Is Shyness an Evolutionary Tactic?

[2012PhD]

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Great article in the Times for those of us that work with social anxiety or introverted clients! You may want to give this to your clients.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/opinion/sunday/26shyness.html?pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me

 

[UhOh]

Cool, thanks for posting 🙂.

Great article in the Times for those of us that work with social anxiety or introverted clients! You may want to give this to your clients.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/opinion/sunday/26shyness.html?pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me

 

[MrQuack]

Cool, thanks for posting 🙂.

The sad thing is that there is a lot of research out there showing how shy kids really get the short end of the stick, at least in the West.

I think very few behaviors have adaptive value. And those that do are purely by accident. The funny thing is that you can put an evo. psych spin on almost any behavior, however it gets kind of funny when you do it with humans and not animals (well non-human animals).

For example, if a little girl kicks a little boy in the sack, and these two children were wearing, figuratively speaking, monkey suits, an evo. psych might see this behavior as a social gesture in which the female disapproves of the males traits and wishes to decrease his chances at mating by lowering his sperm count. Maybe that actually happens, but she only did it because she saw it in an Adam Sandler movie.

 

[UhOh]

MrQuack, a few comments:

1) You said "I think very few behaviors have adaptive value". That's interesting, I don't know anything about evolutionary psyc, but I'd wager that that statement might invite an argument 😉.

2) Agreed on that you can put an evolutionary psyc spin on anything. This recently came up in another thread on this forum.

3) Nice example. I have a friend who has to write a quals question on evolutionary psych stuff, & I'll tell him he should include your example in there. I think the committee would take a liking to that 😉.

The sad thing is that there is a lot of research out there showing how shy kids really get the short end of the stick, at least in the West.

I think very few behaviors have adaptive value. And those that do are purely by accident. The funny thing is that you can put an evo. psych spin on almost any behavior, however it gets kind of funny when you do it with humans and not animals (well non-human animals).

For example, if a little girl kicks a little boy in the sack, and these two children were wearing, figuratively speaking, monkey suits, an evo. psych might see this behavior as a social gesture in which the female disapproves of the males traits and wishes to decrease his chances at mating by lowering his sperm count. Maybe that actually happens, but she only did it because she saw it in an Adam Sandler movie.

 

[Buzzwordsoldier]

MrQuack, a few comments:

2) Agreed on that you can put an evolutionary psyc spin on anything. This recently came up in another thread on this forum.

Let's not pretend this is a ding against evolutionary psych in particular. Adherents of any school of psych can put a spin on anything. That's what makes psychology's power so awful. It's like a perpetual motion machine.

 

[MrQuack]

MrQuack, a few comments:

1) You said "I think very few behaviors have adaptive value". That's interesting, I don't know anything about evolutionary psyc, but I'd wager that that statement might invite an argument 😉.

2) Agreed on that you can put an evolutionary psyc spin on anything. This recently came up in another thread on this forum.

3) Nice example. I have a friend who has to write a quals question on evolutionary psych stuff, & I'll tell him he should include your example in there. I think the committee would take a liking to that 😉.

Yeah I bet they would 😉 I think your first comment is correct, perhaps non-adaptive behaviors increase with the complexity of the life form. I'm sure monkeys do a lot of silly stuff 😉