Evolution in Daily Life

Biological Heritage Reconsidered

Gary Bernhard, Ed.D. and Kalman Glantz, Ph.D.

Twilight of the Emotions #4: Guilt

Guilt is a terrible feeling, but it served a critical purpose in the hunter-gatherer bands of our ancestors. What purpose does it serve today?

Twilight of the Emotions: Righteous Anger

Part 3: Righteous anger evolved to regulate the behavior of band members who had to cooperate in order to survive. Today, it often facilitates division rather than cooperation.

Twilight of the Emotions: Why Envy Evolved

Envy has had a bad reputation for a long time. But it evolved to maintain social order, fairness, and equality.

Twilight of the Emotions

The emotions that evolved in the foraging bands of our ancestors are still with us, but they no longer are able to regulate socioeconomic systems.

The Dance of Death and Inheritance

The human emotional system, efficient at dealing with death alone, splinters when inheritance joins the funeral, shifting thoughts from the lost loved one to the all-too-present.

The Grass Is Always Greener

Advances in technology have given humans more mobility than they have ever had, opening new opportunities. However, extraordinary mobility has unintended consequences.

Can We Blame Capitalism?

Many blame "capitalism" for the problems of the world today, but the system was created by a species that evolved both self-interest and a desire for equality.

We Are Inured to Lies

Over the past several decades, television, the Internet, and social media have made lying and cheating commonplace, undermining our evolved ability to detect falsehoods.

Moral Convictions and Identity Politics

The ability to form and retain moral convictions evolved to promote social cohesion in human groups. Today, it wreaks havoc in diverse societies.

What's Happened to Baseball?

The human cerebral cortex was "liberated" after the agricultural revolution and began to take off on its own, creating a cascade of unintended consequences—even in baseball.

Uncertainty, Leadership, and Demagoguery

A far-reaching change that came with agriculture was the loss of social certainty. This loss made humans more vulnerable to demagogues who project absolute certainty.

Defection and Its Dilemmas

Common characterizations of societies, such as "socialism" and "capitalism," have become almost meaningless over the years. The concept of "defection" can provide new insights.

Why Socialism Fails

Our hunter-gatherer past can help us understand both why we are drawn to "fairness" and why political attempts to establish fairness so often fail.

Why People Join Fanatical Groups

The need for group affiliation is deeply rooted in the human genome and can lead people to join dangerous destructive groups.

Half Men

Lots of stories have been written about women having to choose between passion and security when it comes to men. Why is this theme so compelling?

Unintended Consequences Are All Around Us

The unintended consequences of the workings of the human brain since agriculture are causing serious problems today. Can anything be done?

The Sine Qua Non of Human Existence

One crucial unintended consequence of agriculture and sedentary living was the aggrandizement of reason.

The Wages of Agriculture

Is there a serious mismatch between our hunter-gatherer brains and the post-agricultural world?

Unintended Consequences and the Cerebral Cortex

What happened to humans when the cerebral cortex no longer had to focus on survival and entered the service of problem-solving and order?

Science, Evil, and Human Evolution

Most western societies conceive of evil as a concrete entity, a force. We think evil is the erosion of pro-social inclinations that evolved in our foraging past.

Too Many Options

Many young people in high school and college are overwhelmed by the number of choices they encounter. The reason for their distress may lie in our evolutionary history.

Why Xenophobia Works

For millennia, leaders have used xenophobia as a powerful tool to draw often diverse groups together against a common enemy.

The Tragedy of the Foraging Assumption

In the face of overwhelming evidence that climate change is threatening the planet, many, including the President of the United States, deny it. Why?

Second Chances

Why do "second chance" stories all have a similar theme?