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.

Every now and then, through life, you run into someone who just amazes you – and who typically amazes everyone else who knows that person. I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely at a point in life where the older I get, the more I realize how little I know and how much others have to offer. If you’re paying any attention, life is humbling. My respect for others deepens each day.

I have several heroes. Through graduate school at the University of New Hampshire, I got to work closely with Becky Warner. Other-oriented behavior (quietly) radiates from Becky all the time. I could not have had a more supportive and helpful mentor. Exemplary. When I moved to Oregon in 1997, I was fortunate to work in the psychology department at Western Oregon University. This was the kindest, funnest, most easygoing, capable, and supportive group I’d ever seen. Years later, this is still true. All the faculty there impressed me deeply. The person I worked most closely with was Vic Savicki. Also an understated person, Vic was capable of teaching 14 classes a year, publishing 5 or so articles a year, sailing the Puget Sound regularly, and always making time for others. With a smile.

Not surprisingly, I also have heroes in the field of evolutionary studies. I stand in awe of pretty much everything that David Sloan Wilson does – and Gordon Gallup, of course, makes Superman look like chump change. Having David and Gordon’s support has been enormous for my own development. These guys are heroes.

Over the past several years, I was extremely fortunate to work closely with Maureen O’Sullivan of the psychology department at the University of San Francisco. Just like Becky, Vic, David, and Gordon, Maureen was simply awe-inspiring in how she worked and in how she treated others. I still remember the day when she and Paul Ekman agreed to contribute a chapter to my first book (on the topic of measuring emotional intelligence). Maureen took the lead on this chapter. Two things stood out for me in working with her on this. First: Wow, she was razor-sharp! You had a question of her, and she was right back in your inbox – usually that same day – with everything you asked for – and more. And, as a plus, everything was delivered with exceptional humor. Second, Maureen and Paul’s chapter in my book turned out to be fantastic. It’s critical of the whole idea of emotional intelligence – but it’s critical in a productive manner. In academia, it’s easy to be critical. And it can be uninteresting, to be honest. Being critical while also being productive and respectful, now that’s something.

As anyone who knows Maureen will vouch for, she was fun to work with. A day with Maureen in the inbox was a good day. I remember a particularly tough week for me – in the span of a few days, I’d learned two depressing facts about my demographic group from the empirical literature. First, once a male gets past 30 (and I was 34 at the time), he tends to be rated as less physically attractive. Second, as a bonus, he also tends to score lower on standard measures of intelligence. Ouch! Looking for sympathy, I shared this news with Maureen – who quickly told me that I might be getting dumber and worse-looking, but that I had a long way to go before reaching the gutter! I needed that! I have that email printed and saved, as evidence in case I need it.

In seeking collaborators for my second edited book (on the topic of mating intelligence, co-edited with Geoffrey Miller), I immediately put Maureen near the top of the list of folks I’d ask to contribute. As luck would have it, Maureen and I had extremely parallel research trajectories. She got her PhD back in the day working with Guilford on the structure of intellect model of intelligence. Her research interests included intelligence, social intelligence, emotional intelligence, evolutionary psychology, deception-detection, and human mating. These are almost precisely my research interests! Maureen quickly agreed to be part of this new book – and she had a chapter based on data from hundreds of young adults on the topic of self and other deception in the context of mating. It turns out there’s lots of deception in the mating domain! Her chapter was fantastic – and it really played a pivotal role in getting the idea of mating intelligence cited in all sorts of media outlets.

Always fast to respond, always helpful, always kind. In a world where these qualities are all rare, Maureen was just unbelievable to work with. She and I had talked generally about future collaborations. Just the thought of future collaborations with Maureen made me happy.

And Maureen embraced evolution fully. Her work on emotion and deception-detection, largely done in collaboration with Paul Ekman, stands as some of the most important evolutionarily informed research in all of psychology. In fact, while many talk about how “new” the whole field of evolutionary psychology is, anyone paying attention knows that Paul and Maureen were doing this stuff for decades. The psychology of deception-detection was shaped by significant evolutionary forces across human phylogeny, and Maureen O’Sullivan knew more about this than did anyone in the world. Maureen was an evolutionary psychologist sine qua none. And she was the world’s leading expert on the topic of “truth wizards” – a highly appropriate topic of study for such an honest and genuine person.

