the adaptionist approach has limits

The Adaptionist Approach Has LimitsAuthor(s): Robert A. HindeSource: Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1995), pp. 50-53Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1449575 .

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COMMENTARIES

The Adaptionist Approach Has Limits

Robert A. Hinde MRC Group on Development and Integration of Behaviour

Cambridge, England

Of course, I agree with Buss that the theory of evolution by natural selection can serve as an inte- grating framework for many aspects of psychology. Indeed, to an ethologist, this is almost a truism, for ethologists have emphasized the four separate but interrelated questions of development, causation, function, and evolution (Tinbergen, 1963). A functional approach has in fact been increasingly evident in recent decades in some branches of psychology. For instance, Bowlby's (1969/1982) attachment theory drew extensively on functional considerations, and Gunther's (1955) pioneering work on breast- feeding did likewise.

Buss focuses on the third of Tinbergen's four questions-the biological function of aspects of human behavior in our environment of evolutionary adaptedness. The approach he espouses might therefore be better labeled functional or adaptational rather than evolutionary psychology. That he neglects discussion of evolution is not a cause for criticism, but it is as well to be aware of the difference. One would expect evolutionary psychology to be concerned with the evolutionary origins of humans' psychological and behavioral characteristics-it might include, for instance, van Hooff s (1972) work on the evolutionary origins of smiling and laughter; comparisons between some other human signals and those used by our primate relatives (e.g. Eibl Eibesfeldt, 1975; Goodall, 1986); or the de- bate about the possible cognitive changes in hominids between the middle and upper Palaeolithic, as sug- gested by the changes in the artefacts (Mellars, 1991).

Leaving that aside, I am wholly with Buss in his view that an adaptational perspective can assist in many psychological endeavors. He uses the concept of adaptation primarily to pose questions and to integrate diverse findings. It has therefore been unnecessary for him to pursue the difficulties inherent in deciding on criteria for adaptedness-or in demonstrating it (Clutton-Brock, 1981; Gould & Lewontin, 1979; Hinde, 1975, 1982; Williams, 1966). He certainly shows its usefulness in posing questions to the psychol- ogist, but he sometimes gives it more credit than is due, and setting up "a new paradigm for psychological sci- ence" is, I would suggest, stretching things a little.

Usually functional issues take us only some of the way. For instance, the initial questions Buss poses about sexual jealousy stem from functional considerations. However, he makes a further suggestion- namely, that the difference between men who

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experience sexual jealousy more than emotional jealousy and men who experience the reverse lies in the extent of previous experience of a committed sexual relationship. This seems to be based on more general grounds. And, for some of his examples, the issue of adaptation seems to be only a matter of lip service-for instance, differences claimed to exist between first- borns and laterborns are merely presumed to be adaptive. And, do we need an adaptationist approach to tell us that humans seek for status and attempt to form cooperative alliances?

A more serious issue arises over his treatment of the differences in behavior between men and women in heterosexual relationships. I agree that the directions of the differences can be understood in terms of biological function (Hinde, 1984). Indeed, a functional approach is, so far as I am aware, the only way in which the directions can be understood. But the concept of biological function helps only over that question, and, if the matter is left there, it is understandable that feminist hackles should rise. The questions of how these differences develop, of why they are so extensive, and of why they are patterned in the way they are demand psychological explanations, and the differences between cultures demand anthropological ones. Much argument can be avoided if it is recognized that these are separate questions (Hinde, 199 1a). Of course, the psychological explanations will depend on relatively stable characteristics (discussed later) that are adaptive (in domain- general or domain-specific ways), and anthropological explanations will depend on the relations between the norms, values, beliefs, and institutions in each culture-themselves ultimately shaped by biologically adapted, relatively stable characteristics (discussed later). The point is that a functional approach can take you only some of the way.

I am wholly with Buss when he argues that an emphasis on adaptation does not mean, as some ex- treme sociobiologists would have it, that all behavior is adaptive really-if only we could see how. As Buss emphasizes, it is the psychological mechanisms that have been selected for, and this does not mean that their behavioral outcomes are necessarily adaptive. Thus, in several societies, success in male-male competition has been shown to be correlated with reproductive success (Betzig, 1988), and the evidence suggests a causal link (Irons, 1980). However, the correlation tends to be reversed in Western societies (Vining, 1986). The important issue, therefore, is to explore the



COMMENTARIES

links between the adaptive mechanisms and the behavioral outcomes (Hinde, 1987).

