Just The Way You Are? - A Not So Skeptical Journey Into Evolutionary Pscyhology.

Back in 1902, Rudyard Kipling taught children how the leopard got his spots, how the whale got his throat, how the camel got his hump, and how the rhinoceros got his skin. Leaving aside Kipling's, of his time, assumption that all animals were male (or preferred to identify using male pronouns) these Just So stories weren't actually true.

Charles Darwin would probably not have been impressed. Kipling, of course, wasn't suggesting they were true. He was just writing fun bedtime stories to read to his daughter. These stories were the inspiration for the title of last night's Skeptics in the Pub - Online talk, How the Evolutionary Pscyhologist Got His Hypothesis (And Other Just So Stories) - Sense and Nonsense in Evolutionary Psychology, with the engaging and articulate Dr Lindsey Osterman.

Lindsey is an associate professor of psychology at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia (and received her PhD in Oklahoma - proving that not everyone in the American South is a creationist) and with the help of Kat Ford from the Merseyside branch of Skeptics, the evening's host, set out to tell us a brief, and potted, history of evolutionary psychology and how, unlike in the case of Kipling and contrary to the beliefs of some of her detractors, these was far more than Just So stories.

Aware that not everyone in attendance would have been well versed in psychology, the talk began with a brief outline of what evolutionary psychology is. It's a mix of 'ethology' (the study of animal behaviour) and ideas that came about during the cognitive revolution that began in the 1950s and peaked in the 1970s.

Ethological studies proved that the behaviour of animals and their pscyhological traits were, as with their physicality and biology, developed during a process of evolution. Many young birds stay in their nests long after their births. Others, the gosling is a particularly needy bird, leave the nest quickly and then follow the first living thing they see.

During the cognitive revolution, intellectual types began to apply the scientific method to the study of human cognition which, quite remarkably, had been a no go area before. Presumably, because of the belief that our brains are not up to the task of being able to understand our brains and that a bigger, more developed brain, despite giving us more ability to make sense of what goes on 'in there' would have more going on and remain inscrutable. 

Rendering the situation supposedly impossible. But those ideas were gradually chipped away at and people began to make studies into such things as how much information it is possible for one person to store in their head. Evolutionary pscyhology, like all psychologies, relies entirely on the the belief that the mind can be studied.

Evolutionary psychology, as Dr Lindsey clearly put it, approaches the mind as an integrated network of cognitive modules in which thoughts are quickly processed and decisions are made. A simple example:- you are hungry and in front of you are three items. A juicy red apple, a rotten apple with maggots crawling inside it, and a red rose.

An alien on their first visit to Earth, or a new born baby, wouldn't have enough data in their mind to make a decision on which of these items would sate their hunger. But most humans would have many cues inside their head that would tell them to choose the juicy red apple and a similar amount of cues that would prevent them from eating either a rotten apple or a rose.

It's a simple example but the basic concept can be applied to far more complicated human behavioural patterns. Some would say this is down to lived experience. Others, those in the field of evolutionary psychology, would say that we have adapted as creatures to make these decisions.

Critics of evolutionary psychology can include human exceptionalists (either those of a creationist bent or those who believe in evolution but think that these ideas cannot account for the vast complexity of human behaviour and certainly not when you factor in all the huge cultural and social influences that humans, alone of all creatures on Earth, are subject to) or those that claim that theories in this field are, like Kipling's Just So stories, retrofitted to explain already obvious outcomes.

Dr Lindsey disagrees, strongly, with these criticisms. She states that social and cultural factors are considered during evolutionary psychology studies and that the resultant hypothesis, or hypotheses, are not the end of the science but simply the start of it.

When it comes to adaptations, Dr Lindsey said, evolutionary psychologists take great care not to conflate to make for easy, glib, answers to human behaviours. I lost the thread a little here but she cited, as an example, how a preference for sugar is probably an evolved thing. Once, sugar was desirable but rare so we craved it. Now, sugar is plentiful for most of us - but that hasn't stopped us desiring it.

