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The adopted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture
Person. in&id. 01% Vol. 15, No. 5, pp. 607408, 1993
Pergamon Press Ltd. Printed in Great Britain
BOOK REVIEWS
JEROME H. BARKOW, LEDA CQSMIDESand JOHN TUBBY @Is): The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press (1992) 666 pages. H/bk $55.00. In recent decades, the theoretical approach called evolutionary psychology or “sociobiology” has greatly illuminated the origins and nature of the human mind. The conception of the brain as a general purpose computer, tabularasa or passive recipient of culture has given way to a view of the mind as “a network of functionally specialized computers, each of which imposes contentful structure on human mental organization and culture”. This book consists of a series of essays exploring the relevance of this approach to areas such as mate selection, parental care, language development, aesthetic responses, environmental preferences, psychodynamic mechanisms, and culture processes in general. The power of this approach is testified by the various essays and psychologists concerned with individual differences, especially sex differences, so one cannot afford to ignore it. As Donald Symons notes in his discussion of “the use and misuse of Danvinism”, the human male’s taste for nubile females may not be front-page news but social scientists continue to preface discussions about such matters with phrases like, “In our culture . . .“, gratuitously implying that things are different elsewhere. As long as such things are attributed to “cultural conditioning” or “social learning”, explanations which have no chance of being correct, Symons argues, “even seemingly mudane findings of evolutionary psychology will be scientifically significant”. One theme that comes out of many of the essays in this volume is that the adaptive mechanisms we observe today evolved in the Pleistocene era to solve the problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Therefore we should not necessarily expect that they would continue to be adaptive today. For example, pregnancy sickness seems to have evolved as protection of the foetus against the plant toxins that would have been most threatening in the Pleistocene era (Profet, Chapter 8); hence sensitivity to caffeine is more marked than reactions to alcohol (even though the latter may be more dangerous to the unborn child). Similarly, high intelligence would have been linked with reproductive success earlier in our evolutionary history, but since the advent of modern contraception the relationship seems to have reversed. Bright people have learned how to separate sexual pleasure from its consequences, thus reversing the correlation between IQ and fertility. In this respect we may currently be evolving a trait of irresponsibility, or perhaps even an instinct to avoid contraception. GLENN
THEODOREMILLON: Toward a New Personology:
An Evolutionary
D.
WILSON
Model. New York: Wiley (1990). pp. viii + 200. Hardback.
E24.50. ISBN O-471-51573-6. This is a fascinating and at the same time frustrating book. It can best be described as an exercise in wide-ranging theoretical speculation. The level of this speculation, which encompasses everything from catastrophe theory to personality disorders, is quite high-Millon is an ingenious and well-informed author-and this fact explains the book’s fascination. The frustration derives from the fact that the argument, at least in this reviewer’s opinion, is frequently so loose and figurative as to lack the power of persuasion. Though numerous studies are cited, their role is primarily that of suggestive relevance rather than of direct theoretical support. Millon is a well-known authority on personality disorders, and his Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory is an outstanding and widely utilized assessment device. He is, then, no stranger to the rigors and relevance of hard data. In the present work, however, he has chosen, as already implied, to paint with a broader, more theoretical brush. His basic stance, framed in a quasi-evolutionary framework, posits three crucial polarities in personality development: pain-pleasure, active-passive, and self-other. He then conceptualizes balances and imbalances among these three tendencies to derive a systematic nosology of the various personality disorders. The book as a whole is thus more oriented toward personality disturbance than what we ordinarily think of as normal personality functioning. Though Millon’s schematization is challenging and stimulating, and in this sense is worthy of the reader’s careful attention, there is, it seems to me, a very considerable distance between the speculative nature of the underlying theoretical structure and the specificity of the nosological descriptions. PAUL MCREYNOLDS
WALTER TOMAN: Family Constellation:
Its EApects on Personality
and Social Behavior. New York: Springer. Fourth Edition
(1993). Pp. 307. Price $28.95. The first edition of this book was published over 30 years ago. I remember being much impressed by it when I first came upon it in the early 70s. At that time there was much interest in birth order as a possible aetiological factor in mental illness, and by taking account of the gender as well as the position of siblings, the book provided a number of interesting and testable new hypotheses concerning not only mental illness but also the stability of marital relationships. I became disillusioned by the approach because (1) my own findings and those of others turned out to be universally negative and 607
