Many, if not all, of these problems have been recurring throughout the lives of human beings, and finding an appropriate solution for them can mean the difference between life and death, or between having many grandchildren and having none. It is difficult to imagine that all human beings must figure out solutions to these problems on their own, learning everything from scratch over the course of their lifetime—often with few or no opportunities to gain experience beforehand—and picking the most appropriate solution to the problem among the myriad possible different options. No, natural selection gives us a hand by suggesting successful solutions found by our ancestors. In some cases, the correct behavioral response to the problem is entirely hardwired in our brain and automatically triggered whenever we confront the problem; in others, we need to figure out the solution on our own, but our predispositions give us a big push in the right direction. Clearly, when we say that a trait—bones, body organs, or behavior—is the product of natural selection, we imply that the trait is genetically controlled. This doesn’t mean, however, that there are single genes for specific algorithms—psychological and behavioral algorithms may be influenced by many genes interacting in complex ways—or that the environment is not important. In reality, traits are always the result of interactions between genes and the environment. One cannot work without the other.
The kind of algorithms we possess in our minds depends on the kind of problems that recurred in the environment of our ancestors. If humans had been small fish, we would be born with all kinds of predispositions for swimming, navigation, and orientation in water; avoidance of sharks and other predators; coordination of movement with other fish; and so on. But humans are highly social primates, so we must deal with the ecological problems typical of other primates—spatial orientation in forests or vast open spaces, finding food appropriate to our digestive physiology, avoiding dangerous animals—plus the host of problems that arise from living long lives in complex and highly competitive societies. No wonder, then, if many of our mental and behavioral algorithms have something to do with solving social problems.
But what exactly are these algorithms, and what do they do for us? Structurally, they are complex neural circuits, some of which are located in particular brain regions and others of which are diffused throughout the entire brain in a thick web of intricate neural connections. In humans, research with a technique called functional brain imaging—which allows researchers to obtain visual images of the brain areas that get activated when we experience particular thoughts or solve particular behavioral tasks—is beginning to tell us what these algorithms are and where they are, but this is an extremely difficult enterprise, and we still know very little about it. We know a lot more about the function of algorithms: what they do for us and how they operate.
Some of these predispositions are simple preferences for certain visual, auditory, gustatory, or olfactory stimuli over others. Human babies are predisposed to show interest in faces, and especially in the eyes of faces. Sexually mature heterosexual males are predisposed to be visually attracted to female faces with infantile characteristics (which suggest a young age) and to female bodies with a thin waist and wide hips (which suggest high fertility). Females of all ages are predisposed to be visually attracted to baby faces. Infants and children are predisposed to be attracted to the sounds of baby talk, or motherese. We are all predisposed to like the taste of sugar. Other algorithms take the form of predispositions to experience particular emotions in response to particular situations, to make particular decisions when given a particular set of options, and more generally to act in particular ways with particular individuals and situations. Emotions represent very powerful biological predispositions to help us deal with environmental problems and are involved in virtually all of the social situations I discussed earlier in this book.
Emotions: Activators and Coordinators of Programs
When ecological and social problems arise, we have some behavioral algorithms at our disposal to help us solve them. But natural selection doesn’t just provide us with the solution to the problem; it also makes sure that we actually use it, and sometimes that we use it quickly. Behavior doesn’t always happen directly in response to the external environment. Rather, behavior is activated by a trigger inside our body. The environment pulls our internal trigger, and the trigger activates behavior. This trigger is called motivation. Motivation, or “wanting to do something,” doesn’t necessarily imply consciousness and free will. We can be motivated to do something and be totally unaware of it. In many cases, the substrate for motivation is a physiological reaction that begins in the body, where an event from the environment is recorded, and then moves into the brain. To give an example, if you stick your index finger in a flame, the flame will burn your skin and hurt the nerve cells in your fingertip. Pain, a physiological reaction that results from a connection between body and brain, is the trigger, the motivation that makes you withdraw your finger quickly.
