Disgust as an adaptive system for disease avoidance behaviour

Disgust is an evolved psychological system for protecting organisms from infection through disease avoidant behaviour. This 'behavioural immune system', present in a diverse array of species, exhibits universal features that orchestrate hygienic behaviour in response to cues of risk of contact with pathogens. However, disgust is also a dynamic adaptive system. Individuals show variation in pathogen avoidance associated with psychological traits like having a neurotic personality, as well as a consequence of being in certain physiological states such as pregnancy or infancy. Three specialized learning mechanisms modify the disgust response: the Garcia effect, evaluative conditioning and the law of contagion. Hygiene behaviour is influenced at the group level through social learning heuristics such as 'copy the frequent'. Finally, group hygiene is extended symbolically to cultural rules about purity and pollution, which create social separations and are enforced as manners. Cooperative hygiene endeavours such as sanitation also reduce pathogen prevalence. Our model allows us to integrate perspectives from psychology, ecology and cultural evolution with those of epidemiology and anthropology. Understanding the nature of disease avoidance psychology at all levels of human organization can inform the design of programmes to improve public health.     

What anthropologists can learn from psychologists,and the other way around

The Mind and Spirit project uses methods from anthropology and psychology to explore the way understandings of what English-speakers call ‘the mind’ may shape the kinds of events people experience and deem ‘spiritual’. In this piece, we step back to reflect on this interdisciplinary approach. We observe that, in some ways, both fields are in parallel states of critical self-reflection around explanation and comparison: anthropology in the wake of the postmodern and postcolonial critique; and psychology in response to a pair of recent crises about the overreliance on Western samples and the reproducibility of psychological research. We suggest that combining our methods may go some way towards giving each field more confidence in its research. Joint fieldwork with specific point-by-point comparison is not common in either anthropology or psychology. We found it fruitful and commend it to others.     

The fitness of human sociobiology: the future utility of four concepts in four subdisciplines.

Reported here are the results of a survey inquiring into the rate of acceptance of four sociobiological concepts in regard to their usefulness for future research. Included in the survey were members of four subdisciplines: animal behavior (biology), biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, and developmental psychology. Three types of institutions were included: universities, four- and five-year colleges, and community colleges. A total of 1,631 responses are reported with the degree of acceptance varying from highest to lowest as follows: biology, biological anthropology, developmental psychology, and cultural anthropology. These variations are related to the central concepts of each subdiscipline.     

A critique of Darwinian anthropology

Darwinian anthropology holds that human behavior is adaptive in the sense of being designed to maximize reproductive success and that measurement of reproductive differentials typically illuminates adaptation. I argue to the contrary, that adaptive design is usually manifested at the psychological rather than at the behavioral level, that measuring reproductive differentials is at best an inefficient and ambiguous way to illuminate adaptation, and that Darwin's theory of natural selection sheds light on human affairs only insofar as it promotes understanding of the psychology that underpins these affairs.     

Introduction à l’anthropologie clinique

This paper discusses the concept of clinical anthropology. It recounts how an anthropological school of thought emerged in psychiatry and clinical psychology. Nowadays, that school spans the fields of philosophical anthropology, medical anthropology, cultural psychiatry, anthropological psychology, and clinical anthropology. After providing a conceptual and historical definition, we briefly introduce the ideas of the psychiatrist and philosopher, Ludwig Binswanger. In 1930, he became the first to introduce anthropological research into psychiatry, emphasising the a priori difference between homo natura and existence. Finally, we outline the development of phenomenological anthropology in Europe, with reference to the major philosophers and psychiatrists of the second half of the twentieth century.     

Individuals and society in anthropological theory

Conclusion Though relatively little direct attention has been given by Marxist anthropologists to a theory of individual behavior and thought in relation to societal processes, the above partial summary indicates the wealth of insight that is available for elaborating such a theory. In addition, there are of course significant developments in the field of psychology, notably the attention to activity as central to individual personality [], the renewed concern with levels of integration theory [], and the burgeoning interest in Vygotsky's writings on language, thought, and culture []. There are also the continuing attempts to locate Freud's positive contributions in a historical materialist frame [].Where, then, is psychological anthropology? As always, producing a richness of suggestive materials — such as those on varying conceptions of the self — but, as a glance at the pages of Ethos will show, unfortunately not engaged in fundamental theoretical innovation. By way of illustration, let me cite Spindler's The Making of Psychological Anthropology, a collection of articles by major figures, past and present. Spindler's introductory essay is thoughtful; always the teacher, he presents with consideration and modesty the history of the field, the disfavor into which it fell (in large part due to the methodlogical travesties of national character studies), and its stubborn persistence (following from the pervasive interest in the psychological dimension that has always characterized cultural anthropology). He summarizes ongoing problems as perceived from within the field, and as the major difficulty to be overcome pinpoints cultural overdeterminism and its inadequacy for explaining variations. The solution? Not the necessity of respecting history and focussing on how individuals variously understand and relate (according to their individual histories) to the established structures whereby particular societies produce, allocate, and consume basic goods, and how they variously respond to disjunctions in these structures even as they reproduce them. Instead Spindler writes, ... if we are to escape the double bind of our cultural overdeterminism, we are going to have to go beyond culture and even ecology, to biochemistry, to physiology and neurology, to genetics — to biology in the broadest sense of the term [].In closing, let me say to the reader, do not simply turn away in dismay. One must conclude that it is imperative to continue to build a solid alternative theory of relations among individual behaviors, individual understandings, cultural values, and societal processes, or, in other words, to replace a non-historical and essentially biological paradigm with a dialectical and materialist view of human action.Eleanor Leacock is Professor of Anthropology and Chair at the City College, City University of New York.

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It's Not the Culture of Poverty, It's the Poverty of Culture: The Problem with Teacher Education

The preparation of novice teachers is dominated by psychological notions almost to the exclusion of other social science paradigms. The perspective that is least likely to be evident in teacher preparation is that of anthropology. However, prospective and novice teachers regularly and loosely use the word "culture" as an explanation for student patterns of behavior they cannot explain. This discussion focuses on the ways prospective and novice teachers construct culture simultaneously as both the problem and the answer to their struggles with students different from themseles.     

How Conservative Are Evolutionary Anthropologists?

The application of evolutionary theory to human behavior has elicited a variety of critiques, some of which charge that this approach expresses or encourages conservative or reactionary political agendas. In a survey of graduate students in psychology, Tybur, Miller, and Gangestad (Human Nature, 18, 313-328, 2007) found that the political attitudes of those who use an evolutionary approach did not differ from those of other psychology grad students. Here, we present results from a directed online survey of a broad sample of graduate students in anthropology that assays political views. We found that evolutionary anthropology graduate students were very liberal in their political beliefs, overwhelmingly voted for a liberal U.S. presidential candidate in the 2008 election, and identified with liberal political parties; in this, they were almost indistinguishable from non-evolutionary anthropology students. Our results contradict the view that evolutionary anthropologists hold conservative or reactionary political views. We discuss some possible reasons for the persistence of this view in terms of the sociology of science.     

Estrogens and relationship jealousy

The relation between sex hormones and responses to partner infidelity was explored in two studies reported here. The first confirmed the standard sex difference in relationship jealousy, that males (n=133) are relatively more distressed by a partner’s sexual infidelity and females (n=159) by a partner’s emotional infidelity. The study also revealed that females using hormone-based birth control (n=61) tended more toward sexual jealousy than did other females, and reported more intense affective responses to partner infidelity (n=77). In study two, 47 females were assessed four times across one month. Patterns of response to partner infidelity did not vary by week of menstrual cycle, but significant relations between salivary estradiol level and jealousy responses were obtained during the time of rising and high fertility risk. The implications, at least for females, are that any evolved psychological, affective, or behavioral dispositions regarding reproduction-related relationships are potentially moderated by estradiol, and that the use of synthetic hormones may disrupt this relation. David C. Geary is the Frederick A. Middlebush Professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri at Columbia. He has published nearly 100 articles and chapters across a wide range of topics, including cognitive and developmental psychology, education, evolutionary biology, and medicine. His two books, Children’s Mathematical Development (1984) and Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences (1988), have been published by the American Psychological Association. M. Catherine DeSoto recently completed her Ph.D. in psychological sciences at the University of Missouri at Columbia and is currently assistant professor of psychobiology at the University of Northern Iowa. Her research primarily focuses on the interface between biology and behavior, including the relation between sex hormones and personality disorders. Mary K. Hoard is completing her Ph.D. studies in psychological sciences at the University of Missouri at Columbia and is currently a research specialist in the Department of Psychological Sciences. Her research interests focus on children’s cognitive development, as well as the relation between sleep and cognitive and psychological functioning. Melanie Skaggs Sheldon is a graduate student in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Her research interests include social cooperation, sexual behavior, and personality, as understood from an evolutionary perspective. M. Lynne Cooper is a professor of psychological sciences and director of the training program in social psychology at the University of Missouri at Columbia. She is an associate editor of the Journal of Personality and the author of more than 60 articles and chapters in the areas of personality and social psychology. Her primary research efforts involve directing a longitudinal study of risky sexual behavior of adolescents and young adults.     

The Psychology of the Self-Actualizing Personality in the Work of Abraham Maslow

The second and third quarters of this century saw the appearance of a number of different concepts of personality in foreign psychology. Most of these were spawned by pathopsychology as a result of attempts to understand the personality of the neurotic and as a practical offshoot of psychotherapy. Although these theories were generalizations based on studies of the psychopathological personality, they began to be propagated by their creators as general theories of personality. Material gathered from the investigation of mental patients was used as the foundation for what are now standard personality tests — the Rorschach test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) — used chiefly to discover neurotic tendencies in the individual. An extremely exaggerated evaluation of the significance of the pathopsychological method has been the hallmark of personality theory in foreign psychology. Yet the neurotic and, even more so, the pathological personality are qualitatively, not quantitatively, distinct from the personality of a normal human being. We must therefore concur with Maslow, who shows how the "study of mutilated, sickly, immature and unhealthy subjects will also give rise to a mutilated psychology and philosophy" (9, p. 234).     

Color in context: psychological context moderates the influence of red on approach- and avoidance-motivated behavior

Background

A basic premise of the recently proffered color-in-context model is that the influence of color on psychological functioning varies as a function of the psychological context in which color is perceived. Some research has examined the appetitive and aversive implications of viewing the color red in romance- and achievement-relevant contexts, respectively, but in all existing empirical work approach and avoidance behavior has been studied in separate tasks and separate experiments. Research is needed to directly test whether red influences the same behavior differently depending entirely on psychological context.

Methodology/Principal Findings

The present experiment was designed to put this premise to direct test in romance- and achievement-relevant contexts within the same experimental paradigm involving walking behavior. Our results revealed that exposure to red (but not blue) indeed has differential implications for walking behavior as a function of the context in which the color is perceived. Red increased the speed with which participants walked to an ostensible interview about dating (a romance-relevant context), but decreased the speed with which they walked to an ostensible interview about intelligence (an achievement-relevant context).

Conclusions/Significance

These results are the first direct evidence that the influence of red on psychological functioning in humans varies by psychological context. Our findings contribute to both the literature on color psychology and the broader, emerging literature on the influence of context on basic psychological processes.     

The Importance of Physical Strength to Human Males

Fighting ability, although recognized as fundamental to intrasexual competition in many nonhuman species, has received little attention as an explanatory variable in the social sciences. Multiple lines of evidence from archaeology, criminology, anthropology, physiology, and psychology suggest that fighting ability was a crucial aspect of intrasexual competition for ancestral human males, and this has contributed to the evolution of numerous physical and psychological sex differences. Because fighting ability was relevant to many domains of interaction, male psychology should have evolved such that a man’s attitudes and behavioral responses are calibrated according to his formidability. Data are reviewed showing that better fighters feel entitled to better outcomes, set lower thresholds for anger/aggression, have self-favoring political attitudes, and believe more in the utility of warfare. New data are presented showing that among Hollywood actors, those selected for their physical strength (i.e., action stars) are more likely to believe in the utility of warfare.     

