#36 [EN] Mark Van Vugt - “How does our Stone Age brain deceive us every day?”

Data: Wed, 31 Oct 2018 08:00:00 +0000  ·  Duração: 00:41:17

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Mark Van Vugt 00:00:00.00The following is a conversation with Mark von Wucht, evolutionary psychologist and professor at the Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, recorded for 45 graus, a podcast based in Portugal. 00:00:17.20Bem-vindos! 00:00:18.74Como já perceberam, esta conversa foi gravada com um convidado estrangeiro. 00:00:22.60Na verdade, já a gravei em junho, na altura em que me trouxe sobre este tema da psicologia evolutiva. 00:00:27.68Mas como já seria, na altura, o terceiro episódio seguido sobre este mesmo tema, e tive receio de vos dar uma overdose deste tópico, se disse ao publicá-lo mais tarde. 00:00:37.62É, na verdade, uma conversa de apenas 40 minutos, mas com muito conteúdo. 00:00:41.62Mark von Wucht é uma das referências mundiais neste campo. 00:00:44.78É professor na Universidade Livre de Amsterdão e colabora com o Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology da Universidade de Oxford. 00:00:52.58Não sei se se lembra, mas o Paulo Finuras falou dele durante a nossa conversa sobre este mesmo tema. 00:00:56.90Foi então um privilégio voltar a discutir este tema, ainda que só por 40 minutos, com uma pessoa de referência desta área. 00:01:03.46Antes de vos deixar com a conversa, tenho de fazer um aviso prévio. 00:01:06.50Ao voltar a ouvir a gravação, fiquei com a impressão desconfortável de ter falado mais. 00:01:11.66Enfim, é o reverso da medalha do tema me entusiasmar. 00:01:14.44Mas vamos à conversa, espero que gostem. 00:01:20.38Marc, thank you for accepting the invitation for this conversation on the podcast. 00:01:24.90I wanted to talk about your latest book, Mismatch, which, as the name indicates, is about evolutionary mismatches, which is what happens when our primitive brains reply supposedly correctly to stimuli, but in a way that would be correct in prehistoric times, but is not correct anymore or is not beneficial to ourselves anymore. 00:01:45.06This is a very interesting issue, obviously, and is at the bottom of evolutionary psychology. 00:01:50.14It's something that is dealt across a wide array of books you mentioned in your introduction, Ivalerari's books, for instance. 00:01:58.78But in this case, your objective with this and your co-author's objective is to not focus on one specific type of mismatch, but rather describe the whole range of mismatches that exist. 00:02:10.82I think I'll ask you to start on that, to, well, give any more information on the book that you find relevant and also discuss the most relevant mismatches, if you will.
José Maria Pimentel 00:02:20.66Okay, so yes, you're right, this is not a book that focuses on one specific example of evolutionary mismatch. 00:02:28.54Instead, we wanted to bring this very interesting concept to a broader audience by, I suppose, speculating about how evolutionary mismatch can account for some of the challenges that we face as society today. 00:02:45.56So the basic idea is, yes, biological evolution of our bodies and minds is a slow process, which has happened over many, many generations, over thousands and thousands of years. 00:03:00.32And, of course, if an environment quickly changes as a result of something that is happening, a natural catastrophe or something that humans have done, then we may find that our bodies and brains are no longer adapted to this new environment. 00:03:17.88And we try to show that, at least theoretically, this can be the case. 00:03:26.14And we then try to come up with lots of examples where we find that the mismatch principle can have some relevance, for example, in our bodies as they adapt to a new environment with, for example, cars and traffic, airplanes. 00:03:46.02Something that, of course, wasn't around a long time ago when our ancestors developed their bodies and brains. 00:03:55.24And so health, bodies, love, war, leadership. 00:04:00.50These are some of the examples that we've tried to develop in our book.
Mark Van Vugt 00:04:05.62One of the issues you mentioned, and it's quite an interesting one, is stress, which is an evolutionary tool which makes complete sense in our previous life, so to say. 00:04:17.44But nowadays, it affects us in a way that's completely beyond what it was meant to be a tool for. 00:04:25.66So now we feel, or some of us feel, levels of stress that are persistent and not point in time. 00:04:32.04So not a reaction to a lion behind a rock, but rather a reaction to stresses at work. 00:04:38.12Do you think that's one of the main mismatches or at least one of the most impactful nowadays?
