedure. In his recent blog, Massimo Pigliucci2 suggests that the main point of Platt’s article was to explain why the “soft sciences” (including the evolutionary sciences) were less successful than the new (at the time) “hard sciences” like molecular biology and modern physics. I am not sure I agree with Pigliucci’s hard- vs soft-science dichotomy (perhaps that is a discussion for a later blog). In any case, as a young scientist, my take home message was that “Strong Inference” could be applied to all kinds of questions and that it should have been applied more often than it had. Perhaps, that is still so today.

Strong Inference

“In its separate element, strong inference is just the simple and old-fashioned method of inductive inference that goes back to Francis Bacon. The steps are familiar to every college student and are practiced, off and on, by every scientist. The difference comes in their systematic application. Strong inference consists of applying the following steps to every problem in science, formally and explicitly and regularly:

1) Devising alternative hypotheses;

2) Devising a crucial experiment (or several of them), with alternative possible outcomes, each of which will, as nearly as possible, exclude one or more of the hypotheses;

3) Carrying out the experiment so as to get a clean result;

1′) Recycling the procedure, making sub-hypotheses or sequential hypotheses to refine the possibilities that remain; and so on.”1

The advantage of testing a main hypothesis against multiple, alternative hypotheses is that it protects the scientist against what T.C. Chamberlin called over “affection for his intellectual child”:

A Beautiful Hypothesis

Dr Stephen Colbert (Hon DFA) has pointed out, sometimes you have to think with your gut. And evolutionary theory can generate some great gut-worthy hypotheses that simply “feel” right. Here is an example: You all know “Why” the giraffe has a long neck? As long ago as Lamarck, the explanation has been “to get to the top of the acacia tree to reach the tender, most nutritious leaves’” Darwin and Lamarck may have differed in their notion of “How” the giraffe acquired its long neck but they would have agreed that it was advantageous in competing for food. We’ll call this the Interspecific Foraging Competition Hypothesis (IFCH). Soon after Darwin and Wallace proposed Natural Selection theory, the IFCH had become the accepted explanation for the giraffe’s long neck.

Now you have to admit that the IFCH is a beautiful hypothesis. It just feels right (sensu “Truthiness”). It just makes sense. It fits (with Darwinian natural selection).

Why ruin it by testing it?

An Ugly Fact

Why? Because there might be a better explanation. One obvious test of IFCH is to determine how giraffes actually USE their neck? In 1996, Robert Simmons and Lue Scheepers decided to do just that, and in their review of the literature, Simmons and Scheepers found that giraffes don’t use their neck in a way consistent with the IFCH — they tend to spend most of their time foraging at about shoulder height even when food is scarce and competition high. Now you could attempt to “save” the beautiful hypothesis by special pleading, or by suggesting that all of the many studies cited by Simmons and Scheepers “missed” something. Of course, then you would be reduced to simply refuting ugly facts. However, if there were plausible alternative hypotheses, then those could be explored and perhaps we can reject the IFCH without feeling empty-handed. The irony of the story of the giraffe’s long neck is that Darwin had developed another theory (Sexual Selection Theory) that could have been used to generate plausible alternative hypotheses to IFCH (although he didn’t know it at the time, he came close when he recognized that male giraffes use their long necks to swing their heavy skulls and stubby horns as weapons). But the rest of Simmons and Scheepers story will have to wait until next time.

==========

In the next few months, I plan to discuss other missed opportunities and other ugly facts. I invite you to comment and perhaps suggest your own ugly facts, and/or alternative (beautiful) hypotheses. One difficulty is developing multiple, plausible, alternative hypotheses and this could be a place to air your ideas and perhaps get feedback. Science really is a collaborative effort.

– Tom Nolen, New Paltz, NY

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Citations (Read these before posting comments –start by Googling the authors)

1. Platt, JR (1964). Strong Inference: Certain systematic methods of scientific thinking may produce much more rapid progress than others. SCIENCE 146(3642), pp: 347-353.
2. Pigliucci, M (2009). Strong Inference And The Distinction Between Soft And Hard Science. http://www.scientificblogging.com/rationally_speaking/strong_inference_and_distinction_between_soft_and_hard_science cited on the web, May 31, 2009.
3. Chamberlin, TC, cited in Platt (1964) above.
4. Simmons, R and Scheepers, L (1996). Winning by a neck. Sexual selection in the evolution of giraffe. American Naturalist. 148(5), pp: 771-786.