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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is a product of selection. I have lobbed ideas to colleagues and friends in conversations and drafts for decades, and they have tossed them back or away. Those conversations and comments have carved away much nonsense and confusion and helped me to capture ideas that otherwise would have gotten away. Barbara Smuts, Linda A. W. Brakel, and
Richard Nisbett deserve special thanks. Barb is a psychologist and primatologist whose work and friendship have inspired me. Linda is psychoanalyst/psychiatrist/philosopher who for years joined Barb and me in weekly discussions that shaped my ideas and who provided wonderful critical comments on drafts of these chapters. Dick is a social psychologist whose work and friendship have inspired me and whose comments on a draft of this book were invaluable.
My students and colleagues at the University of Michigan have provided wonderful encouragement and criticism. Generations of psychiatry residents took my course on evolution and mental disorders. One group read a whole draft of a previous version and provided cogent suggestions; it included Ryan Edwards, Lauren Edwards, Srijan Sen, Margit Burmeister, Paul Wright, and Shweta Ramdas. This version of the book is so different that they will not recognize it. Professors of psychiatry who inspired my research career at the University of Michigan include John Greden, Bernard Carroll, George Curtis, Kevin Kerber, James Abelson, and Oliver Cameron.
The University of Michigan provided a fabulous intellectual environment in the last twenty years of the twentieth century. The evolutionary biologist Richard Alexander brought together a nucleus of scientists to debate the crucial issues about evolution and behavior. That group developed into the Evolution and Human Behavior Program, including Barbara Smuts, Richard Wrangham, Bobbi Low, Warren Holmes, David Buss, and me. Younger affiliated scientists, including Beverly Strassmann, Paul Turke, Laura Betzig, and Paul Ewald, have gone on to stellar careers. After that group disbanded, the university provided funds, thanks to Nancy Cantor, that allowed me to continue as the director of the Evolution and Human Adaptation Program. Many others at the university were also sophisticated evolutionary thinkers, including the psychologist Phoebe Ellsworth and the philosophers Allen Gibbard and Peter Railton, whose evolution and ethics lunches set me straight on many matters. The university also made possible leaves that allowed creation of this book, including one at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, where the environment was extraordinarily conducive to creative thinking. UK philosophers and evolution experts Helena Cronin and Janet Radcliffe Richards provided friendship and conversations that were even more inspiring than their wonderful books.
Conversations with John Holland, Bob Axelrod, Bobbi Low, and Carl Simon proved seminal about complexity theory, and regular lunch conversations with the geneticist Jim Neel over many years provided an advanced education in genetics and a model of generosity from a world-leading scientist to a curious doctor. Visitors, including Bill Hamilton, George Williams, Bill Irons, Napoleon Chagnon, Martin Daly, and Margo Wilson, expanded our vision. The person at Michigan who did the most to make my work possible was Nancy Cantor; in her administrative position she arranged for half of my appointments to move from the medical center to the main campus, where I was able to do the work needed to develop evolutionary medicine.
Many friends and colleagues provided detailed commentary on chapters, some on the entire book, line by line. Your reading experience has been greatly improved as a result of the generous and detailed critiques provided by Sylvia Bonner, Annette Hollander, Richard Nisbett, Carl Carlson, Holly Carlson, Linda Brakel, Holly Smith, and Paul St. John-Smith. Tyler Quigley spent an entire summer editing and helping me find missing references. Maria Klingler and Chelsea Landolin are careful readers whose comments were as encouraging as they were critical. Julia Heiman, Marlene Zuk, Laura Betzig, and Hanna Kokko provided crucial critiques of the sex chapter.
Conversations and friendships with evolutionary psychiatry leaders have inspired many ideas and made this work possible. A few of them are Daniel Stein, Martin Brüne, John Price, Russell Gardner, Riadh Abed, Paul St. John-Smith, Daniel Wilson, Daniel Nettle, Paul Gilbert, Leon Sloman, Douglas Kramer, Jay Feierman, Pieter Adriaens, John Beahrs, Jerry Wakefield, Allan Horowitz, Jay Belsky, Kalman Glantz, Eiko Fried, Matthew Keller, Andy Thompson, and most of all Brant Wenegrat, Melvin Konner, Alfonso Troisi, and Michael McGuire, whose seminal books about evolutionary psychiatry set this field in motion decades ago.