To be honest, I wasn't totally sure where she was going with this and felt the talk, which was otherwise fascinating, was getting a bit tied up in itself. So I was pleased when we moved on to the subject of 'kin recognition'. How humans distinguish relatives from non-relatives.

It's a useful skill as it tells us who to be especially nice to and, also, who not to mate with. Useful. For obvious reasons. Golden hamsters use odour signals, red squirrels use similarity of vocalisation, and other creatures use spatial cues - were they in your den or burrow in your formative years. But if birds do and bees do it, then how do you and me do it?

Most of us know who our brothers and sisters are and are unlikely to be sexually attracted to them. Even if we were - say they're particularly hot, Freud theorised that huge social and cultural taboos would tell us that that was definitely a place not to go. But what about siblings that were separated at birth that meet later in life? Anecdotal evidence tells us of many cases of siblings like this who became attracted to, or even involved with, each other.

Studies were made of couples of Taiwanese sim pua marriages and from Israeli kibbutzim. The sim pua marriages of Taiwan took place at the start of the last century and saw more than half of the country's young girls given away to live with the family of the boy that they would eventually marry. Not a fan of arranged marriage anyway but this seems a particularly revolting idea.

So it proved. Those forced to undergo these marriages reported very low marriage satisfaction, high divorce rates, and there were reports of very traumatic wedding nights in which girls were forced, by their families, to consummate their relationships with a person they had grown up with and who felt exactly like a sibling.

Imagine your mum and dad insisting you must have sex with your brother or sister and you'll understand the scale of the trauma. The situation in Israeli kibbutzim wasn't quite so grim but in societies where people grow up in large and extended groups it is not uncommon for people to enter into relationships with those they grew up with.

They had a slightly better chance of working but only just. Anthropological studies suggest there is something, some kind of reverse imprinting inside us, that suggests imitation of kinship between two humans means examples of sexual attraction between the involved parties becomes rare or non-existent. Although where I come from, Tadley, there are a few example of people who disprove that theory.

That's another blog for another day. I was glad the Doc had turned the talk round. I'd enjoyed the digressions into Jordan Peterson's sexist theories, the ornithological studies of the Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz, and the enlarged hippocampi of London cabbies but the talk was best when it got back on track and that certainly included the stuff about not mating with your brothers and sisters.

It ended on what, to me, was another interesting note. Babies. Anybody who has observed a baby will have noticed that they will put almost anything in their mouth - except plants. Babies are so averse to plants that many are freaked out by simple green grass. There are videos on YouTube of parents trying to put their baby down on a patch of grass and in many cases the baby lifts their legs to avoid this weird and scary green stuff.

The evolutionary psychological thinking here, and nobody is saying they've cracked it yet, is that babies are born with an instilled behavioural immune system. Humans and plants have complicated relationships, we rely on them to stay alive but some of them keep trying to kill us, so babies instinctively know they are to avoid plants but they don't, yet, know which ones are dangerous.

So they try to avoid all plants. So next time your child turns their nose up at some broccoli, don't be worried. They're just trying to avoid being poisoned. Dr Lindsey Osterman had provided a slightly disjointed, but still hugely engaging, talk and a Q&A session that took in infanticide, incest porn, Richard Dawkins, Sir Mix-A-Lot, spider dicks, and the poison inside all cruciferous vegetables was great too. 

I particularly enjoyed that during a discussion about the sexuality of various animals, prawns were mentioned and somebody, quick as a flash, suggested to get an understanding of their sexual proclivities you need to go over to Prawnhub. It's one of the things that make these Skeptics events so fun - even when they're not in the pub. You have a laugh and you learn something at the same time. That's my idea of a good night out and, for now, a good night in. If it's not yours, that's probably down to the fact we have evolved differently. Let's not fall out over it.