Laws of Attraction: The seduction of Evolutionary Psychology?

Hi Holmes.here's an EP study which I find interesting and may answer an important question - if schizophrenia is genetic and reduces evol. fitness, why does it persist in the population?Paper here...http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/...%20clegg%20proceedings%20b.pdfweb summary... Schizotypy, creativity and mating success in humans I thought you'd like this study, lol - schizophrenia is largely genetic, schizotypy is associated with schizophrenia, schizotypy is related to creativity, creativity is related to sexual success - therefore sexual success of schizotypy maintains the scizophrenic genes...It's an explanation, maybe not perfect, but the best we have at this time.This message has been edited by melatonin, 02-24-2006 04:46 PM

Just thought I'd outline my opinion of EP . I see no problem with EP thinking. We are an animal, and therefore are affected by the same processes as other species. I don’t feel that EP suggests that genes are the sole determinant of behaviour, just that genes provide a dispostional basis of behaviour. Many personality traits are highly heritable and therefore there are good reasons to look for evolutionary explanations of behaviour. But we also know that that even in identical twins they can readily develop different personalities due to environmental situations (Judith Harris’ book ”No two Alike’ addresses this; Pinker is a fan of Harris).For instance, sociopathy/psychopathy is highly heritable and the same can be seen in criminality (due to its association with sociopathy). The two-threshold model suggests that an interaction between genes, hormones, and environment are required to express sociopathy. So, we know that sociopathy is much more common in males - this may well be because androgens trigger these genes. But how do we explain female sociopaths? Well it’s suggested that for sociopathy to appear in females, they need a greater ”genetic dose’ to exhibited this behaviour. It’s also been shown that there is a greater risk in the offspring of female sociopaths - suggesting that environment is more important for male sociopathy (and it expresses at a lower genetic dose) and females possess a greater genetic load.Personality theories suggest that certain traits are indicative of sociopathy - low ”harm-avoidance’, high ”novelty-seeking’, low ”reward-dependence’ (Cloninger. 1987). These are also heritable and have a neurophysiological basis - HA -serotonin; RD = noradrenaline; NS = dopamine. So we would expect sociopaths to exhibit such physiology - there is data suggesting they do (see Zuckermann, 1989). Researchers also distinguish between ”primary’ (predominately genetics) and ”secondary’ (predominately environment) forms of sociopathy. Also important is the fact that sociopaths exhibit a poor ”theory of mind’ (are less able to represent the feelings of others, autisism is more common in males and they seem to lack a TOM).So EP would suggest that the ”trait’ of sociopathy must have some utility in fitness. One way to view sociopaths is as ”cheaters’. Game theory suggests that in certain circumstances (environments) this strategy will pay-off.I have a different view of this. I don’t know if it is discussed in the literature of EP but a recent paper by Tania Singer raised this possibility to me. Tania Singer’s group at UCL have shown that males show less empathy (and even pleasure - schadenfreude) to the suffering of an individual who has ”cheated’ them. They suggest that this would be useful in the evolution of society - men as rule makers and protectors (which I guess is similar to alpha male behaviour). It seems to me that this could be a consequence of similar genes indicated in sociopathy (it’s completely my speculation, lol). As empathy requires ”theory of mind’ and sociopaths are deficient in ”theory of mind’ and so lack empathy, it seems that sociopathy may be the result of an extreme version of such behaviour. It seems analogous to the schizotypy situation - schizotypic traits aid a form of human display and are useful for sexual selection, schizophrenia is an extreme form of schizotypy. Maybe sociopathy is an extreme form of the male ability to exact revenge by restricting empathy. It’s quite paradoxical because it would mean that the genes that aid in maintaining adherence to social rules, may actually also underlie the behaviour of those who break such rules.Anyway, be kind to me on the speculation above One good criticism of EP comes from Panksepp (a behavioural neuroscientist), he agrees with some aspects of what holmes says - there is species-centrism in EP and assessment of comparative neurology would aid in the understanding of human behaviour/evolution of mind. A lot of the criticism of EP seems to be due to the perception of ”hyperreductionism’, I think reductionist approaches are useful (I have a tendency for reductionism because of my approach to human behaviour), as long as we understand it cannot explain behaviour in its entirety (i.e. they are limited).I see possible EP explanations of social behaviours such as prejudice but it is very useful in certain behaviours that are directly related to evolutionary selction (mate selection etc).And before Holmes posts his criticism of the schizotypy study - I see a few issues with it myself - one is that the researchers should have assessed social desirability, the answers to questions about sexual proclivities are likely to be very amenable to demand characteristics - maybe high schizotypal individuals are more likely to exaggerate. I’m sure holmes will have more though.Report of Tania Singer paper . http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_wtx028342.htmlHolmes, on the REM-memory article issue, I would tell her to start with the papers I posted (couple of good reviews there). If she can't access them, I'll e-mail them to you if you want This message has been edited by melatonin, 02-25-2006 02:58 PMThis message has been edited by melatonin, 02-25-2006 03:08 PM

cheers crashfrog, I'll check that out.I come up with 20 different hypotheses a week from reading the literature - one day I may hit a useful one, lol.edit: I should probably restrict expending my brain juice to areas more relevant to my research...This message has been edited by melatonin, 02-25-2006 04:50 PM

oops, double posted OK, may as well use this space...Holmes, don't know if you have seen Panksepp's criticisms of EP. Here's a linky to his paper "seven sins of evolutionary psychology"...http://www.psy.plym.ac.uk/...chology/panksepp_seven_sins.pdfThis message has been edited by melatonin, 02-26-2006 10:14 AMThis message has been edited by melatonin, 02-26-2006 10:27 AM

haha, thought you'd enjoy this paper. As you point out, it does have good points but some definite methodological problems and the conclusions drawn are at a stretch.There are good reasons to look at the genes underlying schizophrenia as selective fitness indicators. Most animals have fitness indicators and we would expect the same in humans, common indicators are behaviour (performance) and physical attributes. Schizophrenia generally becomes apparent during the major period of reproductive fitness (15-26) and is rare before puberty. In many species, dopamine agonists stimulate courtship behaviour and we know that dopamine activity is a major dysfunction in schizophrenia (but of course not the only one) and is treated with anti-psychotics that are dopamine antagonists (further, dopamine agonists worsen symptoms). One thing you did mention, and is known, is that schizophrenics in long-term relationships do produce a similar number of children - but if their genes underlie courtship behaviours then we expect them to have difficulties in attracting/retaining a mate - they do have lower rates of future marriage and reproduction/mates when single. Also we would expect sex differences in humans, males do show more frequent and severe symptoms compared to females. So if we want to show that these genes are a fitness indicator, then we need to find how they are used to attract mates. So we have a fair hypothesis - the genes underlying schizophrenia/schizotypy provide a fitness indicator in humans, (and like most fitness indicators, it will be variable across the population). There is a fair bit of research that links schizotypy and creativity, so it is an approach worth using.On the methodology side, there are problems, as you mention fame may be a confound - but I would say that if you look at society, entertainment is a major industry and source of fame - so we could say that these sort of creative behaviours are highly valued in human society. Maybe because they are fitness indicators (my speculation here). Poor scientists with their analytical minds are much less valued, although we may well provide more instrumental value to society The measure of number of partners seems appropriate to me. We already control our reproduction, so we would have problems in using offspring as an indicator. And as we are interested in selective fitness indicators, number of attracted mates would seem a fair measure.I also wonder why they used an 18yrs cut-off. I know that many teenagers are sexually active in the UK, so it may have actually helped their study to just assess partners across lifetime. Seems a bit silly.The cultural issue is always a problem in research. We have limited funds and time. I would love to head off to S. Africa to provide some cultural validity in my research (especially in winter, lol), but it would take a long time to gain ethical approval and perform such studies, never mind the financial cost. We need researchers in these cultures doing similar research. So, we restrict ready generalisation to our culture and tentatively apply it to others. But I agree that if we are looking for universal behaviours (which EP is) then we need this approach.My major issue is with demand characteristics/exaggeration. We already know that schizophrenics have a tendency to confabulate. Can we really depend on creative people with high trait schizotypy to provide reliable answers to such questions? A simple social desirability questionnaire may help here (maybe they did use one, but I don't see it reported).From the results, if we ignore the professional artists we only have two correlations; one positive - impulsive non-conformity; one negative - introvertive anhedonia. So it seems to me that there is no real advantage to schizotypal behaviour in the general population - the gains are negated. And in a society where non-conformity is widespread (compared to the 50's), I definitely see issues with the conclusions formed.So I agree with the many of your criticisms. The conclusion formed is shaky at best. But I do see good reasons to continue this line of research, replication and other approaches are defintely required.This message has been edited by melatonin, 02-26-2006 10:54 AM

Yep, seems the site is down.Here's a savefile link...http://www.savefile.com/files/2446211