José Maria Pimentel 00:04:43.56Probably, yes. 00:04:44.34Certainly at work. 00:04:45.90And we spend an awful long time at work nowadays. 00:04:50.34And so, yes, our stress system evolved in response to acute dangers and threats. 00:04:57.98And so our stress system, as it were, when it's activated, it signals to the body that it's important to do something, to fight or flight. 00:05:10.00And then it sets in motion a sudden rush of hormones, cortisol, adrenaline, in order to cope with that threat. 00:05:19.22But the threat is acute. 00:05:21.30And for example, as you say, a lion running towards you, immediate action is required. 00:05:26.66And once you've escaped, then the stress system is deactivated, basically. 00:05:35.06So what we have now is almost a permanent stress from living in a modern, urbanized and working environment where we have deadlines to take care of. 00:05:47.54We have maybe conflicts with co-workers who we don't have any kinship relationship with. 00:05:55.08And they are stressful, but at a sort of at a lingering level. 00:05:59.56But they do affect us physiologically. 00:06:01.56It affects our sleep and rest patterns. 00:06:06.18And it also affects our hormonal household. 00:06:08.98And so this sort of continuous secretion of cortisol that we experience now in response to these daily stresses are affecting our health, are affecting how our bodies respond, are affecting our sleeping patterns and the decisions that we make. 00:06:26.64So, yeah, that's certainly one example of mismatch that we discuss in our book.
Mark Van Vugt 00:06:31.66There's an interesting bit of information, which I think you mentioned, which is the fact that in ancient times, and if we still study the hunter-gatherer tribes that exist today, we don't find anyone experiencing insomnia, for instance, which is a very interesting phenomenon. 00:06:51.38Yes. 00:06:51.70In that it tells us that insomnia is completely, or at least to the most part, related to our present lifestyle.
José Maria Pimentel 00:06:59.04Yes, no. 00:06:59.98But then what we try to say is that there are so many cues in the environment that are different. 00:07:06.78For example, I mean, humans evolved in Africa. 00:07:13.02And so the day-night shifts are fairly fixed across seasons. 00:07:18.92And so we now live, at least I, in the northern latitudes in the Netherlands, where there's a clear distinction between seasons in day and night rhythms. 00:07:28.68And so our bodies are probably fairly ill-adapted to cope with that. 00:07:34.56And hence, that's one cue, of course, that is very different. 00:07:38.90So we have very long summers. 00:07:40.82I mean, it almost doesn't get dark nowadays in the summer. 00:07:44.42And it almost doesn't get light in winter times. 00:07:47.68And so our body has to cope with that. 00:07:50.64And so that, I think, is, of course, a source of stress, which causes here insomnia. 00:07:57.12And then there are all these other cues related to work, related to the fact that we interact now with lots of genetic strangers, people we don't have any familiarity with. 00:08:08.70And so that is emotionally exhausting as a sort of more extreme form of stress. 00:08:15.86We talk about burnout. 00:08:17.10Well, one of the aspects of burnout is depersonalization and cynicism. 00:08:23.50We get that in contact professions like teaching, but also nursing. 00:08:28.60Well, what characterizes these jobs is that we are asking people to empathize with complete strangers, lots of them, on a daily level, at schools, in hospitals, etc. 00:08:43.04No wonder that people depersonalize and suffer from cynicism and emotional exhaustion. 00:08:49.48We haven't evolved to cope with that problem.
Mark Van Vugt 00:08:52.76Yeah, we were made for face-to-face interaction, right?
José Maria Pimentel 00:08:55.70Face-to-face with kin, people who we have a deep emotional connection with because we have a shared genetic interest.
Mark Van Vugt 00:09:02.16Let me ask you something about going a little bit towards the root of the issue in a point you just mentioned, about the fact that we, as a species, arose in Africa. 00:09:15.44Then we spread out in the last roughly 50,000 years. 00:09:21.90I would guess that's one of the greatest difficulties in this realm, which is to understand to what extent did we evolve since then? 00:09:32.90Because we know that 50,000 years ago is already a lot of time, although evolutionary arguably is not too much. 00:09:39.08But it's already enough for we to be all across the world, the same species, but with different features. 00:09:47.10And even with some physical differences, for instance, the northern peoples are different from the Ethiopians, for instance, in terms of body fat and stuff like that. 00:09:57.36Isn't it possible that we have evolved to adapt to these differences in environment, for instance? 00:10:04.84This is going back to your example about the sunlight and the season.