The world of academia (let’s face it!) has its share of stuffiness and ego. In such a world, Maureen was a gem. Zero pretense. Zero arrogance. And a consistent and genuine kindness that made others feel good about themselves. Further, as a native New Yorker, Maureen totally had this “let’s get real” way about her. It’s sort of hard to not appreciate someone with this special constellation of traits.

On May 10 of this year, any possible future collaborations with Maureen came to a halt – as the world lost her to cancer. Maureen was an exemplary teacher, scholar, psychologist, and evolutionist. But more importantly, she was an exemplary person. And she will be missed sorely.

I end with a phrase that doesn’t seep into the evolutionist lexicon very frequently: God Bless you Maureen O’Sullivan.

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 is pretty widespread agreement in the popular and academic worlds that women were made to be mothers. Picture Mother Mary, Jesus at her bosom (there were no breasts in the Renaissance images I am seeing), so designed to be a mother that she didn’t even have to participate in the act of conception to achieve her mothering perfection. There is such variation in the ways that women mother, however – from the 50s doting Donna Reed to mothers employing wet nurses and nannies to Andrea Yates, who drowned her 5 children – that one has to wonder: if mothering is so natural, why are some women so shoddy at or disinterested in it? And why do traditional societies, history, and comparative psychology contain so many examples of mothering requiring practice?

Humans possess relatively few, if any, skills that can be performed naturally, without practice. Even walking, once believe to just happen is now known to occur only after the infant has the chance to acquire other skills including balance and the coordination of upper and lower body. But walking is a skill that every normally developing infant eventually acquires, whereas mothering is not a skill that all women are willing or able to acquire – and there is much more variation in the outcome. Even still, a person can hardly think of a woman without picturing her as a mother. In fact, when men or mothers meet a married woman of reproductive age who has chosen not to have children, who among them doesn’t ask “why?” We even have many names for childless women, all pejorative (e.g. spinster, old maid).

Among hunter-gatherer groups, older sisters are often employed throughout the day to assist in childcare of younger siblings (Sear & Mace, 2008). In a Western context, we can see this practicing in the pretend play of (predominantly) girls with their dolls and accessories. Among the upper-class “founding mothers” generation of the U.S. colonies, upper-class teenage girls would often be apprenticed to new mothers to learn how to become mothers when their turns were up (Roberts, 2004). Even in other primate species, adolescent females yearn to get exposure to new infants, though humans alone among the great apes will share their very young infants with group members (Hrdy, 2009). Common chimpanzees will not share the infant until it is around 3.5 months, orangutans around 5 months – whereas in humans, it is mere minutes after birth. Women need training in all elements of parenting – from breastfeeding, which likewise does not just occur “naturally” (Volk, 2009) to dealing with a hormonal teenager. Feel free to leave a comment if you have tips about the latter!

Mothering can at times be overwhelming, especially when a mom finds herself with little to no help during most of the day. For those who have full-time careers, finding time to excel at work and raise a child can be daunting. Likewise, for mothers who stay at home with the children, dedicating yourself to the child at the expense of yourself, trying to complete daily tasks such as cooking and cleaning while tending to and entertaining a child, and trying to maintain a schedule that works for both you and the child (as in 5 am is too early, kids!) can be an exhausting challenge. This truth is inescapable.

Given the overwhelming nature of raising one of the most helpless and needy infants among primates, human mothers need others. In our modern world, we can see examples in Facebook, which has the support group Circle of Moms, where one can tag her friends who are also moms, and there are many mothers’ groups for finding playmates for mom and her child(ren) (such as the national group Las Madres). When new mothers were given support in the form of only 21 visits by RNs over the course of two years, their children benefited in many ways for at least the first 15 years of life, including cognitively (Hrdy, 2009). So, then, it is possible that when ‘others’ are around and help mothers hone their skills, both the mother and the infant benefit. In the Sear and Mace (2008) study cited above, for those infants who had older sisters to help in the childcare, they saw marked decreases in mortality. In other words, moms and infants both need moms who have help and support so that the moms may perfect their skills.

