Browse 435 quotes about Evolutionary Psychology.
“We tend to trust others with whom we share similar values or worldviews. The shared belief in the supernatural world accesible through trance, where one interacts with watchful ancestors and spirits might be a basis upon which trust could be built. If while ritually interacting with beloved ancestors, members of both groups pledge their mutual allegiance, then rivals might become friends and trading partners. Once again, a psychological resource, trust, gives access to the material resources of trade.”
Source: Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources
“You are not alone in the struggles of life. Entire cosmos is with you. It evolves through the way you face and overcome challenges of life. Use everything in your advantage.”
Source: Mindfulness Meditation for Corporate Leadership and Management
“Close friendships are truly vestiges of our biological heritage.”
Source: Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature
“Often we’re more about the anticipation and pursuit of pleasure than about the experience of it.”
Source: Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
“Our brains, like rat brains, are wired so that food and sex give us little bursts of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that is the brains's way of making un enjoy the activities that are good for the survival of our genes.”
Source: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
“Girls raised in dangerous, stressed or abusive environments are more likely to have a range of mental health issues, are typically more avoidant or reactive and are less able subsequently to parent as successfully as might otherwise have been the case.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health
“Starting from middle childhood, however, boys and girls begin to take part in different social worlds with specific sets of challenges; moreover, sex differences in muscle mass and strength, bone density, and adiposity become more pronounced, giving boys a definite advantage in dealing with physical danger.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach
“The body is not shaped for maximum health or longevity; it is shaped for maximum transmission of its genes.”
Source: Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
“Plato warned that pursuing pleasure leads to unhappiness. The Buddha taught that desires can never be satisfied. Every religion provides advice about how to get off the hedonic treadmill, leaving its emotional baggage behind. However, such advice is like advice about diets: correct, well-meaning, plentiful, and, for good evolutionary reasons, well-nigh impossible to actually follow.”
Source: Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
“The suffering that accompanies nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, cough, fever, fatigue, pain, anxiety, and low mood motivates escape from a current bad situation and avoidance of future similar situations. Individuals who do not experience physical pain accumulate injuries and usually die by early adulthood. People who don’t feel bad when pursuing unreachable goals spend their lives in contented useless efforts. More low mood might help their genes, but a clinic to boost low mood would be about as popular as a clinic to help people feel more anxious.”
Source: Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
“...more wealth is desired even though above a certain level it has ceased to translate into greater reproduction; with effective contraception much the same applies to sexual success; power, status, honor, and fame -connected to the above- are still hotly pursued even though their reproductive significance has become ambivalent. It is the evolution-shaped proximate mechanisms -the web of desire- that dominate human behavior, even where much of their original adaptive rationale has weakened.”
Source: War in Human Civilization
“Reason and emotion must both work together to create intelligent behavior, but emotion does most of the work.”
Source: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
“Rather than living only in the present, the use of verbal symbols allowed the Homo sapiens to mysteriously transcend the immediate experience given by the physical senses and to live in an abstract, extra-sensory, and hypothetical world.”
Source: Homo: A Brief History of Consciousness
“It's not the passion that unites, rather its the vulnerabilities that bind Us!””
“We have the neurological potential to be truly a wise species, unlike any other species on earth, yet we act like the dumbest species on earth. We are a stupid species with smart phones.”
“People who can see their neighbors with air-conditioning and cars, but who themselves live in shacks and often lack sewage disposal or a reliable water supply, have little to lose, and may find violence a rational option.”
Source: Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World
“Men are preoccupied with a woman's youth. Men want wives who are pretty, attractive, beautiful, gorgeous, comely, lovely, ravishing, and glamorous. Men seek attractive women as mates not simply for their reproductive value but also as signals of status to same sex competitors and to other potential mates. Although most men place a premium on beauty, it is clear that not all men succeed in satisfying their desires. Men who lack the status and resources that women want, for example, generally have the most difficult time attracting good looking young women and must settle for less than their ideal. Indeed, a man's occupational status seems to be the best predictor of the attractiveness of the woman he marries. Men who are in a position to get what they want often partners up with a young, attractive woman.”