José Maria Pimentel 00:10:07.82Yes, no, that's, of course, an interesting question. 00:10:11.52And that really gets at the core of the mismatch theory. 00:10:17.70And that is, well, if you assume that human evolution goes very quickly, very rapidly. 00:10:24.64And for example, if you say that, well, since the last 10,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution, if you argue that humans have evolved many different physical and psychological adaptation to cope with this change, then, of course, the mismatch argument is invalid. 00:10:43.58But all our research, and I'm talking about genetics, anthropologists, research, archaeology research, neuroscience, points at the fact that, A, biological evolution is indeed a very slow process. 00:10:59.44And B, humans itself, our hardware isn't really fundamentally different, whether you talk about a person growing up in a small village in Ethiopia, or a hunt together society in New Guinea, or who lives in Denmark and is working for a company there. 00:11:20.48Our fundamental biology hasn't changed, and that means that you can recognize a homo sapiens everywhere you go. 00:11:28.96And the homo sapiens is very different from any of the other species that are now extinct. 00:11:34.10And the reason why we can be so similar is because we have culture, and culture is a buffer against all these sort of new changes that we encountered when we moved out of Africa.
Mark Van Vugt 00:11:47.62And we've outsourced, in a sense, our evolution to culture, didn't we?
José Maria Pimentel 00:11:52.04Yes, and so we have, our culture is in our clothes, for example, is in the way we use technology. 00:12:00.20Our culture is in our dietary preferences, etc. 00:12:04.84But again, they haven't fundamentally changed our hardware. 00:12:08.30So we are everywhere the same. 00:12:10.32Of course, you can point at physical differences, but they are really very small. 00:12:16.66We talk about skin colour, for example. 00:12:19.28But that is, I would say, a small difference that is really driven by one genetic change, one gene version that is different, that causes a lighter skin colour. 00:12:32.32But most of our psychology, the kind of decisions that we make regarding who we prefer as our partners, who we want to cooperate with others, These are complex psychological adaptations, and they can't really change in 50,000 years ago, let alone in 10,000 years ago. 00:12:49.16They've been built up very slowly over probably hundreds of thousands of years.
Mark Van Vugt 00:12:54.28And also, we do know that, and you mentioned that in the book, I would call them cognitive biases. 00:13:01.32I think you call them ancestral features, which are biases that we know exist in our behaviour. 00:13:08.90And the most reasonable explanation for them is the mismatch principle, is that they were created for an environment we don't face nowadays anymore. 00:13:20.58And actually, I'd like to explore a few of them. 00:13:22.70Just let me ask one question before. 00:13:24.52This is a puzzle I have. 00:13:26.72I'm not sure if it is very much related, but I have a hunch that this may be explained at least a bit by evolutionary psychology. 00:13:33.98You mentioned burnout just a while ago. 00:13:37.16This is a very interesting phenomenon. 00:13:38.84This is obviously a big problem nowadays. 00:13:41.40But I've been noticing, or I've been thinking about a curious aspect of it. 00:13:47.56If you look at the political realm, for instance, not to mention the business one, but let's stick with the political realm. 00:13:54.80If you look at presidents and prime ministers, one, I think it's very rare to observe a case of burnout. 00:14:01.18And two, it's very rare to observe the case of someone who is in power, has a chance to continue in power, so to run, to be re-elected, who doesn't choose to do so. 00:14:11.40Which would tell me that there's kind of a counterforce acting to compensate the pressure of that activity, of that role. 00:14:20.70Because people want, this is one of the most high pressure, these are the most high pressure jobs in the world. 00:14:25.86But people want to stay, if they have the opportunity, most of them want to stay in that job. 00:14:29.86It's very rare for you to find a case of a prime minister or a president who chooses voluntarily to step down if he or she has the options to stay in power, right?