Switching from a natural mothers to practiced mothers perspective can be a real relief for modern moms. Perhaps a not so recent challenge is the feeling of isolation by being literally geographically isolated from friends and family. [I say not so recent because there are many times in history when women have been isolated from childhood friends and family by migrating due to marriage, and perhaps even woman have traditionally been the sex to migrate out of the group. I’ll save that for a future post]. Raising a human is at least the longest commitment among the great apes, if not the most challenging as well – humans are born completely helpless, unable to even cling to the mother; and require care well into adolescence. In fact, recent research suggests they need it much longer – humans don’t begin contributing as many nutritional resources as they consume until into their 30s (Kaplan, 2009). Accepting that mothering is a skill that takes practice can alleviate some of the stress of feeling like a fish out of water.

Similarly, accepting the practiced mothers perspective allows a new mother to accept help more readily. More often than not, mothers, mothers-in-law, and friends are offering help with childcare or advice because they’ve been there before and know how difficult transitioning from carrying a 25-pound bag of baby etc. in your uterus to caring for a 6-pound lump of baby can be. If a mother feels as if she should be a natural, then asking for help can be really intimidating.

So, are women natural born mothers? All signs point to no. Yes, their anatomy allows them to bear children, but that does not mean that they will be great mothers from day one, or ever. If you give a teenager a car, chances are through trial and error they’ll learn how to make it move – but that doesn’t mean that they’ll instantly be good drivers, and some might never even take the time to learn. So too, we need to remember that when it comes to mothering, perfection is not bred but requires a lot of practice.

References

Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Mothers and others: The evolutionary origins of mutual understanding. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Kaplan, H. (2009). Learning, menopause and the 70-year lifespan. Keynote address of the 21^st Annual Human Behavior and Evolution Society Conference, Fullerton, CA.

Sear, R. &  Mace, R. (2008). Who keeps children alive? A review of the effects of kin on child survival. Evolution and Human Behavior, 29(1), 1-18.

Roberts, C. (2004). Founding mothers: The women who raised our nation. New York: William Morrow.

Volk, A. A. (2009). Human breastfeeding is not automatic: Why that is so and what it means for human evolution. Special Issue: Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society. Journal of Social, Evolutionary and Cultural Psychology, 3(4), 305-314.

Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and the Importance of Adaptation Implementation in Evolutionary Psychology

I’m not going to lie. If you follow my work at all, hopefully this isn’t a surprise – I try to stay honest – it’s a way to compensate for my deficits. Lots of folks I know – several of whom I consider good friends – report that they just can’t stand evolutionary psychology. Some seem to think it’s the devil – morally and scientifically irresponsible and reprehensible. I do my best to deal with things, but every now and then, honestly, I just shake my head. And sometimes I just have to write about it.

A few weeks ago, a really interesting discussion about the mating-relevant differences between Luke Skywalker and Han Solo emerged in my graduate course in social psychology. This was one of these moments when a thread of the fabric of American culture and the content of the course interfaced perfectly.

Luke is prototyipically non-masculine – whiny and wimpy throughout three episodes. Han is just macho. He plays it cool, doesn’t need anyone’s help, and has classic masculine good looks.

What’s attractive about Luke? What’s attractive about Han? The conversation touched on several themes relevant to evolutionary psychology – mate choice, optimal features of long-term mates, optimal features of short-term mates, morphological features of sexually attractive males, the handicap principle applied to high levels of testosterone, inbreeding depression, and so forth. It was an exciting class discussion that put a face to many of the concepts from the readings of the week.

About a week later, I had a passing conversation with a long-time academic friend – who’s, notably, not a huge fan of evolutionary psychology. Somehow, I briefly mention this great class discussion – and my friend sort of scoffs – saying something like “can’t it be just that Han Solo would be way better in bed? It’s not like I’d want to have babies with him!”

I’ve learned to not bother arguing about evolutionary psychology in certain circles – but my mind immediately went to a conversation I’d had with David Schmitt when he visited New Paltz last year (to give a talk about mating psychology on Darwin’s 200th birthday). David is, of course, a leading thinker and researcher in the field – and the only thing as substantial as the academic rigor of his work is his reasonable take on things. An expert on the nature of psychological adaptations (see Schmitt & Pilcher, 2004), David introduced me to the distinction between “adaptation implementers” and “fitness optimizers” (a conception that he attributed to his mentor David Buss, a luminary in the field).

