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The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (2005)
* Consider “stranger anxiety” as a candidate psychological adaptation. Its function is to motivate the infant to
recoil from potentially dangerous humans and to maintain close proximity to caregivers, thereby avoiding hazards that strangers might pose. Stranger anxiety possesses a number of well-articulated design features. It shows universality, emerging in infants in all cultures in which it has been studied. It emerges predictably during ontogeny at roughly 6 months of age, coinciding with the time when infants begin crawling away from their mothers and potentially encountering strangers. And its focus centers on strange males rather than strange females because strange males historically have been more hazardous to infants’ health. Stranger anxiety shows all the characteristics of “improbable design” for achieving a specific function.
* THE THEORY OF evolution by natural selection has revolutionary implications for understanding the design of the human mind and brain, as Darwin himself was the first to recognize (Darwin, 1859). Indeed, a principled understanding of the network of causation that built the functional architecture of the human species offers the possibility of transforming the study of humanity into a natural science capable of precision and rapid progress. Yet, nearly a century and a half after The Origin of Species was published, the psychological, social, and behavioral sciences remain largely untouched by these implications, and many of these disciplines continue to be founded on assumptions evolutionarily informed researchers know to be false…
* Adaptationism is based on the recognition that selection is the only known natural physical process that builds highly ordered functional organization (adaptations) into the designs of species, in a world otherwise continuously assaulted by the ubiquitous entropic tendency of physical systems to become increasingly disordered with time. Thus, although not everything is functional, whenever complex functional organization is found in the architectures of species, its existence and form can be traced back to a previous history of selection. Moreover, for a given selection pressure to drive an allele systematically upward until it is incorporated into the species-typical design, the same selective cause-and-effect relationship must recur across large areas and for many generations. Complex adaptations necessarily reflect the functional demands of the cross-generationally
long-enduring structure of the organism’s ancestral world, rather than modern, local, transient, or individual conditions. This is why evolutionary psychology as an adaptationist field concerns the functional design of mechanisms given a recurrently structured ancestral world, rather than the idea that behavior is the fitness striving of individuals tailored to unique circumstances Consequently, systems of complex, antientropic functional organization (adaptations) in organisms require explanation wherever they are found; their correct
explanation (barring supernatural events or artificial intervention) always involves a specific history of selection in ancestral environments; and so the prediction, discovery, mapping, and understanding of the functional architecture of organisms can be greatly facilitated by analyzing the recurrent structure of a
species’ ancestral world, in conjunction with the selection pressures that operated ancestrally.
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The Moral Psychology Handbook
Here are some highlights from the chapter on race in this 2010 book:
* evolutionary psychologists hold that people in many cultures and historical epochs have relied on skin color and other bodily features to classify their fellows, and have further believed that such classifications also group together people who share underlying biological commonalities.
* there is evidence that across cultures and historical epochs—e.g. in Classical Greece and in the Roman Empire (Isaac, 2004)—people have relied on classifications that are similar to modern racial categories in two central respects. First, these classifications are supposed to be based on phenotypic properties: members are supposed to belong to the same racial category because they share some phenotypic, i.e. morphological or behavioral, properties. Second, people assume or act as if racial categories map onto biological categories: members
who share the relevant phenotypic properties are assumed to share some important and distinctive set of underlying biological properties as well.* The presence of these common themes across different cultures is just what an evolutionary psychologist would expect, since evolutionary psychologists view racial cognition as a by-product of a cognitive system shared by all normally developing humans. In contrast, because socialization accounts cannot explain why these core elements should recur across times and cultures, they are at best incomplete.
* children do not acquire the tendency to classify racially from their familial environments. If children were explicitly taught by their parents, or if they merely picked up the classifications their parents used even without being explicitly instructed in their use, one would expect children’s beliefs about races to be similar to their parents’ beliefs. However, this is not the case…
* 3- to 7-year-old preschoolers treat skin color differently from other properties. Unlike properties like body shape, for instance, preschoolers expect skin color to be constant over a lifetime and to be transmitted across
generations. By contrast, they believe that body shape can change across a lifetime and is not necessarily transmitted across generations (ibid.: 97–101).These beliefs about racial properties reflect a kind of intuitive essentialism: racial properties are viewed as stable (racial properties do not change during one’s lifetime), intrinsic (racial properties are thought to be caused by one’s inner nature), innate (the development of racial properties does not depend much on one’s rearing environment), and inherited (parents transmit their racial properties to their children).
* Racial categorization develops early and reliably across cultures; it does not depend entirely on social learning; it is, in some respects, similar to commonsense biological classification. Thus racial categorization seems to be neither the product of socialization alone nor of the perceptual salience of skin color alone. It does not appear to result from a general tendency toward group prejudice, either. Rather, this body of evidence is best explained by the hypothesis that racial categorization results from a specialized, species-typical cognitive system that, even if it did not initially evolve to deal with racial categorization, has been recruited for this purpose.
* First, we are impressed by mounting evidence that race and racial bias can still have measurable and
important effects in real-world situations. In a field study by Bertrand and Mullainathan (2003), researchers responded to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers with a variety of fabricated resumes. Each resume was constructed around either a very black-sounding name (e.g. ‘‘Lakisha Washington’’ or ‘‘Jamal Jones’’) or a very white-sounding name (e.g. ‘‘Emily Walsh’’ or ‘‘Greg Baker’’). When the resumes were sent out to potential
employers, those bearing white names received an astonishing 50% more callbacks for interviews.* Similar evidence of race and racial bias influencing real-world situations comes from a recent statistical analysis of officiating in NBA (National Basketball Association) games, which claims to find evidence of an ‘‘opposite race bias’’ (Price &Wolfers, ms). The study, which took into account data from the 12 seasons from 1991–2003, found evidence that white referees called slightly but significantly more fouls on black players than white players, as well as evidence of the converse: black referees called slightly but significantly more fouls on white players than on black players.
* The racial composition of teams and refereeing crews was revealed to have slight but systematic influence on other statistics as well, including players’ scoring, assists, steals, and turnovers. The study found that players experience a decrease in scoring, assists and steals, and an increase in turnovers when playing before officiating crews primarily composed of members of the opposite race.
* the last couple of decades have shown a significant decrease in the expression of explicit racist attitudes…
* alcohol consumption interferes with the capacity to intentionally control the expression of these biases.
John M. Doris writes the Introduction:
* In the academy, the study of morality has historically been a special province of philosophy, while the study of mental processes has, for the past century or so, largely been the province of psychology and allied sciences. At the same time, recent philosophy has been largely speculative or theoretical (despite the robust empirical interests of many canonical philosophers), while the methods of contemporary psychology have
characteristically been empirical or experimental (despite the robust theoretical interests of many canonical psychologists). The results have been uneven: philosophy has often been light on fact, and psychology has often been light on theory.
From elsewhere in the book:
* So…what follows from the evolution of morality…? Very little.
* Norm violators are likely to feel shame or guilt (depending on which emotion is emphasized in their culture). Victims of norm violations and third parties are likely to feel anger or disgust toward norm violators. These emotions motivate behavior: the anticipation of feeling ashamed and guilty motivates avoiding the violation of norms, shame and guilt motivate reparative behavior, and anger motivates punishment. Disgust causes third parties to distance themselves from norm violators, which results in the loss of cooperative opportunities for the norm violators. Anticipatory fear of shame or guilt often motivates norm compliance…
* Norms, either informal or formal, are ancient: the historical record has no trace of a society without norms. Furthermore, norms are universal (although the content of norms varies tremendously across cultures). Small-scale societies are typically regulated by informal norms, while large-scale societies are typically regulated by informal and formal norms. All known societies also have policing mechanisms that ensure people’s compliance with the prevalent norms…
* While people reason poorly about non normative matters, they are adept at reasoning about normative matters…
* The existence of a cognitive system that seems dedicated specifically to produce good reasoning about norms from an early age on provides some suggestive evidence that normative cognition is an adaptation. Generally, the functional specificity of a trait is (defeasible) evidence that it is an adaptation. Furthermore, the fact that a trait develops early and that its development is distinctive—it is independent from the development of other traits—suggests that natural selection acted on its developmental pathway. The early development of a psychological trait suggests that it is not acquired as a result of our domain-general learning capacity; the distinctive development of a psychological trait suggests that it is not acquired as a by-product of the acquisition of another psychological capacity (for further discussion, see Machery, forthcoming). Thus, evidence tentatively suggests not only that normative cognition is an evolved trait, but also that it is an adaptation.
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Set Your Voice Free: How to Get the Singing or Speaking Voice You Want
Here are some highlights from this book by Roger Love:
* Musicians and singers, not surprisingly, used the widest range of notes. In the course of a conversation, they’d use many thirds (moving from do to mi), fourths (do up to fa), and fifths (from do to sol). Engineers used mostly thirds and tended to stay within that small range. And bankers used only seconds (do-re), which
are very limiting and almost monotonous. After a while my friend had no trouble guessing what a person did for a living, based simply on the intervals used in speech. He also identified the odd, dissonant intervals (minor seconds and flatted fifths) that cause us instantly to back off from someone we think might be emotionally off — the wackos and crazies we sometimes come across.
* Whispering and soft, airy speech happen to be murderous for the vocal cords. That alone is reason enough for me to encourage you to broaden your repertoire of “approachable” voices to include something a little easier on the pipes. A full 80 percent of all singers who develop physical problems with their vocal cords do so because of the way they speak, not the way they sing.