However, one cannot avoid wondering whether Buss is completely weaned from the sociobiology he criticizes. Sociobiologists tend to postulate mechanisms isomorphous with the aspects of behavior they are interested in and to imply that each adaptive psychological mechanism they postulate was evolved by natural selection to produce a specific output. Although he criticizes this procedure-and at times emphasizes the need for psychological analysis-Buss also tends to postulate mechanisms isomorphous with outcomes and emphasizes that many will be domain specific. To exemplify domain specificity, he lists 20 examples of "mechanisms" that "point to domain specificity," in- cluding, for instance, children's fears, causes of marital dissolution centering on infidelity and infertility, male sexual jealousy, and gender differences in sexual fan- tasy. There are two points here. First, each of his examples is complex, and labeling each a mechanism involves falling into the trap of postulating a mechanism isomorphous with the behavior. Second, the examples illustrate probable adaptedness but not domain specificity and certainly not domain specificity of the component mechanisms. Most examples probably involve some domain-general mechanisms and some domain-specific mechanisms. For instance, children's fears would have been adaptive in our environment of evolutionary adaptedness, so it is reasonable to suppose them to have been produced by natural selection. But responses to such situations are only partially correlated with one another in young children (Stevenson- Hinde & Shouldice, 1990), suggesting that they have both common and specific mechanisms. And, there is much yet to be learned about the extent to which the prediction of animate motion, the imitation of high-status models, or the development of a theory of mind uses abilities relevant also in other contexts.

Again, Buss cites the Belsky, Steinberg, and Draper (1991) data that father absence is associated with later sexual promiscuity-and the suggestion of an evolutionary adaptation whereby father absence predicts the improbability of finding a committed mate-and thus indicates that promiscuity is a better strategy. But father absence implies different mothering, a different social milieu, different role models, and so on. Father absence may be merely one form of lack of adequate early relationships: Being reared in an institution the first 4 years also can lead to promiscuity (Tizard & Hodges, 1978). And, both the consequences of the nature of early parent-child relationships (Turner, 1991) and the personality characteristics conducive to reproductive success may differ with the sex of the child. These facts do not deny Buss's suggestion, but they do indicate that the causal sequences may not be quite so simple as he seems to imply. The suggestion that it would be mal-

adaptive to respond to father absence by increased monogamy could be correct, but that does not necessarily imply selection in which the specific signal of father absence triggers a tendency toward a particular sexual strategy.

Although Buss still tends to deduce "evolved psychological mechanisms" from the adaptive outputs they produce and emphasizes that most are domain specific, I have put my money on more elemental "relatively stable characteristics" (Hinde, 1987, 199 la). These are characteristics with limited variability that appear in all humans or in all members of an age/sex class in virtu- ally the whole range of environments in which life is possible-and may be relevant to one, a few, or many types of behavior. They include aspects of perception, responsiveness to stimuli, motor patterns, aspects of motivation and cognition, propensities to learn, and so on. The challenge is to discover not only the bases of these elemental characteristics, but also how they inter- relate to produce the adaptive and maladaptive behavior we observe. To change slightly Buss's analogy, a carpenter with a limited set of tools can make all sorts of furniture if he uses his tools in the right order, although the task is often facilitated by some item-specific jigs or templates. Just like the carpenter's hammer, chisel, and plane, psychological mechanisms may be adaptive without being "uniquely tailored to solving a particular adaptive problem," although many are. For instance, of the subproblems that Buss lists as necessary for forming a successful dyadic alliance, several (e.g., assessing which individuals possess resources, judging potential sources of interference) involve faculties that would certainly be of use in other contexts. What is special, perhaps, is bringing them to focus on the problem at hand. And, postulating a "psychological mechanism" for jealousy or "a specialized 'look for cheaters' cognitive algorithm" involves isomorphism that can be helpful only in the very early stages of analysis.

Buss is dismissive of culture as an explanation, saying that cultural variability depends on evolved mechanisms for its existence and itself demands explanation. Agreed, but we cannot leave it there. As Buss himself implies (quoting Tooby & Cosmides, 1992, p. 91), "culture is also shaped by the details of our evolved psychological organization." For humans, cultural factors are so important that their role must be understood for a full understanding of practically any aspect of behavior. Consider snake fears, which Buss cites as an example of an evolved psychological mechanism. It must be remembered (a) that it is the propensity to fear snakes that has been selected for, not hard-wired behavior; (b) that the extent to which individuals fear snakes is influenced by social referencing to caregivers (Mineka, 1987, has provided beautiful experimental data on monkeys for this); and (c) that the responses of the caregivers depend in part on associations with the

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religious and political thinking of their societies. Snakes are not always seen as evil, for the associations may be influenced by the capacity of humans to build up an imaginary world through language. Whereas in Greek mythology a snake led Eurydice to her death and to the underworld, in India snakes are associated with fertility as well as danger, and images of the Hindu god Shiva are shown with snakes twisted around him like ropes of jewelery. How snakes have come to have different meanings in different cultures is surely a complex story, involving interactions between diverse psychological mechanisms (or relatively stable psychological characteristics) and contextual factors. Thus, although it is true that biological "evolution is respon- sible for who we are today," that isn't the whole story. Cultural evolution has also played its part.