If we think of organisms as designed by evolutionary forces to propagate their own genes (Dawkins, 1976), we can have two general ways of understanding organisms. Perhaps (a) organisms are “fitness optimizers,” designed to consciously do whatever it takes to successfully produce viable progeny. On the other hand, perhaps organisms are “adaptation implementers,” designed with a battery of specific adaptations that, on average, had the effect of increasing the reproductive success of the organism’s ancestors compared with conspecifics without said adaptations.

OK – so let’s put a face to all this. Think about pregnancy sickness, famously studied by Margie Profet (1992). If pregnancy sickness is conceptualized from a fitness-optimization perspective, then pregnant women are essentially framed as conscious of the deleterious effects of certain foods on their babies, and they make themselves sick to certain stimuli as a result. If women with pregnancy sickness are, instead, framed as “adaptations implementers,” then the fact that they tend to get sick in certain contexts (e.g., when eating certain foods that are likely to possess toxins) is the result of this psychological and physiological tendency (that we call pregnancy sickness) to have increased the fitness of ancestral women – regardless of conscious thought surrounding the reproductive benefits of pregnancy sickness.

As Dave put it to me, evolutionary psychology sees humans as “adaptation implementers” – not “fitness optimizers.”

This important construct can be applied, really, to any adaptation. Think about fear of heights – one of the most basic and culturally universal fears. On one hand, we can think of this fear in terms of “conscious fitness optimization” – with people thinking “I know that if I fall 100 feet, that’s it for me – and my entire genetic lineage – ouch!” OR we can think of expressed fear of heights as explicating “adaptation implementation.” In this way, we can think of a natural fear of heights as the product nature selecting for ancestors across generations who happened to, by chance – and likely unconsciously – fear heights. In this way, someone expressing a fear of heights is simply implementing an adaptation that, on average, across generations, gave the ancestors of people with a fear of heights a reproductive advantage over others.

This same line of reasoning makes it so that modern-day contraception is not a deal killer for evolutionary psychology. I’ve heard people argue essentially that “well if evolutionary psychology says we do everything to propagate our genes, but we use contraception and many of us CHOOSE to not have kids, doesn’t that just say that evolutionary psychology is all wrong?” No. Actually. It doesn’t. Such an argument does, however, suggest that the conscious fitness-optimization approach to evolutionary psychology is completely misguided. If we were designed to consciously maximize fitness regardless of any other factors, then maybe contraception would not be as prevalent as it is – and maybe more people would choose to have children. But, in fact, people who use contraception (and there are lots of us out there) are still products of evolution whose psychologies are filled with adaptations. Contraception users still fear heights, spiders, and snakes more than other stimuli. Contraception users still show nepotistic tendencies when considering whom to help in emergency situations. They still get angry at being cheated by others in their close social circles. Contraception users experience the basic emotions of joy, sadness, surprise, disgust, and anger – and contraception users can identify these emotional states accurately in humans from across the globe. And they still find spoiled milk totally gross. Contraception users are attracted to the same features in mates that non-contraception users are attracted to – they still prefer that a mate be kind, intelligent, witty, and attractive. And, back on task, female contraception users still find Han Solo more sexually attractive than Luke Skywalker. That is, they implement psychological adaptations – regardless of conscious efforts to reduce the likelihood of reproducing. And this is exactly what we would expect in organisms that are designed to implement a battery of fitness-increasing adaptations – as opposed to organisms with general-purpose mechanisms designed to consciously increase reproductive success regardless of environmental conditions.

Being a person who uses contraception and chooses to not have children does NOT make that individual a person whose behavior and psychology are unrelated to the evolutionary history of homo sapiens

Back to the Order of the Jedi: Think about the sexual attraction that a heterosexual woman may feel toward Han over Luke. I haven’t done a poll, but suppose we find evidence that more heterosexual women find Han sexually attractive than Luke – thus, corresponding to a non-random mate-choice situation. Is it accurate and comprehensive to just say that Han would probably be better in bed? I don’t think so! I think that such a response actually screams for a distinction between fitness optimization and adaptation implementation!

