Comments for Welcome to the EvoS Consortium!

Comment on The Spandrels of Dunkin Donuts, or How the Munchkin Came to Be by Paul Kelley

Paul Kelley — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:43:50 +0000

I had one of those cards when I was on Long Island. Constantly looking on Ebay for another…

Comment on Urban Angst: Darwinian Theory, the Need for Meaning, and Modern Existential Anxiety by Brandt Smith

Brandt Smith — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 21:56:09 +0000

Perhaps it is similar to the problem with all self-reports. We are rationalizing creatures afterall though we would like to be rational. This could be bi-directional in that meaning provides motivation (“I don’t steal candy bars because stealing is wrong and I am a good person”) while our actions, however odd, will be fit into our self-world view generating our sense of meaning.

I look forward to what you put together on this.

Comment on How Does Creationism Harm African Americans? by Joseph Graves Jr

Joseph Graves Jr — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:19:47 +0000

Dear Glenn, I have no information concerning the number of African Americans in that poll. If it was representative sampling, then we would expect the African American subsample to have been around 80 individuals.

Comment on Urban Angst: Darwinian Theory, the Need for Meaning, and Modern Existential Anxiety by Bo Winegard

Bo Winegard — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:08:30 +0000

Thanks Brandt. I think there is a connection. I am not exactly sure how it fits together though. Do you mean that meaning is a justification for a particular pursuit, which then gives rise to a need for meaning? So I might ask myself, “why am I doing this,” and require an answer in the form of a meaning conferring narrative? Or, at the very least, a meaning conferring narrative would increase my motivation? If so, I think that is a great point–something I did not contemplate as much as I should have and something that could be researched. If true, a lack of motivation should be related to a lack of meaning, which seems true, at least from what I know. And if true, it would explain why depression is often coupled with a profound sense of dread and aimlessness (meaninglessness).

Comment on Urban Angst: Darwinian Theory, the Need for Meaning, and Modern Existential Anxiety by Brandt Smith

Brandt Smith — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:13:25 +0000

Excellent ramble amigo. Very good. There is a latent fear that there is absolutely no meaning to any of this. So we make one up. Religious and social groups sprung from the same source, being social primates it became a group identity that all too often seeps into individual identity.

Just a side thought: Could the need for meaning be response to a need for motivation?

Comment on Urban Angst: Darwinian Theory, the Need for Meaning, and Modern Existential Anxiety by Ben Winegard

Ben Winegard — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 10:20:58 +0000

Solid. Unfortunately, you missed an almost unparalleled moment to make a post-modernly ironic, Youtube joke about double-rainbows.

Comment on Snakes and Spiders: A girl’s worst nightmare by Kaitlyn Andersen

Kaitlyn Andersen — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:19:40 +0000

Thanks Daniel! I’m glad I was able to inspire you :) I’m looking forward to reading your blog! Phobias are a very interesting topic that can definitely be linked to evolution.

Comment on Snakes and Spiders: A girl’s worst nightmare by Daniel Glass

Daniel Glass — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:19:22 +0000

Nice one! You even inspired me to do a post of my own on this, which I was meaning to get around to for the last week or so: http://evostudies.org/2011/12/phobias-prepared-and-acquired-real-and-linguistic/

Comment on Snakes and Spiders: A girl’s worst nightmare by Phobias: Prepared and Acquired–Real and Linguistic | Welcome to the EvoS Consortium!

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:18:25 +0000

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Comment on Darwinian Psychiatry, Evolutionary Psychopathology, Clinical Sociobiology, and so on… by Daniel Glass

Daniel Glass — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 01:44:31 +0000

Rose, that is an excellent question and one on which I am ill-qualified to remark, at this stage in my learning. A response to this could be a blog post in an of itself (or a whole book even), but short answer, I do think elements of an individualized approach are necessary in clinical psychology, just as in the field of medicine, rather than a cookie-cutter approach to treating disorder, regardless of individual circumstance. I will say that a strongly custom-fit approach might be more appropriate and feasible for counseling and psychotherapy settings than it is for severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or OCD, which seem very conducive to biomedical approaches as well as other forms of therapy. The lifetime prevalence rates of such disorders (1-3%, as you mention) aren’t really so rare compared to other types of illness–around the same rates as asthma in the US, for example–that unified approaches are untenable or undesirable. Patient-centered biopsychosocial approaches to treating asthma tend to be more effective, but in terms of etiology and research, there is still plenty of room for biomedical models of how the disease manifests (both in proximate and ultimate terms), and these lines of research are crucial for understanding and treating the disease.

And to your great point of how all forms of therapy seem to have roughly equivalent rates of effectiveness (all other things being equal)….. I’d say that many proponents of evolutionary psychology tend to be highly ambitious about the feasibility of science one day fully unlocking the secrets of the mind, and I’m no exception. To my mind, the finding about the equivalent efficacy of all forms of treatment (given that this efficacy is not 100%) just shows that nobody has gotten it right yet; nobody quite understands what’s going on up there as well as they think they do. Which is where, in my opinion, evolutionary approaches come in…if I didn’t feel evolution was the best way to understand mental illness (and the mind as a whole), I’d be advocating Creationist Psychology!