The Evolution Institute

Dying young and living fast

EI — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:21:21 +0000

The author of Dying young: variation in life history across English neighborhoods and living fast, David Nettle, Centre for Behaviour and Evolution, Institute of Neuroscience, New Castle University examines maternal behavioral responses across neighborhood environments having different levels of poverty. Dr. Nettle’s evolutionary hypothesis is that mothers should follow faster reproductive and child rearing strategies to adapt to higher rates of mortality and morbidity, giving birth to more offspring at earlier stages of life history and providing less parental investment per child. Hence, increasing levels of poverty in neighborhoods should be related to measurable detrimental effects on offspring. Indicators of unhealthy physiological and psychological effects in offspring collected across English neighborhoods at varying levels of poverty confirm Dr. Nettles hypothesis.

EI featured in RSA Journal

EI — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:08:02 +0000

The UK’s Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSA) has a history that stretches back to the Enlightenment. Today, it is a progressive policy organization that appreciates the relevance of evolutionary theory and features an article about the EI in the current issue of its journal. The article is written by EI co-director David Sloan Wilson and is titled “Policymaking the Darwinist Way.” It provides a concise summary of the EI’s mission and three current foci on childhood education, risky adolescent behavior, and the nature of regulation. The same issue features an article by primatologist Frans DeWaal titled “How Bad Biology Killed the Economy” and a description of the RSA’s own Social Brain Project.

Parole policy from an evolutionary (and common sense) perspective

EI — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:47:35 +0000

The January 8 New York Times magazine features an article titled “Prisoners of Parole“, which shows how mild short-term punishment in quick response to parole violations is much more effective than severe long-term punishment after numerous parole violations. The “new” strategy draws upon principles that are familiar from the perspectives of fields such as applied behavior analysis, prevention science, and behavioral economics, all of which in turn are based on a conception of people as biological organisms whose behavior is shaped by consequences in much the same way as other organisms. This article provides one of many examples of how public policy does not necessarily converge on strategies that are both highly effective and common-sensical from an evolutionary perspective. The EI puts the same principles to use in its focus on childhood education.

Social Class Through the Evolutionary Lens

EI — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:15:03 +0000

In an article titled Social class through an evolutionary lens , Dan Nettle of Newcastle University uses an evolutionary approach to explain how social class specific behaviors may be adaptive responses to ecological contexts. For example, the health decisions of individuals resulting in poverty ridden neighborhoods may be adaptive responses to prevailing conditions in the environment rather than mistakes due to ignorance or bad genes. According to Nettle, public policy planners focusing on improving the well-being of individuals in deprived neighborhoods should direct their reform not at correcting individual mistakes but rather altering the existing social and economic conditions to eliminate unhealthy behaviors

Eco-economics – Could Biology explain the recession?

EI — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:25:40 +0000

In a blog titled Eco-economics – Could Biology explain the recession? two Financial Times editors and a science writer explain what financial theorist and practitioners can learn from ecologists and biologists. One thing they can do, according to the authors, to better understand market dynamics is to incorporate into their analysis natural selection and adaptation.

Adam Smith vs. Charles Darwin

EI — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:43:51 +0000

An article titled Smith vs. Darwin by economist James K. Galbraith contrasts Adam Smith’s attempt to explain economics and social progress by means of the “invisible hand” with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. In the process of contrasting Smith with Darwin, Galbraith exposes fundamental flaws in the neo-classical economic “rational actor” model. He argues that an uncritical acceptance of the invisible hand as a natural law by economists is analogous to the ideas of Intelligent Design promoted by religious fundamentalists.

Multilevel Selection Theory and the EI on bloggingheads.tv

EI — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:29:28 +0000

Evolution Institute director David Sloan Wilson was recently interviewed about multilevel selection theory and the EI for a bloggingheads.tv “Science Saturday” segment.

Evolutionary psychology and behavioral economics

EI — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:46:59 +0000

Douglas Kenrick, an evolutionary social psychologist at Arizona State University, relates behavioral economics to evolutionary social psychology in his blog post titled “Deep Rationality: Evolutionary Psychology Meets Behavioral Economics“. This perspective is one of several that was represented at the EI’s recently concluded conference on “The Nature of Regulation“. Results of the conference will be featured on the EI website in the near future.

Economics discovers multilevel selection theory

EI — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 04:40:05 +0000

An article titled “A Group Selection Perspective on Economic Behavior, Institutions, and Organizations”, by Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh and John M. Gowdy, is in the current issue of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organizations (JEBO: v. 72, pp 1-20). Group selection is part of multilevel selection theory, which shows how adaptations can evolve at any level of a multi-level hierarchy, but only when special conditions are met. Multilevel selection theory is highly relevant to the genetic and cultural evolution of human social organizations but it is only recently coming to the attention of economists and other policy makers. Another resource for learning about multilevel selection is a recent special issue of the Journal of Bioeconomics devoted to theory and evidence for group selection.

Matthew Taylor on politics from evolutionary perspective

EI — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:10:57 +0000

Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Arts and prior to this appointment the Chief Adviser on Political Strategy to the Prime Minister of England, has a well-informed article in the Sept 23 issue of PROSPECT magazine on how evolutionary theory and brain and behavior research are changing fundamental assumptions about politics and policy debates. The article includes a discussion of the EI-affiliated Binghamton Neighborhood Project , which shows how prosociality in individuals depends upon social support rather than income.