In the domain of short-term mating, there are reasons underlying why women are attracted to masculine-looking men – with muscular bodies, high shoulder-to-hip ratios, deep voices, and symmetrical faces (Shoup & Gallup, 2008). And an evolutionary perspective on why women are attracted to such Han Soloesque features does not need to presume that women want to have Han’s baby! When we think of adaptation implementation, this way of thinking, in fact, can be greatly elucidated. It’s not enough to say that a woman would rather sleep with Han than Luke, and that’s just that. Science is about addressing WHY – why would such a pattern typify short-term desires of most heterosexual women? From the adaptation implementation perspective, the answer is steeped in our past. Women with such desires in short-term mates were more likely to leave viable offspring in the future. Mating with such “cads” likely led ancestral women who utilized short-term mating strategies to bear healthy, fit, and attractive offspring who were effective at fending off parasites (Gangestad & Buss, 1993).

So, in short, my friend who made this comment about being more attracted to Han than to Luke was completely right – it doesn’t have to be about consciously wanting to have Han’s baby over Luke’s. From an adaptation-implementation perspective, the ultimate causes of differential attractiveness toward one potential mate over another need not have any bearing on consciously trying to reproduce whatsoever. Just as fear of heights can exist without one consciously thinking about how falling a long way will lead to sudden death. Even if you don’t think that, being on the edge of a cliff in the mountains is still scary! And that’s because such fears gave our ancestors survival and reproductive benefits over others. Similarly, being sexually attracted to a potential mate may not make one think about the fitness-relevant end-product (e.g., shared offspring) – it may simply put one in a state (a hot state!) that is likely to lead to increased likelihood of mating.

And to top it off, remember, Han might be more masculine, but Luke can use the force!

References

Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gangestad, S. W., and Buss, D. M. (1993). Pathogen prevalence and human mate preferences. Ethology and Sociobiology, 14, 89-96.

Profet, Margie (1992). “Pregnancy Sickness as Adaptation: A Deterrent to Maternal Ingestion of Teratogens”. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Oxford University Press. pp. 327–365.

Schmitt, D. P., & Pilcher, J. J. (2004). Evaluating evidence of psychological adaptation: How do we know one when we see one? Psychological Science, 15, 643-649.

Shoup, M. L. & Gallup, G. G., Jr. (2008). Men’s faces convey information about their bodies and their behavior: What you see is what you get.
Evolutionary Psychology, 6, 469-479.

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.

It seems a pregnant women is a magnet for unsolicited advice – most often tips for parenting, but even tips regarding how she should give birth. In my own experience, these tips came only from males or childless females, but I’ve not done the research to see whether my anecdotal evidence holds water. In this post, I will explore whether these birthing tips are more likely fact or fiction.

The first tip I encountered at a conference during my first trimester. I was informed that I absolutely MUST give birth in water. Our ancestors did it, and it offers a smooth transition for the baby from the amniotic fluid filled womb to our waterless world. Being no novice to childbirth, I was immediately repelled by the idea, in no small part because women in childbirth frequently lose control of their voluntary organs (to put it lightly). There is variation in how women deliver babies in traditional cultures, such as who is allowed to be present (from no one to female relatives or midwives, typically) to how removed the mother must make herself from the rest of the group, some having to find an isolated hiding spot among the trees (Hrdy, 2009). Despite the variation, in the traditional cultures studied, women give birth on land (e.g. dirt outside, dirt floor in a home) most often while in a squatting or kneeling position. But as to the location of these mythical places where women give birth in water, my searches have been fruitless. And for at least two good reasons – how could that possibly be hygienic in most “traditional” places, lacking chlorine and filtration?, and the faulty assumption this approach implies, that naturally flowing water is as warm and cozy as the amniotic fluid from which the baby emerges.

The second birthing question I received was whether I was going to eat the placenta. I experienced a second eww factor here, but my well-meaning friend was only trying to explain that some women eat the placenta because we’ve been designed to do so to provide us with extra calories after giving birth. When you actually look into this practice, however, it begins to attain mythic proportions as well. In no traditional societies do women regularly engage in the practice of eating the placenta after giving birth (Hrdy, 2009). In fact humans, as well as our great ape relatives, engage in this practice so little that we actually stand out from many other mammalian species. As Hrdy puts it, the people practicing placenta ingestion are New Age women who believe it to be tradition.

