Five Ways to Combat Evolutionary Mismatch

You may not realize it, but so much of what you experience in your everyday life is likely both unnatural and potentially harmful. In the evolutionary sciences, we refer to this kind of situation as an evolutionary mismatch (see Giphart and Van Vugt, 2018). A mismatch exists when an organism (like you or me) finds itself in an environment that differs in important ways from the ancestral environments that shaped its evolutionary history. If you live in a modernized, industrial country (as I do), you likely run into all kinds of mismatches every day. You likely encounter strangers at a higher rate than was true during the lion's share of human evolution. You likely engage in much less face-to-face communication with others than was true in ancestral times. Some proportion of your diet likely includes processed foods (think breads, pasta, cheese, baked goods, chips). In the industrialized world, mismatches abound. And we are only now starting to see the adverse physical and mental health consequences of this fact (see Geher and Wedberg, 2022).

The good news is that, as we begin to understand the nature of mismatch and its adverse effects on our lives, we can consider ways to mitigate them. Below are five things that you can do right now to help minimize the adverse effects of evolutionary mismatch on your life.

1. Get outside. You don't have to climb to the top of Mt. Rainier to have a significant nature experience. You can take five minutes and walk into your backyard. Listen to the songbirds. Notice the blossoms on the trees. Check out the sun's rays as they spread across the land. Or look at the cloud formations hovering overhead. Small doses of nature can go a long way toward bringing us back to the conditions that surrounded our ancestors in the bulk of human evolutionary history.
2. Eat something natural. As simple as it might sound, eating natural foods (fruits, vegetables, nuts, meats, eggs) is good for both the body and the mind. In the US today, estimates suggest that less than 40 percent of the food consumed is actual natural food (Guitar, 2017).
3. Give a relative a call. "Call your mom" may sound like a cliche. But from an evolutionary perspective, it is likely a good move. Our relatives generally share a high proportion of genes with us. As such, relatives (that is, kin) are special people in our world from a biological perspective. They have our hearts in mind because our hearts (and the rest of our bodies) share genes with them. Your success is, in a strict evolutionary sense, their success. Plus, you probably have a lot to laugh about together!
4. Exercise. Whether it is 20 push-ups, a two-mile run, or a quick set of curls at the weight bench—when it comes to exercise, something is always better than nothing. For the lion's share of human evolutionary history, exercise was not optional—our nomadic ancestors exercised intensively with regularity. Hiking miles and miles with one's clan to reach a location where food can be expected in a particular season was a standard part of life for these nomadic ancestors. They did not need to join a gym because life, under such conditions, was the gym. These days, our lives can be so deeply sedentary if we let them. The downsides of living a predominantly sedentary life are voluminous. Take steps to avoid this excessively unhealthy mismatch that is all too easy to fall into.
5. Put your phone in another room for half an hour. Modern cellphone technology, along with its evil sibling social media, brings us more mismatches than you might think. One of the main mismatches in cell phone technology: it facilitates non-face-to-face communication. For human evolutionary history, face-to-face communication was the only game in town. These days, so much of our communication takes place behind screens. And all the research shows that people are more likely to be antisocial in these contexts and are less likely to be prosocial in these contexts. Give yourself half an hour to be free of your phone. And actually talk to people in your life face-to-face. Your mind will thank you later.

Bottom Line

Evolutionary mismatch, which exists when the fish jumps out of the proverbial fishbowl—or when the person leaps from ancestral nomadic conditions to large-scale industrialized societies—can have a broad array of negative effects on people's lives. Mismatch can lead to physical, emotional, and social problems. And it often does. If you're like me and live in an industrialized country with large cities, processed foods, and lots of advanced communication technologies, you may well have to go out of your way to reduce the adverse effects of mismatch on your life. The five steps here are all easy ways to bring yourself back to natural living—the living that our bodies and minds evolved for. If you take a few minutes to follow even one of the suggestions herein, your mind and body will likely appreciate it.

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Note: This post was inspired by a conversation I had today with fellow evolutionary psychologist, Sarah Hill