Pergamon Press Ltd. Printed in Great Britain
BOOK REVIEWS
JEROME H. BARKOW, LEDA CQSMIDESand JOHN TUBBY @Is): The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press (1992) 666 pages. H/bk $55.00. In recent decades, the theoretical approach called evolutionary psychology or “sociobiology” has greatly illuminated the origins and nature of the human mind. The conception of the brain as a general purpose computer, tabularasa or passive recipient of culture has given way to a view of the mind as “a network of functionally specialized computers, each of which imposes contentful structure on human mental organization and culture”. This book consists of a series of essays exploring the relevance of this approach to areas such as mate selection, parental care, language development, aesthetic responses, environmental preferences, psychodynamic mechanisms, and culture processes in general. The power of this approach is testified by the various essays and psychologists concerned with individual differences, especially sex differences, so one cannot afford to ignore it. As Donald Symons notes in his discussion of “the use and misuse of Danvinism”, the human male’s taste for nubile females may not be front-page news but social scientists continue to preface discussions about such matters with phrases like, “In our culture . . .“, gratuitously implying that things are different elsewhere. As long as such things are attributed to “cultural conditioning” or “social learning”, explanations which have no chance of being correct, Symons argues, “even seemingly mudane findings of evolutionary psychology will be scientifically significant”. One theme that comes out of many of the essays in this volume is that the adaptive mechanisms we observe today evolved in the Pleistocene era to solve the problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Therefore we should not necessarily expect that they would continue to be adaptive today. For example, pregnancy sickness seems to have evolved as protection of the foetus against the plant toxins that would have been most threatening in the Pleistocene era (Profet, Chapter 8); hence sensitivity to caffeine is more marked than reactions to alcohol (even though the latter may be more dangerous to the unborn child). Similarly, high intelligence would have been linked with reproductive success earlier in our evolutionary history, but since the advent of modern contraception the relationship seems to have reversed. Bright people have learned how to separate sexual pleasure from its consequences, thus reversing the correlation between IQ and fertility. In this respect we may currently be evolving a trait of irresponsibility, or perhaps even an instinct to avoid contraception. GLENN
THEODOREMILLON: Toward a New Personology:
An Evolutionary
D.
WILSON
Model. New York: Wiley (1990). pp. viii + 200. Hardback.
E24.50. ISBN O-471-51573-6. This is a fascinating and at the same time frustrating book. It can best be described as an exercise in wide-ranging theoretical speculation. The level of this speculation, which encompasses everything from catastrophe theory to personality disorders, is quite high-Millon is an ingenious and well-informed author-and this fact explains the book’s fascination. The frustration derives from the fact that the argument, at least in this reviewer’s opinion, is frequently so loose and figurative as to lack the power of persuasion. Though numerous studies are cited, their role is primarily that of suggestive relevance rather than of direct theoretical support. Millon is a well-known authority on personality disorders, and his Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory is an outstanding and widely utilized assessment device. He is, then, no stranger to the rigors and relevance of hard data. In the present work, however, he has chosen, as already implied, to paint with a broader, more theoretical brush. His basic stance, framed in a quasi-evolutionary framework, posits three crucial polarities in personality development: pain-pleasure, active-passive, and self-other. He then conceptualizes balances and imbalances among these three tendencies to derive a systematic nosology of the various personality disorders. The book as a whole is thus more oriented toward personality disturbance than what we ordinarily think of as normal personality functioning. Though Millon’s schematization is challenging and stimulating, and in this sense is worthy of the reader’s careful attention, there is, it seems to me, a very considerable distance between the speculative nature of the underlying theoretical structure and the specificity of the nosological descriptions. PAUL MCREYNOLDS
WALTER TOMAN: Family Constellation:
Its EApects on Personality
and Social Behavior. New York: Springer. Fourth Edition
(1993). Pp. 307. Price $28.95. The first edition of this book was published over 30 years ago. I remember being much impressed by it when I first came upon it in the early 70s. At that time there was much interest in birth order as a possible aetiological factor in mental illness, and by taking account of the gender as well as the position of siblings, the book provided a number of interesting and testable new hypotheses concerning not only mental illness but also the stability of marital relationships. I became disillusioned by the approach because (1) my own findings and those of others turned out to be universally negative and 607