Thus, to understand human behavior, we must (a) distinguish a number of levels of social complexity (individuals, short-term interactions, longer lasting relationships, groups, societies, and nations); (b) recognize that each of these has properties and demands explanatory concepts not relevant to the level below; (c) recognize that each level is affected by and affects adjacent levels (e.g., the course of a relationship is affected by and affects the component interactions); (d) recognize that each of these levels affects and is affected by both the physical environment and the structure of beliefs and values accepted by the individuals concerned; and (e) accept that each of these levels, and the structure of beliefs and so forth, is best regarded not as an entity but as a process in continuous creation through the agency of these dialectics-dialectics that operate both historically, ontogenetically, and in the ongoing present (Hinde, 1991a). Buss hints at this complexity but seems to underestimate its importance.

This complexity implies that some of the issues referred to by Buss must be analyzed in social terms, rather than individual terms. For instance, he cites evidence that promiscuity is high in a society with a low male:female ratio and that monogamy is stressed in another society with a high ratio, and he suggests that this is a consequence of "mechanisms that are sensitive to the relative availability of mates." But the issues are surely more complex than that implies-one suspects that unpartnered women play a role in male promiscuity and competition from unpartnered men in a social norm of monogamy.

Again, Buss's view that culture is merely either (a) the consequence of interaction between contextual factors and adapted psychological mechanisms or (b) transmitted from one mind to another is simplistic. The genesis of culture is much more complex than that. For example, the striving for power emphasized by Buss is liable to result in power groups and class divisions, and these in turn will affect the values and beliefs of individuals. And interactions within a group tend to pro-

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duce a psychological orientation enhancing what ex- isted in the individual members beforehand (Minnix, 1982; Rabbie, 1989): Insofar as influential groups (e.g., Parliament, the Vatican Council) affect societal values and norms, the dynamics of groups plays a role in the genesis of culture. Of course, this aspect of the behavior of individuals in a group situation may have an adaptive explanation or may be a neutral or maladaptive consequence of mechanisms functional in other contexts. But the need to explain cultural diversity implies an obliga- tion to tease apart the dialectical relations between cultural values and behavior. Thus, cultural beliefs about divorce affect its incidence-but, also, the incidence of divorce affects cultural beliefs.

A functional approach can indeed facilitate this aim. Buss shows how it can pose new questions, give us a new perspective, and provide a degree of integration. I personally find much of his contribution really exciting in these ways. But I would add that it is especially important to examine behavior that appears not to be adaptive. If we start with a phenomenon and test hypotheses about its function, as Buss advocates, we can easily fall into the sociobiological trap of assuming that it has a function. It may not. It may even be maladaptive. Buss acknowledges this, saying that humans are not "fitness strivers." But he goes only part of the way. One explanation for maladaptive behavior, given by Buss, could be that such behavior is due to the inappropriate or excessive expression of a propensity that is normally adaptive (e.g., gluttony): That, of course, poses the further question of why the motivation should have been excessive. Another explanation he also gives is that the behavior was adaptive in our environment of evolutionary adaptedness but is so no longer: This seems to fit childhood fears, for instance. A third and (my view) more often useful type of explanation is that the behavior in question is controlled by the structure of values, norms, and beliefs in the culture, which are themselves only distantly related to the propensities of individuals on which selection acted (Hinde, 1987, 1991a). This does not involve abandon- ing the Darwinian perspective but implies that the social structure and the beliefs and values of individuals are complex-influenced by many and diverse psychological propensities of individuals, by similarities and conflicts of interest between individuals, and by histor- ical and ecological factors. Such must be the case, for instance, with self-sacrifice in war. In most cases, ar- guments suggesting that combatants exposing themselves to danger are thereby increasing their inclusive fitness stretch credulity. And, combatants don't fight due to a propensity for individual aggression that can be ascribed to natural selection. For the most part, combatants fight because it is their duty to do so, and their society accepts Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori. War must therefore be seen as an institution-



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with constituent roles each with its attendant rights and duties-and the forces that support that institution must be teased apart. They include the warisms of everyday speech, religious and nationalistic precepts, organiza- tional forces, economic forces, and so on (Hinde, 1991b). In the same way, the complexities of the behavior involved in ritual must be teased apart before its relation to adapted psychological mechanisms can be understood (Hinde & Rawson, in press).

Thus, although I share Buss's view that an awareness of functional questions should play an important role in psychology and can help in the integration of the human sciences, I have the slight feeling that setting up "evolutionary psychology" as a new entity is a bit over the top. It doesn't help to criticize developmental psychologists for not addressing questions in which they are not interested, to cast scorn on the efforts of social psychologists to deal with complex phenomena, or to decry the state of psychology in general. We need to pull together.

Note

Robert A. Hinde, MRC Group on Development and Integration of Behaviour, Madingley, Cambridge, CB3 8AA, England.

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the adaptionist approach has limits

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