Emotions are similar to pain, but more complex. As mentioned in Chapter 6, one function of emotions is to energize motivation, but they do a lot more than that. According to evolutionary psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, emotions are “computer programs” designed by natural selection not only to motivate behavioral responses but also to coordinate and organize other algorithms or subprograms. It is often the case that some of these algorithms need to be activated and others need to be deactivated in order for the appropriate behavioral response to be expressed, because at any point in time our body is simultaneously confronted with multiple different problems that require an adaptive solution.8
Imagine that you are walking alone on a street late at night. You haven’t had dinner yet, and the sight of people eating burgers at a McDonald’s and the smell of French fries tell you that you have a problem. The motivational trigger—hunger—is activated, and you want to find food. But you also haven’t had sex in months, and the sight of an attractive, half-naked model on a giant Victoria’s Secret lingerie billboard ad tells you that you have a problem. The trigger—lust—is activated, and you want to find a mate. But you also haven’t slept in three days, and walking nonstop for five hours has reinforced the notion that you have a problem. The trigger—fatigue—is activated, and you want to crash on a bed. But all of a sudden you feel the barrel of a gun pressed to the back of your head and a voice saying: “Give me your wallet or I will kill you.” Your life is in danger, so you definitely have a problem. The trigger—fear—is activated, and it makes you want to run away as fast as you can. But what about that Big Mac and fries, the lingerie-clad Victoria’s Secret model, and the comfortable bed that you wanted so badly a second ago? Luckily for you, your fear of being killed suppresses your hunger, lust, and fatigue so that the behavioral algorithms activated by these other triggers are not in competition with the one you now need the most to save your life. Eating a burger, having sex, or falling asleep is the last thing you want to do when you have a gun pointed at your head. Instead, other cognitive processes are activated: you are very alert and start processing other information from the environment and from memory. From the intensity with which the gun is pressed to your head, you get a sense of how potentially ready the robber is to kill you. From his voice, you gauge his size, his anger or fear, and his overall dangerousness. You estimate the distance from the nearest street corner and the time it would take you to get there if you started running. You remember that there is a garage where you could hide just around that corner. Finally, you scan the airwaves with your ears hoping to hear sirens in the background, which may suggest a police car is nearby. If you knew that the robber is your best friend playing a practical joke on you with a toy gun, none of this would happen. You would just laugh and keep thinking about the burger and all the rest. Instead, because the danger is real, your fear has all of these effects on your sensory processing, your memory and cognitive evaluations, and your shifting goals and motivations.
In the words of Tooby and Cosmides, the human
mind is “crowded with functionally specialized programs.” In addition to behavioral programs, there are cognitive and physiological programs that regulate the functions of our minds and bodies. According to Tooby and Cosmides, these programs regulate, among other things,
perception and attention; inference; learning; memory; goal choice; motivational priorities; categorization and conceptual frameworks; physiological reactions (such as heart rate, endocrine, immune, and reproductive function); reflexes; behavioral decision rules; motor systems; communication processes; energy level and effort allocation; affective coloration of events and stimuli; recalibration of probability estimates; situation assessments; and values and regulatory variables (such as self-esteem, estimation of relative formidability; relative value of alternative goal states; efficacy discount rate).
In the academic jargon of Tooby and Cosmides, “Programs that are individually designed to solve specific adaptive problems could, if simultaneously activated, deliver outputs that conflict with one another, interfering with or nullifying each other’s functional products. To avoid such consequences, the mind must be equipped with superordinate programs that override and deactivate some programs when others are activated.” Such “superordinate” programs are our emotions. Their function is to direct and coordinate the activities and interactions of all the other behavioral, physiological, and cognitive subprograms.
This might all sound a little complicated. Does it really work this way? Do emotions really guide us to do the right thing in every circumstance? Suppose that while you are being robbed at gunpoint your fear activates the fleeing response but, as you try to escape, the robber shoots and kills you. Was the wrong emotion or the wrong response activated? Did natural selection screw up? No, it would be unfair to expect natural selection to get it right every time. Natural selection that operated thousands or millions of years ago could not predict the contingencies and outcome of every individual situation in the future. Each emotional program was selected to activate subprograms that, when averaged over individuals and generations, would have led to the best course of action. Every situation is unique, however, and there is some uncertainty linked to the contingencies of the environment. In the words of Tooby and Cosmides, “An emotion is a bet placed under conditions of uncertainty. Running away in terror, vomiting in disgust, or attacking in rage are bets that are placed because these responses had the highest average payoffs for our ancestors, given the eliciting conditions.”
In some cases, of course, being held at gunpoint results in being shot, not because the right behavioral response doesn’t work but because the wrong emotion was elicited, or because no emotion was elicited when one should have been. We routinely find ourselves in evolutionarily novel situations for which natural selection has not prepared us to respond appropriately, and when we do, trouble or maladaptive behavior may arise. Evolutionary psychologists call this situation a “mismatch” between our evolved emotional responses and the novel environment in which they happen to be elicited. A classic example is crossing the street and not being afraid of being hit by a car. Automobiles kill pedestrians all the time, but because cars are a recent phenomenon, we don’t respond to risky situations involving them with the appropriate fear and anxiety. In contrast, we do have the propensity to be afraid of situations and stimuli that were associated with danger during much of our evolutionary past: darkness, heights, large predators, snakes, and spiders.
Even in novel situations, however, there may be cues that remind us of environmental problems that recurred billions or trillions of times during our evolutionary history. Some of our ancestors dealt with these problems well, while others didn’t; thus, some survived and reproduced, and others didn’t. We are the descendants of the successful problem-solvers. Thanks to natural selection, we have an innate knowledge of these recurring problems and the situations in which they arise; we have responses to deal with these problems and mental programs that help activate and guide these responses. Each emotion evolved to deal with a particular evolutionarily recurrent situation type. When familiar cues of danger are perceived—and this can happen unconsciously—a particular emotional trigger is immediately activated.