* To the brain, speaking and singing feel almost like the same thing. They use the same body parts, the same
muscles, and when you sing, your brain simply thinks you’re speaking but sustaining words an unusually long time and using more pitch variation.
* Paying attention to alignment will help you eliminate much of the muscle tension that impedes good singing and speaking. I’m impressed by the ideas developed by movement specialists like those practicing the Alexander Technique, and I think they have definite applications for the work we’re doing here. Alexander Technique experts believe that our bodies were designed to move and perform easily. Watch a healthy toddler in action and you will see an erect spine, free joints, and a large head balancing effortlessly on a small put unwanted pressure on the body, exerting more force than we need for even the simplest act — standing, sitting, or, I would add, singing. Paying attention to the alignment of the head and the spine can help correct the body’s overall coordination and bring us back into balance. So can being aware of how much force we’re putting into simple actions like lifting a book, opening a jar — or breathing. Balance, once we find it, is essentially effortless, and so is the flow of air into and out of our bodies. Discovering a way of standing that opens and lines you up may seem incidental to singing, but it frees space and energy for producing beautiful sounds.
* A newscaster’s goal is most often to make negative information sound intriguing but not depressing. Rather than giving in to the emotions tied to news of death and devastation, they look for ways to keep a high-energy, positive sound in their voices. The feeling of energy is created in part by the way they “punch” particular words, making them louder, or lifting the pitch, for emphasis. These speakers also end nearly every sentence by either staying on the same note or going higher. In regular conversation, most of us drop the pitch at the end of a sentence, which releases tension and lowers the feeling of intensity we’re creating. But by ending on the same pitch or going higher, news voices sustain the feeling of importance that they’ve built around what they’re saying — and leave you wanting to hear what comes next.
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La Cienega Heights Was Known As Corning-Cadillac When It Was Dominated By The Playboy Gangster Crips
* When I signed a lease on an apartment on Corning in 2018, I couldn’t believe my luck. The location couldn’t be beaten — 15 minutes from the beach, 20 from Downtown, a stone’s throw from Beverly Hills — yet I could afford it on a writer’s salary. Moreover, at a moment when I felt ambivalent about Orthodox Judaism, I could observe as I pleased. Most of the block’s residents were of Mexican descent, as was my new roommate, a stranger who had posted on Craigslist. But the neighborhood was adjacent to the heavily Orthodox Pico-Robertson area where I grew up, and I could walk to my parents’ for Shabbat dinner.
What I did not then understand was that the neighborhood, the very block, had changed a lot over the past 60-plus years. My good fortune had actually come at the tail end of a decades-long process of race-based discrimination. The Jewish revival of La Cienega Heights, as the neighborhood has been known since 2003, has not quite happened at the expense of Black life. But the trajectory of these 18 square blocks underscores the subtle ways in which American Jews, including myself, often benefit from structural anti-Black racism without realizing it.
* La Cienega Heights stayed predominantly white and Jewish through the 1950s.
Then, in 1967, came the first seeds of integration. That was the year the original cohort of Black students from South Los Angeles was bused to Alexander Hamilton High School, a mile from Corning Street. By 1972, half the school’s students were Black; by the 1980 census, 60% of La Cienega Heights residents were Black. Many of the area’s white residents, including most of its Jewish population, had moved out.
La Cienega Heights was not spared the introduction of rock cocaine into Black communities or the emergence of street gangs during the 1980s. Wrought-iron window bars and barbed wire went up around the neighborhood as a homegrown gang, the Playboy Gangster Crips, sold crack on Corning Street and controlled the surrounding blocks. The 1987 injunction developed to stop that gang, the first of its kind in the country, was the first of a series of crackdowns on crime in the neighborhood; what followed over the next 30 years was a gradual outflow of the neighborhood’s Black residents and an influx of Latino immigrants who took their place.
* La Cienega Heights — the area bound by Robertson and La Cienega boulevards, between Sawyer Street and Cadillac Avenue, and to be clear, a place with no heights to speak of — is now roughly 20% Black and 50% Latino.
* La Cienega Heights has sprouted a kollel (an institution that supports full-time Torah scholars), more sukkahs crop up every fall, and I see as many yarmulkes as pet dogs on the walk to shul. The Black community does not seem likely to return to its previous numbers.
* In her 2015 book “Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries,” which contains a historical ethnography of La Cienega Heights, Ana Muñiz, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California-Irvine, writes that one resident estimated the neighborhood was 80% Jewish in the 1950s. As they found professional success, those Jews sent their children to Hamilton, one of the top public high schools in the city. They got zoning laws changed so they could put up apartments in their backyards.
Then came busing.
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