I hope this book will be recognized as a fine example of the “third culture” developed so well by my agents John Brockman and Katinka Matson, who is also a talented artist. Their work and their Edge.org blog have created a new publishing space for popular books that advance serious new science. I am especially grateful to Katinka for her patience and sage advice at many phases of the process.
Finally, the two editors who provided the most help and support to get this manuscript in shape are my wonderful wife, the novelist Margaret Nesse, and my wonderful editor at Dutton, Stephen Morrow. Warmest thanks to them and everyone else I can never repay. I hope they and all others who have helped will take satisfaction in seeing this book do what it can to advance our understanding of mental disorders and to find better ways to treat them.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
INDEX
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.
A
Abed, Riadh, 267
abnormalities, 13
abundance, 231–33
Ache tribe, 125
Adaptation and Natural Selection (Williams), 33
adaptationism, 264
addictions
to alcohol, 234–35
behavior control system and, 236–37
to drugs, 238–39, 240–41
to sugar, 219–20
treatments for, 243–44
vulnerability to, 235–36, 242–43
ADHD. See attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
affect, 87
affective disorders. See mood disorders
aging
evolutionary aspects of, 11–12
genes that cause, 13
agoraphobia, 77–78
Akil, Huda, 24
Akiskal, Hagop, 253
alcohol and alcoholism
infection and, 238
rates of, 235
Alexander, Richard, 162, 184, 193, 197
alleles (gene versions), 39, 164
alpha male, 91
Allport, Gordon, 145
altruism
closed groups and, 171
competitive versus selfless, 174
cultural factors in, 170
as hypocritical, 193
reproduction and, 161
sexual partners and, 173
Alzheimer’s disease, 253, 258–59
ambition, 132
American Psychiatric Association (APA), 21–22
amphetamine, 240–41
amygdala, 52
amyloid beta (protein), 259
Andreasen, Nancy, 22–23
Andreas-Salomé, Lou, 213
Andrews, Paul, 94
Animal Behavior Society, 183
anorexia, 224–27, 228
antagonistic pleiotropy, 253
antibiotic resistance, 37
anticipator mechanism, 131
antidepressants, 79, 136
anxiety
benefits of, 72
false alarms and, 73–74
reason for, 71–73
social, 176–78
usefulness of, 16, 82
anxiety disorders, 67–68, 71–72
APA. See American Psychiatric Association
Apgar, Virginia, 152
Apgar score, 152
appraisals, 62
Archer, John, 180
Armstrong, Elizabeth, 212
arousal, 209–10
artificial sweeteners, 229
attachment
avoidant or anxious, 90
in sexual relationships, 205, 215<
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attachment theory, 89–90
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 98
attention surplus disorder, 98
Austen, Jane, 147
autism
benefits associated with, 253
genetic factors in, 247, 251–52
rates of, 245–46
Axelrod, Robert, 167–68
B
babies
Apgar score for, 152
larger, 251–52, 258
mental disorders in, 246
nutrition in utero of, 230
separation from mothers and, 89–90
bacteria, 37, 56
Bargh, John, 191
Barker, David, 230
Baron-Cohen, Simon, 252
Barrett, Lisa Feldman, 58
baselines of mood, 122–23
Bateson, Melissa, 83, 231
Bayer Company, 240
Beck, Aaron, 129
behavior
control systems for, 236–37
formula for cost of, 33
normal, xii, 264
in pursuit of goals, 94–95
regulatory systems for, 241–42
behavioral ecology, 48
behavioral psychology, 69
behavioral therapy, 136–37
Behavior is a function of a Person in his or her Environment (B = f(P,E), Lewin formula), 115
behavior therapy, 79
Bell, Charles, 52
benefits
of anxiety, 72
of cooperation, 163–64
of mental disorders, 253
of traits, 33, 164
vulnerability and, 253
bereavement, 86, 178–82
Berridge, Kent, 242
berry picking, 95–98
Betzig, Laura, 216, 239
B = f(P,E) (Lewin formula), 115
Bierce, Ambrose, 205
Biggest Loser, The (television program), 224
biopsychosocial model, 8, 90, 267
bipolar disorder
benefits of, 253
brain abnormality and, 119–20
depression and, 114, 130–33
Good Reasons for Bad Feelings Page 40