Evolutionary Psychology
Knows You, Oh, So Well
Knows You, Oh, So Well
Evolutionary psychologists can explain why women love to shop (they must be the ones keeping that cliché alive), why some people vote for conservatives (neurons or genes), and why men tip at restaurants (to get the girls, not the service). They also know:
- -Why children don’t like vegetables (nothing to do with young’uns’ preference for sweet things).
- -Why hungry men prefer plump women (not just because they probably know where the kitchen is).
- -Why we have color vision (mainly to detect blushing).
- -Why we are sexually jealous (not fear of abandonment, but “sperm competition”).
- -Why toddlers are Neanderthals (not just immature).
- -Why we don’t stick to our goals (evolution gave us a kludge brain).
- -Why women prefer men with stubble (except for those who don’t).
- -Why gossip is good for you (despite wrecked relationships).
- -Why moral behavior is based on primitive disgust (not rational evaluation).
- -Why music exists (to “spot the savannah with little Pavarottis”).
- -Why art exists (to recapture that lost savannah).
- -Why altruism exists (to spread selfish genes).
- -Why altruism is really a form of sexual display; why altruism is really just selfishness; why a child must have a selfish motive for saving his sister’s life (do you sense the urgency to -explain away altruism? Why?).
- -Why right and wrong don’t really make sense (to whom?).
- -Why we don’t eat grandma (because she can babysit the kids).
- -Why we can’t help behaving badly (it is programmed into our genes).
Oh, and religion is a sort of replicator or “meme” in our brains; and we believe in God because he is a supernatural cheat detector; or else we believe in God because belief is and is not adaptive at the same time; also, we believe in God because we have a genetic predisposition to communicate unverifiable information. (Do you sense a pattern here?)
There is a dark side, too. Our Stone Age ancestors are deputized to explain, as Sharon Begley observes in Newsweek, why we rape, kill, and sleep around.
Welcome to the world of hard science.
Note: All these items and many more have appeared in professional literature on evolutionary psychology.
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