José Maria Pimentel 00:14:37.92Yes, no, but that, I think it's an old evolutionary principle at work that transcends humans. 00:14:43.72You see it in all the non-human primates as well. 00:14:47.26And that is, once you've climbed up the hierarchy of your group, there is a strong incentive to stay there. 00:14:53.86Because the position in the hierarchy, certainly in our ancestral environment, and I'm talking now also about our primate ancestors, not just humans. 00:15:05.16But as soon as you're at the top of the hierarchy, there are privileges and rewards in terms of status and also reproductive success that you don't easily give up that position. 00:15:18.82And so maybe there is a mismatch there because being a prime minister today doesn't nearly give you the rewards in terms of reproductive success, in a democracy at least, as in our primate cousins. 00:15:34.08Because if you're the alpha in the gorilla, you have all the matings, all the females are yours, and all the children in the group are yours. 00:15:44.20And so there's a big, big incentive to fight for. 00:15:47.52And so we don't have that in our modern environment, probably in democracies, but still the psychology is the same. 00:15:54.92Once you're in the top position, don't easily give up your place. 00:15:59.32And so if you're not in a democracy, but in an African dictatorship, and you are not the top boss, but you are a civilian, then it's very hard. 00:16:10.14Because what we see left and right is that these African dictators, and not just in Africa, I'm thinking China now too, They want to maintain their power position and expand their power position, but they're really responding to a very old psychology, an evolved psychology that says, once you are there at the top, don't give up.
Mark Van Vugt 00:16:30.20And my intuition would be that there's something at a biochemical level that acts as a counterweight to the burnout pressures. 00:16:41.14Something that acts as a pleasure sensor or something that counterweights that and gives you...
José Maria Pimentel 00:16:47.10No, it's dopamine, it's testosterone. 00:16:49.74Exactly. 00:16:50.48And we know that power comes with rewards. 00:16:58.34You can measure that by looking at dopamine levels in people, and high-testosterone individuals also seek out these powerful positions. 00:17:09.58Their whole body, as it were, screams for power.
Mark Van Vugt 00:17:12.90Exactly. 00:17:14.16You just mentioned leadership. 00:17:16.52That's also a very interesting field of this realm of evolutionary psychology, and you have also written about that. 00:17:25.08One of the most interesting aspects of it is the fact that we, unlike our primate cousins, we have evolved from a dominance hierarchy to one which is more based on prestige, which is based on reputation. 00:17:37.72And also one of the assumptions, or I say assumption because I don't think we can ever come to a complete conclusion on this, is the fact that during our hunter-gatherer times, which, as I mentioned before, is the bulk of our time as a species, we lived under a more egalitarian ethos, which means that those tribes or even those groups before being tribes were roughly egalitarian. 00:18:05.72To what extent can we know that, and how did this prestige versus dominance duality work out back then?
José Maria Pimentel 00:18:15.66Yes, very, very good question. 00:18:17.94And so, yeah, we, first of all, have to consider different timelines here. 00:18:23.10And so we're talking about a very, very long history as primates. 00:18:28.82I mean, primates have been on this planet for maybe 60 million years ago or something like that. 00:18:35.16And so we share a common ancestor with a lot of primates living today, the chimpanzees, the bonobos, the gorillas, the orangutans, whatever. 00:18:46.76And so, and what characterizes all of them, bonobos are a little bit exceptional, but it's indeed dominance hierarchies where individuals compete for resources and naturally form some sort of hierarchy. 00:19:01.98Now, what happens with humans particularly, and that was the human niche, if you like, is something that happened about three, four million years ago, is when the niche for humans started opening up. 00:19:13.70And that was the savannah environment. 00:19:15.16And in the savannah environment, you had to survive, you could only survive by forming these highly cooperative groups. 00:19:22.08And so dominance was really not the currency on which groups could function well. 00:19:28.50And so in these groups, there was a really active suppression of any dominant behaviors. 00:19:33.64And so how do we know that? 00:19:35.32Well, we look at current hunter-gatherer societies. 00:19:38.72There are still a few on this planet who have a tribal structure that looks, we think, like what ancestral group living was for these a couple of million years ago. 00:19:51.20We, of course, look at archaeological records. 00:19:54.72We look at neuroscience. 00:19:58.08So, for example, in neuroscience and in social psychology, there have been very many studies looking at, for example, our inequity aversion. 00:20:09.48We don't really tolerate as humans that one individual is better off than us, particularly if they haven't worked for it. 00:20:16.72So there is this sort of very strong sense of fairness and a strong sense of reciprocity. 00:20:21.78And that must come from somewhere. 00:20:24.06And we think that that comes from this period of egalitarianism that lasted from about the origin of humans to three million years ago to about 10,000 years ago when the agricultural revolution kicked in. 00:20:40.20And again, there, what happened then, and that's really what mismatch is about, people were more or less released from this strong and strict egalitarianism that characterizes these small cooperative groups. 00:20:53.76And so what we call these leveling mechanisms that were part and parcel of these small egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups, they started to disappear. 00:21:04.16Leveling as in sanctioning or punishing individuals who were dominant, who were shown dominant or exploitative behaviors. 00:21:12.90These were no longer in place in these agricultural societies. 00:21:17.06And so suddenly there was opportunities, again, for particularly corrupt, nepotistic, but also dominant authoritarian leaders to emerge. 00:21:30.08And that's really, so we've evolved as a sort of, we've evolved as a sort of democratic egalitarian age where leadership was really prestige-based. 00:21:41.62The best hunter got the best rewards, the best diplomat, the best warrior. 00:21:46.22But their influence, their power was limited really to their domain of expertise. 00:21:52.56Well, we moved from that to a situation where leadership was no longer prestige-based, but it's now, again, based more on dominance, authoritarianism, formal positions in the hierarchy, the CEO, the president, the king, etc. 00:22:10.52And so that's a mismatch.