Source: The Evolution Of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating
“Girls in virtual networks are subjected to hundreds of times more social comparison than girls had experienced for all of human evolution. They are exposed to more cruelty and bullying because social media platforms incentivize and facilitate relational aggression. Their openness and willingness to share emotions with other girls espouses them to depression and other disorders. The twisted incentive structures of social media reward the most extreme presentations of symptoms.”
Source: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
“Half of the human population has been shaped by selection to live fast and die young. I mean, of course, the fragile sex. On the average, men die seven years sooner than women do.”
Source: Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry
“On average, women are more physically vulnerable than men and less able to defend themselves against attacks. Accordingly, it is adaptive for them to be more sensitive to potential cues of vulnerability and entrapment, and display a lower threshold for the activation of escape behaviors.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach
“An evolutionary perspective also contributes to explain the higher female prevalence of panic disorder and agoraphobia. On average, women are more physically vulnerable than men and less able to defend themselves against attacks. Accordingly, it is adaptive for them to be more sensitive to potential cues of vulnerability and entrapment, and display a lower threshold for the activation of escape behaviors.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach
“Women suffer higher rates of depression than men because their survival and reproduction depends more critically on the integrity of social networks (which provide help, protection, and resources). For this reason, they have a stronger evolved motivation to avoid social stressors, a lower tolerance for cues of social conflict, and more intense emotional responses when conflicts break out.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach
“Few women would prefer an unemployed and rudderless man to an ambitious and successful one, all other things being even roughly equal; and few men would choose an obese, unattractive, and dull woman over a shapely, beautiful, sharp one.”
Source: The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are - The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
“What do you take me for!
Brain scientist here!
You know what it means?
It means I know your deepest fantasies as well as your darkest secrets - it means I know more about you than you know about yourself.
Yet have I ever belittled you?
Never!
You know why?
Because, by knowing the worst in you I came to now the best in you. Know your worst my friend - for once you conquer your worst you'll automatically manifest your best.”
Source: Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament
“Either Aşkistan or Junglistan (A Sonnet)
Ours is either aşkistan,
Land of love founded on amity,
Or it is an archaic junglistan,
Run by contagious self-centricity.
What is civilized is also unselfish,
For selfishness makes the animal,
Across the self there is humanity,
What is unselfish is also accountable.
Technology may bring comfort,
But it doesn't ensure ascension,
When comfort belongs to the privileged,
Such progress is mere descension.
Over 3 billion years have gone in selfishness,
It's time to unself our soul and rise as sapiens.”
Source: Solo Standing on Guard: Life Before Law
“In the absence of self-control, this primordial nature of the limbic brain often compels the mind to give in to evils of corruption.”
Source: The Education Decree
“When anxious subjects are shown happy, neutral and angry faces on a computer screen, their attention is drawn to the angry faces signaling a potential threat Conversely, good moods broaden attention and make people inclined to seek out information and novelty. In one study, participants in good moods sought more variety when choosing among packaged foods, such as crackers, soup, and snacks. Moods have the power to influence behavior because they have such wide purchase on the body and mind. They affect what we notice, our levels of alertness and energy, and what goals we choose.”
Source: The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic
“Our current cultural ethos is that achieving happiness is like achieving other goals. If we simply work hard at it, we can master happiness, just as we can figure out how to use new computer software, play the piano or learn Spanish. However, if the goal of becoming happier is different from these other goals, efforts devoted to augmenting happiness may backfire, disappointing -and potentially depressing- us because we can't achieve our expected goal.”
Source: The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic
“A chimpanzee is capable of feeling ad, but only a human being can feel bad about feeling bad.”
Source: The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic
“Just as artificial illumination has freed us from the light-dark cycle, it has also opened the door to night shift work, which upsets the body's circadian rhythm. Electricity powers evening routines that conspire against rest.”
Source: The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic
“Our species is diurnal, and the best chance of finding sustenance and other rewards was in the light phase (think about the challenge of identifying edible berries or stalking a mammoth). Consequently, we are configured to be more alert during the day than at night. Consistent with the link between light and mood, some clinically serious low mood is triggered by the seasonal change of shorter daylight hours. The onset of seasonal affective disorder, a subtype of mood disorder, is usually in winter.”
