Positive Evolutionary Psychology - Glenn Geher

Glenn Geher 0:00 Once you start thinking from an evolutionary perspective, if there is some feature of the organism that is species typical, if humans across the world have tendencies toward anxiety, especially under the same kinds of conditions, then instead of just saying, "Oh, anxiety feels bad, let's get rid of it," well, why don't we step back and say, "What is this? What's the function of it? What is the evolutionary function? Why is this part of our evolved psychology?" And then in treating it, you have a different perspective.

Chris Williamson 0:28 (wind blowing) Glen Gare, welcome to the show.

Glenn Geher 0:31 Hey, thanks so much for having me, Chris.

Chris Williamson 0:34 Something that I think is really interesting is that there's been a paleo movement around food and training, but there hasn't really seemed to be an equivalent around psychology. There's no sort of paleo psychologists or at least people that have taken that and tried to apply it to their own lives. I haven't seen many people walking around doing paleo psychology yet.

Glenn Geher 0:51 Mm. Paleo psychology, that's a great phrase. I wish I would've come up with that myself. Um, it's, it's a really good question. So, when we talk about the paleo lifestyle or the paleo movement, um, most people are familiar with the, the dietary component of it, and honestly as someone who teaches about evolution and the human experience, that is the most vivid and easiest example to get across to people. Um, it makes sense, it matches data, people can sort of see their own behavior and, and think about it, and just the idea of eating too much processed food leading to health problems is, you know, kinda something that we all know, and then this really puts sort of a, a scientific framework around it. So, the, the paleo, um, the paleo diet and the paleo solution related to exercise and nutrition, tons of sense and, and it's definitely a, a reasonably well-established movement at this point. Um, but as, as you're talking about, um, this broader concept of paleo psychology, which really is, I think, a, a, uh, an interesting way of framing what I'm calling positive evolutionary psychology, um, using evolutionary psychology to help us lead better lives, to understand ourselves better, to lead better, um, community lives and to help advance the goals of our communities and so forth in positive kinds of ways. It turns out that the same reasoning that you can apply to the paleo diet movement really can be applied to many issues regarding our emotional, social functioning as well, and I think that, um, that's really very much untapped at this point, and I'm, I'm hoping to be part of, you know, maybe even just a small part, but part of the solution to sort of get, get people in a broader sense to think about, um, how broadly applicable this evo- evolutionary perspective is with all aspects of our lives.

Chris Williamson 2:51 Is there something that's missing from positive psychology which evolutionary psychology adds in? I know that for a long time psychology was focused on all of the malignant parts and biases and how we mess up-

Glenn Geher 3:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 3:03 ... and then positive psychology came along and said, "Well, we should probably try and actually improve people's lives as well. That would be a useful thing." But then, well, I, I'm trying to work out what it is that's missing from positive psych that is added into by evolutionary psychology.

Glenn Geher 3:19 Sure. It's a really good question (clears throat) . Um, and if you go back to the history of the two fields, evolutionary psychology and positive (clears throat) , positive psychology, it's super interesting that they have, um ... There's a lot of parallels. So, they're both considered relatively new fields within psychology. They both started arguably in the '90s, um, in a lot of ways. Um, positive psychology emerged when Martin Seligman became president of the American Psychological Association and really made a, a big call to behavioral scientists and practitioners saying, you know exactly what you're talking about. What, why can't ... You know, why can't we study the positive features of the human experience scientifically so that we can amplify the good and the positive? Which I think is, you know, um ... Totally on board with that message and with a lot of the work that's been done. Evolutionary psychology really started, I mean, it started and stopped over the years ever since Darwin in a lot of ways, but the current movement started very much in the '90s with people like David Buss, Steven Pinker, um, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby, and, um, really said, you know, we need to think about everything in, in ... when it comes to human behavior (clears throat) relative to our evolutionary history. So, um, I think that field has been very powerful and successful at helping shed light on things like human emotions, human relationships, um, human sexuality, human aggression, social interactions. Like, tons and tons of fields. And when my, my co-author Nicole Wedberg and I were thinking about this idea of positive evolutionary psychology, the, the big insight that we had was, you know, positive psychology's great, but if you look at the literature in the journals, the academic journals of positive psychology such as the Journal of Happiness Studies and so forth, and the main textbooks in the field, it's, it's very devoid of evolutionary thinking, um, and it doesn't seem intentionally so. You know, I think generally speaking, behavioral and social scientists have not been trained in evolutionary thinking across the years. I, you know, that's a whole separate, um, thread that I could go down, but, you know, positive psychologists don't have that training, and so when you read their, their articles, their scientific work, the general theme tends to be, how can we make people happier? And Chris, I'm not gonna say that's a bad goal at all. I'm not gonna argue against that as a goal, um, but when you start thinking about things from an evolutionary perspective-... that starts to look like a very limited, um, very limited approach to sort of what we should be doing in terms of trying to advance humans, advance our society, advance our scholarly work. So, the idea that we came up with, "Well, why don't we do what we can to evolutionize positive psychology, see if we can integrate, um, these two, these two fields?" And I will tell you, um, quickly that my, my co-author Nicole and I went to a symposium one time, it was all positive psychology research presentations, it was held on our campus. It was really, as you can imagine, it was a positive experience, uh, mostly given by students. They had really great projects. Um, they had done some great reading, pr- proposed and implemented a bunch of great research. And the insight that Nicole and I had after talking to every presenter and looking at every, um, presentation was that n- not a single one of them mentioned or even came close to thinking about things from an evolutionary perspective. And I'm gonna say that without exception, make- what can we do to make people happier seemed to be the singular goal of each and every project. And that's when we were like, "You know what? We gotta, we gotta do our part to shed some light on, on this situation," which is, um, you know, how can we look at the goals of positive psychology, but within an evolutionary framework? And maybe that'll be a more powerful way to actually try to implement some of these values and ideas.

Chris Williamson 7:40 Well, we derive satisfaction from life on a lot of other pathways than simply happiness. Right?

Glenn Geher 7:46 Sure.

Chris Williamson 7:46 There's a lot of other things that contribute to living a good life than being happy all of the time.

Glenn Geher 7:50 Absolutely.

Chris Williamson 7:50 But I suppose thinking at it from the reverse, thinking about what the potential holes in evolutionary psychology that are filled by positive psychology are, a lot of eve psych consists of harsh tru- truths and uncomfortable realities about our genuine, uh, less than admirable motivations for the things that we do.

Glenn Geher 8:09 A- absolutely. Absolutely. Um, (clears throat) evolutionary psychology is pretty famous for studying the dark side of the human experience. Um, and you know, there's a general negativity bias that people have, so you know, even if, even if a good percentage of evolutionary psychological research has not been on the dark side, you know, negative dark things tend to stand out in our minds. Just as a- an example, um, we had a great speaker on campus the other day, virtually, um, presenting, and it was Todd Shackelford who's, um, a really renowned, uh, alum of David Buss, and now he oversees the psychology department at Oakland University in Michigan. And he's published a ton, largely on facets of sperm competition and how that relates to behavior and infidelity.

Chris Williamson 9:01 No way.

Glenn Geher 9:03 Oh- oh, yeah. Yeah. Great, great research. And he gave a talk that s- the specific concept that he had multiple studies on this, was the phrase he used was forced in-pair copulation, um, which is essentially, um, I almost feel like I have to, like, trigger warning with something like this, is essentially, like, rape within a, within a pairing, within a monogamous pairing.

Chris Williamson 9:26 Mm-hmm.

Glenn Geher 9:27 And he presented data, this is not an altogether uncommon experience, um, you know, and he gave f- fantastic and well-thought-out evolution-based reasoning for the conditions under which this happens and how it connects with, um, infidelity and how it connects with paternal uncertainty, and a- a lot of these things that, you know, are, are bread and butter in evolutionary psychology.

Chris Williamson 9:50 Mm-hmm.

Glenn Geher 9:51 And, and I'll tell you, I thought it was, it- I thought it was terrific. Um, there were a few students who, who heard it that I think were, were kind of upset about the nature of the content. And, you know, I got thinking, this- it was such, such a great presentation, but it- it's almost, and this is without any offense at all to Todd or people who are doing similar kind of research, you know, I think it's important research. I think that we need to em- embrace and be open-minded about studying any and all topics within the academy, but you can see the PR issue. You know?