Mark Van Vugt 00:22:12.62One of the most relevant things that arose during those times was, of course, language. 00:22:18.96One of the hypotheses is gossip, so it emerged as a tool for socialization. 00:22:30.72Another one, at least, is that it arose as a signaling device, so to signal intelligence, to signal gene quality. 00:22:39.40And there are even other options. 00:22:40.80Where do you stand on that debate?
José Maria Pimentel 00:22:42.82Yeah, so I think, I mean, I have to stick with the social hypothesis of language. 00:22:52.38So language as a way to bond and connect individuals in increasingly large groups. 00:23:00.86So it was a language as a sort of coordination device. 00:23:04.16I mean, gossip is one aspect of it, but it's also making sure that you manage your social relations, even though you're not in this, at the same time, at the same place all the time. 00:23:15.76You're not in each other's face. 00:23:17.32And so, but you can still transmit information. 00:23:19.86And so once that is in place, I think, once there are these group benefits of language, then, of course, individuals who are excellent at language skills, who are orators or politicians nowadays or poets, or they could show off their skills and maybe attract opposite sex partners by showing off their language, showing off their genetic quality. 00:23:46.16But I think, first, there must be some sort of group-level benefit for language to emerge, so that it's a system for, a relatively honest system for transmitting social information. 00:23:58.36And then it can be hijacked or used by particularly skillful individuals to get these genetic benefits.
Mark Van Vugt 00:24:06.78That's an interesting point. 00:24:07.96Your point is that there must be benefits to the group before there is a benefit to specific individuals for a feature to...
José Maria Pimentel 00:24:15.64Yes, because why would you respond to somebody showing some or transmitting some information if it's deceptive, for example?
Mark Van Vugt 00:24:24.94Sure, sure, sure. 00:24:25.48No, it makes, in my opinion, it makes complete sense. 00:24:28.46You identify, and you just touched on that just now, you identify different types of leadership that were probably existent back then. 00:24:38.14And that's really very interesting because it tells us that a lot of differences in personality and difference in behavior and types that exist today, which seem to be very disparate to us, are actually, they have their roots back then. 00:24:52.60Nowadays, we see people whose mating strategies, for instance, are based... 00:24:57.60When I say mating strategies, I mean the persona they create for themselves, which is obviously rooted in their personality. 00:25:03.84Some of them, they are the sportsmen or sportswomen. 00:25:06.84So someone who is very good at sports or very good in physical activity. 00:25:10.16Other people behave more as managers, so the conscientious and responsible person. 00:25:15.26Others are the diplomat, if you will. 00:25:18.26Others are the know-it-all, if you will. 00:25:20.22So someone who is very good at language and very knowledgeable. 00:25:23.16And what's interesting is that these were different, in your view, and I think that's a very relevant point of view. 00:25:29.82These were different leaderships that emerged in different environments back then. 00:25:35.34Yes, that's right.
José Maria Pimentel 00:25:37.06But also, I mean, we humans are niche constructors. 00:25:41.30We are cultural animals, but we're also always, as individuals, looking for some opportunity to display our talents. 00:25:50.80And so, as a group living species, in many different kinds of environments, we can occupy lots of different niches. 00:25:59.26So, indeed, you can get status in a group by, of course, being a good hunter, providing some public good that is beneficial to others, but also as a diplomat, as a manager, as an explorer. 00:26:15.42And so, you would expect individuals in a prestige-based hierarchy, because that's what our sort of egalitarian past was, a prestige-based hierarchy. 00:26:28.64You would expect them to look for opportunities to display talents and work on talents that are ultimately beneficial to the group, because that's the way that they can get status. 00:26:38.60And so, you see that among children as well, even in a family with sons and daughters, each of them tries to occupy a niche where they can be better than the others, if you like. 00:26:52.84And they can, and so they can differentiate, yes. 00:26:56.84With that, you have different personality, you get personality variation, which ultimately builds on probably genetic variation. 00:27:04.10And so, and I think it's great, and it's probably one of the secrets of the success of our species as humans, is that we can occupy so many niches as individuals that are fostering our own reproductive interests.
Mark Van Vugt 00:27:20.88Yeah. 00:27:21.12Let me go back to the cognitive biases that we have, the essential features of our brains.
José Maria Pimentel 00:27:29.10There's an important point here, because I don't think people who read Kahneman's work, for example, will realize that when they talk about these heuristics, that they probably have a very deep evolutionary functional history. 00:27:48.14And so, you can go through all these biases that Tversky and Kahneman found from loss aversion to the endowment effect and whatever. 00:27:58.04And there is probably some story of some functionality in our ancestral environment, which is currently leading to perhaps maladaptive decisions in a new environment. 00:28:12.18And so, people don't often realize that, but I think it's a very important message to convey.
Mark Van Vugt 00:28:20.20In my opinion, that's one of the most interesting aspects of this field.
José Maria Pimentel 00:28:24.28You're an economist, eh? 00:28:25.60Yes. 00:28:26.98Exactly.
Mark Van Vugt 00:28:28.42It really enables us to go to the root cause of this issue. 00:28:32.86As you mentioned, Kahneman or Robert Cialdini's book, also very, very well known in the field of psychology. 00:28:40.82But studying this from an evolutionary point of view enables us to go to the root cause of all those biases that exist, all those things that we notice that don't follow necessarily a rational path, But rather, our heuristics are shortcuts for decisions that are really embedded in our hardware. 00:29:00.32And that's really very, very interesting.
José Maria Pimentel 00:29:01.92So, I thought a little bit more about this question. 00:29:05.12And I don't think our book totally deals with that. 00:29:07.88But so, what I'm suggesting here is that we have evolutionary old problems. 00:29:13.90Things that have been around for many generations and are still around with us today, like how to find a mate to have your children with and live a long life with, etc. 00:29:24.40How to find a place to eat or sleep or whatever. 00:29:29.50These are evolutionary old problems. 00:29:31.72And we would expect our heuristics, our system one, if you like, our intuition to do well with these kinds of problems. 00:29:39.32So, we don't need to evoke our prefrontal cortex. 00:29:43.40We don't need a lot of deliberate thought. 00:29:45.58I mean, how does it happen? 00:29:47.22You go to a bar, a party, to a student accommodation. 00:29:53.90You find someone, you fall in love, etc. 00:29:56.92That's it. 00:29:57.80So, evolutionary old problems can be dealt with very well with these heuristics. 00:30:02.02But evolutionary novel problems, things that haven't been part and parcel of our evolutionary history, like climate change, for example, or where to get a mortgage from, or how to invest in our pension. 00:30:13.52For these kinds of problems, our evolutionary heuristics are mismatched. 00:30:17.66And they actually require a lot of deliberate thought, prefrontal cortex activation, etc. 00:30:23.06And so, and that is where system two comes in. 00:30:25.52And where we encounter problems is when we apply system one to evolutionary novel problems, or vice versa, where we apply system two thinking to evolutionary old problems for which we have heuristics. 00:30:40.44And I think it's at that cross-section where Tversky and Kahneman's work is relevant. 00:30:45.38Sure, that's a very interesting perspective.
Mark Van Vugt 00:30:47.36I hadn't thought about it in that way, in that...
José Maria Pimentel 00:30:49.56Yeah, we should do more research on that, but I think that's really what is happening. 00:30:54.22Yeah, no, it's indeed very, very interesting, because it tells you that not everything is a mismatch.
Mark Van Vugt 00:31:00.30So, there are heuristics we have, which are not... 00:31:03.38Maybe they could become more perfect or more accurate, but they are not mismatches.