Let’s go back to the elevator ride with a stranger in Chapter 1. This is an evolutionarily novel situation, like crossing the street at a busy intersection. Natural selection didn’t prepare us to deal with elevator rides, and it certainly didn’t give us an elevator-specific emotion or elevator-specific behavioral algorithms. Nevertheless, the elevator situation, though novel itself, is full of cues of danger that are not novel at all. First, you find yourself in close proximity to a stranger, a position that is a strong cue for risk of aggression. Second, you find yourself locked in a small space, so if the stranger attacks you, there is no opportunity to escape or to call for help from family members or allies. If the stranger attacks and you fight back in that small space, it is almost certain that you are going to get hurt. And finally, in addition to all this, if the stranger makes eye contact with you and stares you down, well, that’s as strong a cue as you’ll ever get.
This combination of cues has probably recurred millions of times during our evolutionary history, and natural selection has prepared us to deal with the situation and given us an emotion that will motivate and trigger appropriate behavioral responses. The emotion, however, is not fear. When you are being robbed at gunpoint, the threat is clear, the danger is high, and you could die within seconds. There is no uncertainty as to the intentions of the robber, and given the seriousness of the situation, fear is the appropriate emotion. Fear is reserved for emergency situations. In the elevator, however, there is a lot of uncertainty, both about the stranger’s intention—is he indifferent, hostile, or friendly?—and about the possible courses of action: indifference, appeasement, or a preemptive threat. The appropriate emotion here is anxiety. A moderate level of anxiety will inhibit your motor behavior and make you avoid direct eye contact with the stranger.
As with fear, anxiety activates some motivational, cognitive, and behavioral processes and deactivates others. While avoiding eye contact, you may peek at the stranger standing next to you and unconsciously evaluate his formidability as a potential opponent relative to yours. Is he big and strong? Does he look like someone who could lose his temper quickly? Does he act with self-confidence, signaling that he is a high-status individual? How much social anxiety “leaks” from the stranger’s behavior? As you make these assessments, you may unconsciously recall relevant memories about similar encounters with strangers with a similar profile, make comparisons, and estimate the outcome probabilities. High social anxiety may prompt you to take preemptive measures to minimize the risk of aggression, such as sending appeasing signals—smiling and making small talk.
Similar social anxiety and the accompanying cognitive and behavioral processes may also occur in a low-status individual who encounters a familiar higher-status person—for example, when you meet your company’s boss in his office. In this case, your anxiety is based more directly on the awareness of the status difference, memories of past interactions, and their implications for the present and the future. The boss got mad at you and was verbally abusive in the past. Will he act similarly this time or not? You can’t afford to lose your temper because the consequences could be devastating for your career. As with the stranger in the elevator, you unconsciously assess your boss’s appearance and nonverbal behavior—for example, the way he looks at you or the tone of his voice—looking for potential cues of hostility. You process past and present information and make predictions about the future. Your anxiety doesn’t just suppress behavior that might be misinterpreted as hostile, such as boldly looking your boss in the eyes. You also express explicitly submissive behavior such as avoiding his gaze, keeping your head down, smiling a lot, and speaking in a soft tone of voice.
The emotional flip side of fear and anxiety in socially dangerous or competitive situations is anger. Anger can motivate competitiveness and assertiveness
in confrontations with individuals with whom you don’t have a well-established dominance relationship. This could be anyone from an individual well known to you, such as your partner or spouse, to a stranger you are meeting for the first time or an out-group member such as a fan of a different football team or a member of a different political party. As discussed in Chapter 2, when a dominance relationship within a couple is not well established, confrontations are likely to be frequent and accompanied by outbursts of anger. If you get into a major car accident and the other driver starts screaming at you and accusing you of being at fault, you’d better yell back and hold your ground because the outcome of this confrontation may affect subsequent negotiations about assumption of responsibility and costs. Finally, confrontations with out-group individuals—whether they occur at sports events or at political rallies—are often accompanied by anger and animosity toward the members of the other group. In some types of confrontations with out-group members, fear is also elicited. Fear makes us infer danger and aggressiveness in others. Along with anger, fear can contribute to motivating competitive and aggressive responses toward out-group members. Generally, anger motivates assertive and threatening behavior, and sometimes acting self-confident or threatening is all that’s needed to settle a contest to your advantage. An angry dog will growl and bark loudly to another one he meets in the park; if this display is effective, he becomes dominant over the other without any need for physical aggression. If a fight arises, between dogs or people, anger may provide the motivational fuel for fighting hard and long, or as long as it takes to win the battle. As with fear and social anxiety, when anger is triggered, some perceptual, cognitive, motivational, and behavioral subprograms are activated while others are deactivated.
Games Primates Play: An Undercover Investigation of the Evolution and Economics of Human Relationships Page 28