Reciprocal unconditional-conditional organization of the fundamental emotions and paraadaptive personality reactions

Paraadaptive personality reactions (PPR) are modes of behavior and experience on the borderline of normal psychology and psychopathology. In them the thinking is overdetermined or obsessive. Overdetermined PPR are well illustrated in common proverbs. The people's wisdom has also knowledge of the obsessive (or "magic") paraadaptive rituals for prevention of possible misfortunes (such as touching wood, keeping away from a black cat, etc.). One part of the PPR is described in the psychoanalytical literature as defense mechanisms. The analysis of thought dissociation in schizophrenia shows that the reciprocal relations could be considered as a basic principle of functional organization on all levels of nervous and psychic activity. Proceeding from this assumption, the author proposes the conception of a reciprocal neuropsychological unconditional-conditional affect-behavioral system (ABS). It consists of ten subsystems corresponding to the basic emotions. Each subsystem stimulates the personality toward predetermined forms of thinking and behavior. In adequate conditions the reciprocal processes in the ABS are well counterweighted and integrated. In some persons and in situations of greater affective "loading" this reciprocal balance is disorganized, which leads to PPR. In this paper a neuropsychological analysis is made of the overdetermined PPR, reflected in such proverbs as "Not being able to beat the donkey, he beats the packsaddle" and "The thief cries catch the thief."     

The State of Biological Anthropology in 2008: Is Our Discipline Strong and Our Cause Just?

ABSTRACT   Biological anthropologists inform a largely professional discourse on the evolutionary history of our species. In addition, aspects of our biology, the ways in which we vary, and certain patterns of behavior are the subjects of a more public and popular conversation. The social contexts in which we work not only define our times but also produce the anthropologists that in turn construct an emergent understanding of our species' (and our societies') inner workings. In this review of scholarly production, I focus on developments within a selection of "sub-subdisciplines" that were particularly influential in bending the arc of biological anthropology in 2008, namely: evolutionary medical anthropology, anthropological neuroscience, forensic anthropology, primatology, and paleoanthropology. Ultimately, this review demonstrates, yet again, anthropology's great contribution: the ability to incorporate new technologies and research methodologies into a synthetic and integrative interdisciplinary approach toward the elucidation of human behavior, evolution, and biocultural engagements with the environment. [Keywords: biological anthropology, year in review, 2008, science and society]     

Primates got personality,too: Toward an integrative primatology of consistent individual differences in behavior

In recent years, research on animal personality has exploded within the field of behavioral ecology. Consistent individual differences in behavior exist in a wide range of species, and these differences can have fitness consequences and influence several aspects of a species' ecology. In comparison to studies of other animals, however, there has been relatively little research on the behavioral ecology of primate personality. This is surprising given the large body of research within psychology and biomedicine showing that primate personality traits are heritable and linked to health and life history outcomes. In this article, I bring together theoretical perspectives on the ecology and evolution of animal personality with an integrative review of what we know about primate personality from studies conducted on captive, free‐ranging, and wild primates. Incorporating frameworks that emphasize consistency in behavior into primate behavioral ecology research holds promise for improving our understanding of primate behavioral evolution.     

Psychological Manifestations of the Basic Properties of the Nervous System in Work

There can be no doubt that the individual psychological distinctions among human beings and, in particular, one area of these differences — the psychological manifestations of the intensity, lability, and equilibrium of nervous processes — are manifested in one form or another in work, that activity which most completely expresses the nature of man. Therefore, study of these peculiarities is a matter of pressing importance in labor psychology. "Investigation of the individual differences among men," writes B.M. Teplov, "is one of the most important tasks of psychology. The importance of this undertaking has become particularly obvious since psychology undertook to become a science of practical value (educational and child psychology, labor psychology, pathopsychology)." (19; p. 108)