José Maria Pimentel 00:31:09.00You have to find the ecologically relevant environment where they can be applied well.
Mark Van Vugt 00:31:15.04Yeah, and it immediately came to my mind, you mentioned the example of falling in love, so mating in a more technical description. 00:31:25.58It immediately came to my mind an example I saw, and I think I mentioned this in the conversation with Glenn also, which is the fact that we know that women tend to prefer... 00:31:35.12And this, obviously, the same feature exists in reverse, but from the point of view of women, they tend to prefer men. 00:31:42.54We have facial features which reflect high levels of testosterone. 00:31:46.78So, the whole chin thing, the forehead, you know all that, of course. 00:31:50.88And what's interesting there is that research, at least so far, tells us that that preference, it gets diluted as societies get developed. 00:31:59.72So, that's really a preference that makes sense in an environment of scarcity. 00:32:04.28It doesn't make sense in an environment in which you have plenty of access to food and other needs. 00:32:11.34And so, there's like an automatic mechanism in that in more developed societies, like the Netherlands or Sweden or other Scandinavian countries, that effect is really, really much more diluted. 00:32:24.16And it tells us that we have hardwired in us, sort of the response with different levels of...
José Maria Pimentel 00:32:31.28Yes, yes, environmental contingencies. 00:32:33.58So, yes, conditions under which we are more likely to select particular mates, for example, those that are more masculine or less masculine.
Mark Van Vugt 00:32:44.92What's interesting, and this is why I think your point is very relevant, is that the same thing doesn't happen in the work environment. 00:32:54.70So, we don't have an automatic adaptation there, which tells us that there's clearly a mismatch and we are really not being able to adapt.
José Maria Pimentel 00:33:02.60Our system is not very well calibrated. 00:33:04.58We try to calibrate it through education, for example, that we prepare our children for the best possible working environment through schooling. 00:33:13.74But these are cultural experiments, and who knows what society looks like in 20, 30 years. 00:33:20.86So, our education may calibrate children... 00:33:23.54For the best. 00:33:24.48Yes, towards a particular thing. 00:33:26.80But the future may be very different. 00:33:29.82And so, and that's clearly... 00:33:31.78So, in the book, we talk about evolutionary mismatch primarily, but there is also a lot of developmental mismatches and even cultural mismatches. 00:33:39.32I mean, look at all the sort of migrants in European society that come from different societies, like culture of honor societies. 00:33:49.26So, how can we explain that a third generation migrant from Morocco in the Netherlands still adopts cultural standards from the nation that their grandparents left? 00:34:03.16I think that there is certainly something like cultural mismatch at work, which I think is another very fascinating topic to speculate on, because it may be very important for the kind of problems that we're also facing in society with social cohesion, how to deal with refugees and what have you.
Mark Van Vugt 00:34:23.72Yeah, exactly. 00:34:24.72That's why all this field of evolutionary psychology, but also the field of culture, interests me so much, because they are really relevant to such a broad array of issues. 00:34:35.18And for instance, one issue you mentioned I was very pleased to find that you wrote about is the issue of climate change. 00:34:43.52And because it's when I was, I just had a, I just recorded a conversation with a climate change expert here in Portugal, and really our cognitive biases are really so much present there in our lack of response to climate change. 00:34:59.12And if you start, if you start, if you start counting them, tribal thinking for one, focusing on the present, herd behavior, that is copying those, the behavior of the ones around us, and focusing only on our group, focus primarily on sensory experiences, so what we can feel without chance. 00:35:16.80These are all biases or ancestral features that are really in the way of our response to climate change.
José Maria Pimentel 00:35:26.20Yes, but what I'm arguing is we can use these ancestral biases in order to get people to be more concerned about climate change. 00:35:36.46If we, for example, tap into people's immediate sensory experiences. 00:35:41.88So, for example, so suppose you would have something added to your drinking water, your tap water, that would reflect the pollutants in the water, which vary from day to day, even what you get in your drinking water. 00:35:55.34Suppose the water company, I mean, they won't do it voluntarily, but they would add something which makes you, which changes the color of your drinking water if it is slightly polluted. 00:36:08.94That would be a clear signal to which our brains would respond. 00:36:12.40And so we have to be clever and think about how we can use these evolutionary relevant nudges, if you like, so to speak, in order to change people's behaviors. 00:36:22.02And so we shouldn't go down the old route of education, information, and think that that somehow helps. 00:36:29.00No, we should look at these biases, study them carefully and say, okay, now we can sort of use these biases in a desirable way.