The third question is such a personal, but common one for a pregnant woman: epidural or no epidural? My response was pretty unwavering – I was going “natural” with this one. And truly, in cultures without medicinal anesthetics, women do have to give birth without any painkillers. It’s no stroll through the park, but it is doable. However, as I just learned from the book Mothers and Others, the practice of licking the amniotic fluid off of newborns and eating the placenta that many mammals engage in (e.g. dogs, cats) actually serves as a natural anesthetic!

Had I known of the natural anesthetic properties of afterbirth, would I have changed my response to number 2? Not likely. Had water birthing and placenta eating been common practice in traditional societies, that still doesn’t make them best practices (also a valid argument for getting an epidural!) – the infant mortality rate in the U.S. has dropped drastically in no small part due to modern medicinal practices, especially the adoption of sterility. Giving birth is such a personal experience. I am happy to live in a country where I get to make my own choices for how to give birth, and leave the decisions of other expecting mothers to their own discretion.

[Do you have any outlandish labor advice stories to share? Add a comment!]

**Please check back in April for a post about the meetings of the Feminist Evolutionary Psychology Society (FEPS; http://fepsociety.org) and the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS; http://neepsociety.com).**

References:

Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Mothers and others: The evolutionary origins of mutual understanding. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Elmo brightens up the faces of little ones while evoking memories of nails on a chalkboard in their parents…but his popularity and notoriety could have been predicted by ethologists years before the creation of this furry red monster. Elmo is red, which is a valued color in many species. Further, he has a high-pitched voice and loves repetition – both things that youngsters prize, and from which adults flee.

Elmo is red. Elmo could have been orange or yellow, but instead he is not just any shade of red, but the most vibrant, almost irritating form of red you could imagine. The first shades that aid in visual discrimination for infants are black, white, and red (Murkoff, Mazel, Eisenberg & Hathaway, 2003). Red allows infants to distinguish borders between objects and patterns. Further, in the wild, red is a signal of mate quality displayed by males for females (for example, see Wolfenbarger, 1999). The color signals dominance, which holds even in humans – in competitive sports, there is a higher probability of winning if you are wearing red in your uniform (Hill & Barton, 2005). Elmo’s fur is a dominant color, and by no coincidence, looked up to by his adoring fans.

Elmo’s voice is a special tone of high-pitch – and also displays extreme variations in pitch contours, and is rather slow. His voice is similar to the voice young children hear from all of the important adults in their lives – parentese! Parentese is the baby-talk used by caregivers to get and direct the attention of infants and young children, and also has benefits for language development (e.g. Fernald, 1992; Snow, 1994, respectively). Kids are used to hearing this type of speech at home, and likewise marvel when they hear it from their favorite red monster. Adults, on the other hand, do not typically employ this type of speech with each other (except in romantic relationships – stay tuned for a forthcoming blog on that topic). In fact, when we do hear an adult use this type of speech with another adult – such as in a nursing home – it is likely to sound just as grating to us as does Elmo’s voice.

Finally, the storyline of Elmo’s World is a repetitive narrative about things that kids like. He doesn’t just introduce dogs; he introduces them using his friends Mr. Noodle and Dorothy the Fish; kids; television; two interactive features; and the dog itself. This format doesn’t change, though the topic does. Infants and young children have two ways in which to learn about their environments – by repetition and exploration. The former explains why we have to read “Goodnight Gorilla” to our kids 1,000 times in a row, or let our kids continuously play with the buttons on the dryer. Elmo’s World helps kids learn about new topics by repeating them. Adults have other methods of learning, including problem solving and a wealth of learned information that enables us to retain new information more easily. So for adults, the repetitive method is boring, and potentially frustrating.

Many parents issue complaints about Elmo, feeling as though he has ruined Jim Henson’s Muppets. Being a die-hard Miss Piggy fan, I find myself often in agreement. But how many parents of yester-generation would load the 1-year-old into the car, cranking children’s music while heading off to the enriching “Little Tumblers” class? Today’s children face a world in which they are boss of their entertainment in a way never before. Rather than acclimating children to our world, we choose to create a whole new world just for them. And in that new world, Elmo is the mascot and king.

References:

Fernald, A. (1992b). Human maternal vocalizations to infants as biologically relevant signals: An evolutionary perspective. In L. Cosmides, J.H. Barkow, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 391-428). New York: Oxford University Press.

Hill, R. A. and Barton, R. A. (2005). Red enhances human performance in contests: Signals biologically attributed to red coloration in males may operate in the arena of combat sports. Nature, 435, 293.

Murkoff, H., Mazel, S., Eisenberg, A. and Hathaway, S. (2003). What to expect the first year. New York: Workman Publishing.

Snow, C. E. (1994). Beginning from baby-talk: Twenty years of research on input and interaction. In C. Gallaway and B. J. Richards (Eds.), Input and interaction in language acquisition (pp. 3-12). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wolfenbarger, L. L. (1999). Red coloration of male northern cardinals correlates with mate quality and territory quality. Behavioral Ecology, 10(1), 80-90.

NOTE: This posting is the President’s Welcome for the 2010 meeting of NEEPS.

Welcome Back to New Paltz – NEEPS 2010!

Good news – we’re back! Four years ago, NEEPS was born at SUNY New Paltz. This fledgling society started as a hair-brained scheme that was plotted in 2006 by me along with several others who dared to dream big. At that point, I was certain that there was no area of psychology that rivaled Evolutionary Psychology in terms of its potential for uncovering our nature. And the resistance to EP that seems to spring up in all kinds of places seemed all the more reason to take steps to ensure the success of this awesome intellectual beast. In 2010, I’m as certain as ever of EP’s importance in academia and beyond.

Luckily, I’m not alone – and NEEPS has made this point abundantly clear. While the powerful nature of EP is certainly a pillar of the success of NEEPS, EP is only a slice of the story. What really makes NEEPS special is the NEEPS community. NEEPSters make up a particularly supportive, effective, and well-functioning group. Products of the NEEPS community include our highly successful conferences, our world-class invited speakers, our selective peer-reviewed journal (JSEC), as well as such extra-curriculars as Darwinian charades, whiffleball, poker, and the beach at Lake Ontario. NEEPSters work hard, play hard, and look out for one another.

I’m thrilled to say that NEEPS continues on its upward trajectory. Submissions for this year’s conference were record-breaking – with some 70 total submissions. This year’s NEEPSters come from 11 different states – California, Georgia, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Pennsylvania – and 5 different countries – Austria, Canada, England, Germany, and the United States. And this year’s keynote speakers, Richard Wrangham and Marlene Zuk, allow us to continue to elicit reactions such as “How in the world did you get her?” and “How in the world did you get him?”

Topics covered at this year’s conference represent the dauntingly broad scope of modern-day EP, including sexual selection, emotion, resource-allocation, competition, skeletal morphology, literature, irony, abnormal psychology, evolutionary clinical psychology, and the nature of the self. And lots more. Special features of this year’s conference will include a session on the international Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) consortium, our first-ever kickball tournament, and the first-annual meeting of our sister society: FEPS – the Feminist Evolutionary Psychology Society.

So that’s the happy news. Here’s the sad news: I write near the end of my third year of a three-year term as president of NEEPS. Starting in June, I’ll officially be “past-president of NEEPS.” Doesn’t quite have the same ring! Our election of this past fall, implemented skillfully by the one-and-only Jay Landolfi, was perhaps NEEPS’ biggest hurdle. Thirteen positions needed to be filled. I was nervous. What if no one stepped up? Who will be the next NEEPS president? What will come of my most precious intellectual offspring?

Well, it turns out there was nothing to worry about at all! Not only is each slot staffed – but the incoming NEEPS officers represent the best of the best. And with Rose at the helm, I can retire knowing full well that the future of NEEPS is bright like the mid-day sun.

On behalf of our local hosts (Alice Andrews, Kim Belmonte, Mike Camargo, Rachael Carmen, Haley Dillon, Ben Crosier, Nicole Giordano, Laura Johnsen, Abbey Kurtz, Heather Mangione, Kyle Titus, and myself), this year’s never-miss-a-beat program chair (Maryanne Fisher), and NEEPS vice president Rosemarie Sokol Chang, welcome to New Paltz!