Source: The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic
“Fantasizing about a world without low mood is a vain exercise. Low moods have existed in some form across human cultures for many thousands of years. One way to appreciate why these states have enduring value is to ponder what would happen if we had no capacity for them. Just as animals with no capacity for anxiety were gobbled up by predators long ago, without the capacity for sadness, we and other animals would probably commit rash acts and repeat costly mistakes. Physical pain teaches a child to avoid hot burners; psychic pain teaches us to navigate life's rocky shoals with due caution.”
Source: The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic
“Our bodies are a collection of adaptations, evolutionary legacies that have helped us survive and reproduce in the face of uncertainty and risk. That does not mean that adaptations are perfect; far from it.”
Source: The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic
“Everyone wants someone to help but prefers that it not be them.”
Source: Rationality
“While fear triggers the full response system at the moment of danger, anxiety triggers parts of the same system when a threat is merely perceived as possible. It is healthy to be anxious and on alert when one is in a situation where there really could be dangers lurking. But when our alarm bell is on a hair trigger so that it is frequently activated by ordinary events- including many that pose no real threat-it keeps us in a perpetual state of distress. This is when ordinary, healthy, temporary anxiety turns into an anxiety disorder.”
Source: The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
“Unchecked biases, fear and prejudice, revert consciousness into compost.”
Source: Either Right or Human: 300 Limericks of Inclusion
“Fear is but memory of our animal past.”
Source: Rowdy Scientist: Handbook of Humanitarian Science
“Fear may blind us to the fact that individual survival often depends on working with others.”
Source: Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources
“Fear of heights begins to manifest as soon as infants start crawling; fears of animals and monsters first appear when toddlers begin to move around more freely and explore their environment. In middle childhood, children become more autonomous and start helping with adult tasks; this is when fears of accidents and injuries become more pronounced.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach
“Fear of heights begins to menifest as soon as infants start crawling; fears of animals and monsters first appear when toddlers begin to move around more freely and explore their environment. In middle childhood, children become more autonomous and start helping with adult tasks; this is when fears of accidents and injuries become more pronounced.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach
“Evolutionary models of phobias share the assumption that evolution has equipped us with a predisposition to fear certain targets more than others. In modern conditions, this evolved repertoire creates a high potential for mismatch, focusing defensive systems on negligible threats while downplaying some real and potentially lethal dangers.”
Source: Evolutionary Psychopathology: A Unified Approach
“Reason is still our signature tool for coping with a complex reality, yet it is easily subverted by overconfidence, cognitive closure, and biases.”
Source: Ideological Fixation: From the Stone Age to Today's Culture Wars
“By establishing a shared system of collective experiences and symbolic meanings, ritual helped to coordinate thought and memory, allowing a group of humans to function as a single organism. And because of its close connection to symbolism, rhythm and movement, as well as its role in demarcating the extraordinary from the ordinary, ritual has also been linked to the evolution of art.”
Source: Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living
“The descriptions of tribal rituals themselves usually exhibit features that we could characterize as play; such ritual is very much embodied as in singing, dancing, feasting, and general hilarity, but there is also a powerful element of pretend play that can have serious meanings.”
Source: Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age
“Just because humans have become -advanced- enough to vaccinate their young, write histories, and speculate about our origins, this does not mean that evolutionary processes have ceased to operate.”
Source: Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding
“Modern environments seem more likely than some previous environments to lead to this sort of malfunctioning. They permit, for example, a degree of social isolation that was unknown to our ancestors.”
Source: The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are - The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
“Just because humans have become "advanced" enough to vaccinate their young, write histories, and speculate about our origins, this does not mean that evoutionary processes have ceased to operate.”
Source: Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding
“To sum up, then, fundamentalism is neither religion in excess nor politics in disguise. It is an attempt to preserve a particular kind of hierarchy based on coalition, when this is threatened by the perception of cheap and therefore likely defection.”
Source: Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought
“People may have finely tuned coalitional capacities, but they do not necessarily have access to how these work. The cues that make some people appear reliable and others less so are computed in ways that often escape conscious attention.”
Source: Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought
“...coalitional dynamics would predict that whatever outsiders do is often little concern to fundamentalists. What matters is what other members of the group are likely to do.”
Source: Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought