Two academic fields that share the topic of explaining how human behavior has evolved over time and place are increasingly finding themselves at odds.
These contending fields are Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavioral Ecology.
Sharon Begley, in a Newsweek column to appear in the 2009, June 29th, issue, entitled “ Why Do We Rape, Kill and Sleep Around?” (www.newsweek.com/id/202789/output/print) brings to the fore a debate on this topic that should be of increasing interest to BioMedical Librarians, particularly those who serve programs in forensic psychiatry and biological anthropology.
Evolutionary Psychology: Eons-Old Genes Compel Necessary (If To Ours Sensibilities, Distasteful) Behaviors That Improve The Survival Of The Fittest Among Mankind
Evolutionary Psychology, at its core, suggests that humans inherit deeply imbedded, strongly driving, and often rather specific traits and urges that confer on their holders an evolutionary advantage.
The Evolutionary Psychology argument goes something like this (and this explanation does contain an element of circular logic).
A human behavior that has historically played out, over and over again for tens of thousands of years, whether good or bad in terms of current morality, persists because it has to have been advantageous for the doers of the deeds that result, in the sense they survive long enough to pass down the gene(s) that compelled them to act out that way in the first place.
Such genes are thought to be genuinely adaptive or purposeful, not merely random, decorative or optional, according to evolutionary psychology, because their very persistence is proof that they have earned their place in the assortment of behavioral genes that must be passed on from generation to generation for the species to survive.
This theory presupposes a kind of parsimonious behavioral gene safety deposit box with a limited capacity, in the sense that organisms, including, man presumably do not save or carry around behavioral genes that serve no purpose.
Reduced to is simplest terms, evolutionary psychology argues that the only real measure of evolutionary success for an organism, including for a man, is whether or not his particular genes are perpetuated. If not, the organism, and the man, is merely an evolutionary dead end. This mindset is perhaps best embodied in portions of the best-selling book by Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. (cited below.) And to a great degree, Human Behavioral Ecology, is incline to degree.
Human Behavioral Ecology: Genes Favor Brains that Are Flexible in Dealing with Changing Conditions Over Eons
Behavioral Ecology posits that at any point in the history of life, an organism, including a man, adapts to his constantly changing environment and its resources, including the presence of other humans, by trying out an assortment of behaviors, and to the degree that he learns quickly enough through these trial-and-error situations, what works and what does not, he eventually optimizes his chances of surviving, and thereby of passing down his genes.
According to Human Behavioral Ecology, the behavioral genes that matter most are those that enable man to learn to assess situations quickly enough to survive long enough to mate and pass on genes to surviving children who themselves “learn to learn.”
According to Human Behavioral Ecology, the ability to recognize when a hard-wired behavior is no longer adaptive, is itself, an evolutionarily favored adaptation, and perhaps a superior one.
In a sense, a seemingly fixed, hard-wired, brain-driven behavior, the kind to which Evolutionary Psychology often points, even if it has survived for ten thousand years for some adaptive reason in the past, is, according to Human Behavioral Ecology, likely to be wiped out, if it results in behaviors that are so rigid as to no longer serve a purpose, or behaviors that costs more to put into play than they will likely yield in survival benefits.
Hard-Wired Brain Modules for Purposeful Menace?
These propositions would be entirely academic if they involved only debates over issues such as whether or not our brains have specifically evolved areas or dedicated synaptic pathways for language or writing, for facial recognition of clan mates and detection of the emotional states of others, for the avoidance of poisonous snakes or carnivores, or for the use of tools and the ability to make fire.
The problem comes when forceful sexual behavior, or group domination through intimidation, war-making and theft of resources is debated by these two groups.
Typically the evolutionary psychologist argue that behavioral uses and abuses along these lines are essentially hard-wired into the brain, and in some cases, they may still serve an adaptive function that will perpetuate greater numbers of people who are thus hard-wired.
Even if this behavior is no longer adaptive, the evolutionary psychologist argues, the person with the genes that drive this behavior often cannot hold it in check, because his brain, is, after all, hard-wired to do it.
This is where Begley’s column comes in.
While discussing a variety of related issues, authors, and sources, she particularly takes to task more recent popularizations and/or over heatedly titled academic books dealing with evolutionary psychology. She focuses especially on Randy Thornhill, Craig Palmer and their book, A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (cited below).
In an attack that is essentially one-sided, she picks out an explosive proposition concerning rape that she suggests is emblematic of the wrong-thinking of evolutionary psychologists, and counters it heavily with studies and interviews from the opposing side.
It should be noted that not all of the critics of this theory or of evolutionary psychology in general, that she and others cite, are scientists of the same high caliber of many of the pro-EP movement. Critics on Begley’s side do include notable scholars from other fields: Philosophers, cultural anthropologists, sex crime prosecutors and feminists in general. But the column gives the impression that the evolutionary psychologists are currently without an effective response to their critics, on this and on related issues.
Is Genetically-Driven Rape A Good Way to Increase the Chances All Your Genes Will Be Passed on to Succeeding Generations?
The most damning assertion Begley attacks is that held by some prominent evolutionary psychologists that rape by males of women is an evolutionarily effective way to increase their progeny, particularly progeny who will behave just like rapists do.
The theory of these particular evolutionary psychologists goes that the more women the rapist impregnates, the more likely the rapist will have children, particularly sons, who have this same strong desire to dominate the sexual activity and reproductive lives of as many women as possible, giving the rapist as many offspring as possible.
This theory is based on some anthropological evidence among primitive tribes, and even on studies of relatively modern human cultures , in which rape is frequently used by the most dominant males, who thereby presumably succeed in have the most offspring, and therefore in passing on their genes.
Begley particularly counters this argument via a study (cited below) done by Smith, Borgerhoff-Mulder & Hill (respectively of the University of Washington, UC-Davis and the University of New Mexico at the time, but now at Arizona State University) in which those authors argue that even under the Stone Age hunter-gatherer-warrior Ur-scenario on which some rape-as-hard-wired-adaptation evolutionary psychologists predicate their theory, rape is unlikely to be a sure path on the road to passing on one’s genes.
Why Rape in Primitive Societies Is Less Likely to Succeed Evolutionarily Than It Would First Appear
· Not all women raped are likely to be ovulating and fertile at the time or rape, and opportunity costs for mating with willing women fertile women are incurred. (Moreover, in some societies preadolescent girls and post-menopausal women, neither of whom can have children are often violently raped, suggesting that having progeny is not the motivation for rape in at least some cases.)
· Many women who are raped will have spontaneous or induced abortions. A momentary coercive fertilization on the part of the rapist can be short-circuited by biology or the woman’s own intervention, even in some very primitive societies
· Women are not necessarily inclined to care for the offspring of rape. They may just kill them outright or enslave them to serve her “legitimate” children, reducing the survivability of the rapist’s genes for the next generation, and in the latter case, actually promoting the survival and prosperity of children who are not the result of rape.
· Women who already have a consensual sexual relationship, particularly one based on emotional bonds with a rapist, may, from a response based on open or covert jealousy, undercut the health or well-being of the rapist. In many primitive societies the vast majority of food is actually brought in by women who are gatherers as opposed to by men who are hunters. Jealous women may reduce or stop supplying the rapist with gathered food or other creature comforts out of disapproval, reducing his reproductive fitness and likelihood of passing down his genes.
· In many primitive societies, as in most modern societies (excepting those where so-called “honor killings” focus rage on the victimized woman), retaliation against the rapist is likely to materialize in the rapist being specifically targeted for death by the offended parties. This retaliation may even extend to other members of the rapist’s family and clan. Under this scenario, the cost of making a child by rape may be overwhelmed by having the rapist and all the rapist’s other children killed in a counterstrike.
· Other family members or members of the rapist’s clan may decide that the trouble caused by a rapist is not worth the purported gains, and take action against him on their own, to forestall retaliatory strikes, and to minimize local sexual tensions and rivalries within the clan.
· While the process of rape is undoubtedly traumatizing for its victims, those victims can in some cases, subsequently learn preemptively to defend themselves or to strike back lethally at this or other rapists unexpectedly. Once an overwhelmed victim, does not means always an overwhelmed victim. Furthermore, women can organize collective self-defense or commit to revenging after-the-fact for crimes committed against any one of their number.
Tony Stankus, tstankus@uark.edu FSLA, Professor, Life Sciences Librarian, Coordinator of Science Collections
University of Arkansas Libraries MULN 223 E
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Buss, D.M. (2000). The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy is as Necessary as Love and Sex. New York, The Free Press.
Buss, D.M. & Malamuth, N. (1996). Sex, Power, Conflict: Evolutionary & Feminist Perspectives. Oxford University Press.
Dawkins, R. (2006). The Selfish Gene, 30th Anniversary Edition. Oxford University Press.
Duntley, J. & Shackelford, T.K. (2008). Evolutionary Forensic Psychology: Darwinian Foundations of Crime and Law. Oxford University Press.
Kokko, H. (2001). Human rape: Adaptive or not? (2001). Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 16, (9), 488-489.
Lalumiere, M.L., Harris, G.T., Quinsey, V.L., Rice, M.E. (2005). The Causes of Rape: Understanding Individual Differences in Male Propensity for Sexual Aggression. Washington. DC.: American Psychological Association.
McKibbin, W.F., Schackelford, T.K.,Goetz, A.T.,m & Starrat, V.G. (2008). Why do men rape? An evolutionary psychology perspective. Review of General Psychology, 12, 86-97.
Smith, E.A., Borgerhoff Mulder, M. & Hill, K. (2001). Controversies in the evolutionary social sciences: A guide for the perplexed. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 16, (3), 128-136.
Smith, E.A., Borgerhoff Mulder, M, & Hill, K. (2001). Human rape: Adaptive or not?’ A Response from Smith, Borgerhoff Mulder & Hill. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 16, (9), 489.
Thornhill, R & Palmer, C. (2000). A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Travis, C.B., Editor, (2003). Evolution, Gender & Rape. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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