Genuinely,
Glenn Geher, NEEPS President

NOTE: This meeting is scheduled for March 25-28, 2010. Be there!

For Homo Sapiens like you and me, family extends beyond kin lines. In fact, while our tendency to create psychological ingroups sometimes has adverse consequences (no doubt), the extraordinary success of our kind owes a great debt to our tendency to include non-kin as family.

Extended family members – including in-laws – comprise a core part of someone’s support system. As folks like David Buss (2003) have said before, mate choice includes more than choice of a mate – choosing a marriage partner is inextricably linked to choosing extended family members who can help support you and who can ultimately (if things go right) provide significant benefits to you, your offspring, and, ultimately, the offspring of your offspring – and beyond. Without question, I have been extremely fortunate in the in-law lottery – and, without question, my kids could not be luckier.

In-laws are more than just mother-in-law (Gill) and father-in-law (Bob). My wife Kathy’s sister Kelly and her nuclear family are fantastic – and having them in our life is an unequivocal plus – my daughter Megan and son Andrew undoubtedly would agree with this.

But we lost a member of our family today – and I’m deeply saddened. We all are. Kathy’s grandmother (and Megan and Andrew’s great-grandmother) – Gran – passed away today. As Keller and Nesse (2006) pointed out, the death of a family member leads people to seek out other family members to stay connected – perhaps to underscore the family support mechanism that still exists. In this family, writing is a way to stay connected – Megan just wrote a beautiful list of things she remembers from Gran – and Andrew drew a very sweet picture. Like most people I know, I’m not very good at dealing with death, so I guess writing a blog is my way of dealing.

Gran was a genuinely amazing person, in a very understated way, and we were so lucky to have her – and so lucky that she lived for so long. My family didn’t do the Christmas thing growing up, but Kathy’s family did – (a pretty secular version, I must add). So I get to be part of this great family tradition. Gran was from Wales – and she lived in Liverpool for a time before coming to the US (on the Queen Elizabeth I, no less). She really had a wonderful British way about her – and Christmas with Kathy’s family is filled with this influence.

Before Christmas dinner, we do the “Christmas Crackers” thing – if you haven’t ever done this, you really should. It’s pretty ridiculous. The “crackers” are sort of special packages that get opened at the start of Christmas dinner. When opened concurrently, they all make a nice “crack” (thanks to a very small amount of some sort of explosive). Included in the crackers are these totally cheesy jokes and prizes (e.g., a fake nail that looks like it went through your finger or small rings that you try to take apart (even though it’s impossible to take them apart – as far as I can ever tell)). And there’s this weird paper hat as well. Every hat comes in a different color – and the rule is you HAVE to wear it. At least through dinner – and preferably longer.

Well it turned out each year that Gran, my brother-in-law Marshall (also not of the “Christmas” background), Gill, and I were the Christmas Cracker champs – we’d wear these things up until midnight some years.

And there were the minced meat pies that we’d eat on Christmas Eve each year. Gran absolutely insisted that we eat these – and my mother-in-law Gill, a dutiful daughter, always complied. Each Christmas Eve, she’d pull the pies out of the oven at 9pm – like clockwork. Gran, Marshall, and I would, along with Gill, eat these “yummy” pies without fail (with sherry, a true British tradition). No one else dares!

Gran was an understated person – nothing fancy. Simple, smart, and funny – right up to the end. She could always hear everything – and she pretty much always had a comment. Around Christmas, there was always lots of “isn’t that lovely,” evenly peppered with dry comments such as “well that wouldn’t make much sense, now would it?”

Last year, we hosted Gran’s 95th birthday party – and it was great. My favorite moment was when she opened an expensive bottle of liquor that my uncle had bought for her. “Well once you open it, you have to let me try some,” Uncle Saul said jokingly. “Absolutely not!” retorted Gran, in the driest tone possible. No one doubted her for a second!

Christmas without Gran doesn’t seem possible, to be honest. But we’ll make do. And we’ll keep the traditions – silly as they are – alive and well, in her honor. We’ve been so fortunate to have her in our lives for so long. From an evolutionary perspective, having such a special family member through marriage is nothing short of a blessing.

References

Buss, D. M. (2003). The evolution of desire. New York: Basic Books.

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