A note on evolutionary psychology
„The more society moves away from the truth, the more it hates those who reveal it.“
George Orwell
We are often discussing psychological reasons why we do something. Most of the time we mention so called proximate causes (a word from behavioral biology). These are the direct reasons why we do something. For instance a wolf prefers to hunt young animals, because he prefers tender meat over chewy meat from older animals. This is the proximate cause (which the wolf would give as an answer why he behaves this way if we could ask him). But there is also an evolutionary reason: it is less dangerous and takes less effort to hunt down young animals compared to older animals (at least if the mother is not around). And young animals are less likely to contain parasites. Therefore the wolf is driven by his desire to eat tender meat to do the strategically right thing. This is the so called ultimate cause. Another example is our fear of spiders. We find them ugly and disgusting (proximate cause) but the reason why we feel like this is that spiders might be poisonous and it is better not to touch them (ultimate cause). In this book we will focus mostly on ultimate causes. Note that the wolf is not aware of the true reason why he likes meat from young animals. It's a survival strategy which is implemented in his reward system which he cannot analyze.
For instance there could be many reasons (proximate causes) why a man has aggressions against women (his relationship to his mother in his childhood for instance). But as male aggression against women is very common (domestic violence), it is possible that even different proximate causes have a common ultimate cause. There might be a genetically induced tendency to develop such aggressions which can then happen in different specific ways. The reason for this must be that this aggression somehow makes biologically sense (i.e. offers an advantage). We will look at this example later in more detail, but try to get used to think in terms of ultimate causes instead of proximate causes.
I will in most cases not discuss proximate causes in this book which does not mean that they don‘t exist. They are important in other contexts (like psychotherapy).
If you look at your own hand you see a system of tremendous complexity in which every part serves a purpose. It was shaped by evolution to its current almost perfect design. There is nothing superfluous in your hand. It makes sense to assume that our mind was shaped in a similar (i.e. almost perfect) way by evolution. Classic psychology is dealing with the question of how our mind was shaped (i.e. in our childhood). While this is interesting too, it does not answer the question what the purpose of different structures of our mind is. In the analogy of the hand: classic psychology tries to understand how the hand is built but is not asking what the purpose of a hand is. In the case of the hand the answer is easy: we need it to grasp and manipulate objects. But it is sometimes less obvious in the case of psychical structures (like fears, behaviors etc.). But it is clear that to answer the question about the function of the hand is essential (even a child is able to do this easily) and a mere discussion of its design makes little sense without understanding its function. The same is true if we want to understand our mind.