Mark Van Vugt 00:36:38.18Exactly. 00:36:38.62It makes complete sense. 00:36:39.52So the benefit of one studying this subject is that one can take better informed decisions based on what we've learned. 00:36:49.06It's not to cross our arms and quit. 00:36:52.68And for instance, the fact that we tend to focus on our kin, as you mentioned before, if the climate change effects are made relevant to our kin, so to our children, for instance, then our heuristics will tell us that it's necessary to...
José Maria Pimentel 00:37:10.68We've just run a few studies whereby we prime people with pictures of children in one condition. 00:37:23.66And in the other condition, we didn't have children, we just gave information about environmental consequences. 00:37:29.70But people respond more strongly if we emphasize or we activate children because that promotes what we call a kin care motivation. 00:37:39.48And that we found that that ultimately resulted in them having stronger intentions to engage in all kinds of environmental behaviors from domestic water conservation to recycling, etc. 00:37:55.16So we should be clever. 00:37:56.78We should be clever about that.
Mark Van Vugt 00:37:58.36Sure. 00:37:58.74Well, congratulations on that research. 00:38:00.76I think you're doing a very, no, really a very relevant and really something that's very significant for society as a whole, which is also obviously something good for our work. 00:38:12.60We're reaching the end of our conversation. 00:38:14.16I wanted to leave with a question that arose really in my mind when I was reading about this. 00:38:19.18And I guess you have the same experience. 00:38:21.08So you are someone who is really well positioned to correct all these mismatches. 00:38:27.60And I'm sure you've tried to do so in your personal life or professional life, which is the one which is really the most difficult one for you to correct, either in your private life or professional life, due to the contingencies that you face in either of those?
José Maria Pimentel 00:38:44.88Yes, that's a very good question. 00:38:47.40I've been asked that question various times. 00:38:50.16And I give different answers because there are so many temptations that I struggle with in modern life. 00:38:58.68But yeah, the one thing, it has to be my eating habits, particularly it's now World Cup time. 00:39:07.44And when there's World Cup, lots of football on television, which I follow. 00:39:12.02And then I do buy a bag of crisps. 00:39:17.10Crisps are obviously a mismatch because in our ancestral environment, there were not these very nice, sweet, salty, fatty foods. 00:39:26.56And so what I cannot do is once I've opened a bag, I cannot stop until the bag is totally finished. 00:39:33.76And so that's my problem. 00:39:37.96My evolved psychological mechanism says, oh, this is so tasty. 00:39:43.54Keep on eating. 00:39:45.38There's nothing better in this world.
Mark Van Vugt 00:39:47.80I think it's, I mean, one shouldn't be too judgmental in this field. 00:39:52.92And I think it's good to let our ancestral brain override our present knowledge.
José Maria Pimentel 00:40:01.98Yes, on the one hand, I still do the exercises. 00:40:05.68I still play football and do some tennis so that I can try and restore some of the excess weight that I gain.
Mark Van Vugt 00:40:12.88That's good. 00:40:13.46So you're balancing things out. 00:40:15.96So you're correcting.
José Maria Pimentel 00:40:18.56It's a permanent struggle, which our ancestors didn't have.
Mark Van Vugt 00:40:21.60Exactly. 00:40:21.60That's why they slept well. 00:40:24.40Mark, thank you very much for this conversation. 00:40:26.48It was a bit of a short one, but very interesting. 00:40:29.04You really gave me some very interesting insights on this topic.
José Maria Pimentel 00:40:32.94So thanks a lot. 00:40:33.72You're welcome. 00:40:34.46Okay. 00:40:34.92Thanks, José.
Mark Van Vugt 00:40:42.42Uma última nota para relembrar que podem tornar-se apoiantes deste projeto através do Patreon, no site www.patreon.com.com.br 45 graus, por esteso. 00:40:55.54Obrigado a quem tem apoiado no Patreon. 00:40:57.30Em particular, ao Gustavo Pimenta, ao João Vítor Baltazar, ao Salvador Cunha, à Ana Mateus, ao Ricardo Santos, ao Nelson Teodoro e ao Paulo Ferreira. 00:41:06.60Até ao próximo episódio. 00:41:08.88E aí E aí E aí E aí E aí E aí E aí