Chris Williamson 10:24 (laughs)

Glenn Geher 10:24 When you... (laughs) Right?

Chris Williamson 10:27 Yeah. Well-

Glenn Geher 10:27 Like, you can see, like...

Chris Williamson 10:28 Well, there's a PR issue in everything to do with-

Glenn Geher 10:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:30 ... evolutionary psychology-

Glenn Geher 10:31 Yes.

Chris Williamson 10:31 ... as far as I can see.

Glenn Geher 10:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:33 Like, look at David Buss's most recent one, Men Behaving Badly-

Glenn Geher 10:36 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:36 ... or Bad Men, I think it was in America or-

Glenn Geher 10:38 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:38 ... or in the UK.

Glenn Geher 10:39 In the UK, right.

Chris Williamson 10:41 Dude, that was ... You know, it's an entire book telling you that all of the things that you think that you value in your partner are a- adaptations to try and get around your own sexual defenses, that you're basically in a predator-prey, um, it's analogous to Predators and Play- Prey that we have one party that gets a new type of trick, and then the other one has to learn about how the trick works-

Glenn Geher 11:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:07 ... to then dampen that down.

Glenn Geher 11:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:09 Dude, our, our motivations for most of the things that we do, they're not ... it's not that they're not virtuous, but they're not as pure-

Glenn Geher 11:15 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:16 ... as we think that they are. They often come from a place which is significantly more zero sum, it's significantly more competitive, it's significantly-

Glenn Geher 11:24 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:24 ... less altruistic.

Glenn Geher 11:25 Sure. A- absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and it's funny 'cause I know David reasonably well, and I, I think the world of him and his research. Um, I, but I do think that he's almost been too successful. And what I mean by that is his research on sex differences and human mating and our evolved psychology surrounding mating has been so, um, so prolific. And that's one of the things, and there's, like you're saying, there's multiple things in evolutionary psych, but that's one of the things in evolutionary psych that makes a lot of people in the modern landscape feel uncomfortable about, you know, this idea of-

Chris Williamson 12:05 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I- I- that makes a lot of sense. It would be nice if, if David Buss is, is looking at some of the darker aspects of human nature through an evolutionary lens, it would be nice to have somebody who is equally well-known...... uh, but looking at some of the lighter sides.

Glenn Geher 12:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:19 But I suppose you're, you're right, it's just less. It's less attention-grabbing.

Glenn Geher 12:24 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:24 Who wants to know that you're nicer than you actually thought you were?

Glenn Geher 12:28 (laughs) Right, right.

Chris Williamson 12:28 You know? It's ju- it's just not gonna grab headlines.

Glenn Geher 12:30 Right.

Chris Williamson 12:30 So, do you think ... Is that one of the big hurdles? Because I- I'm fascinated by evolutionary psychology and constantly surprised. I'm also fascinated by the fact that it hasn't been integrated into modern society tremendously well.

Glenn Geher 12:43 Right, right. Yeah, it's- I think that's- it's- it's quite fascinating that way. Um, I think that, you know, someone like, like David has been, you know, he's been so prolific. Um, there have been a- a ... If you step back, there have been efforts and attempts to, to study the bright side of our experience from an evolutionary perspective. A good example is David Sloan Wilson, um, of Binghamton, who studies and has studied altruism very extensively. And he studies religion, but from, like, a very evolution-based scientific perspective. And, and he's, for, you know, for a secular scientist, David, I think, is very, um, very kind to, to religious ideology, kind of talking about how it's steeped in our evolutionary history and what are the benefits and what are the communal benefits, and, you know, why did- why was this such a successful approach to, to organizing human social interaction? So, um, so I think that there actually is quite a bit of stuff on, on all sorts of things about human behavior and, and community and interactions. But, you know, I will tell you, when you ask people, "What do you think about evolutionary psych?" A very high proportion of people say, "Oh, that's the stuff that says that men and women are different and that, you know, it justifies male's bad behavior," and this kinda thing. And it's like, you hear this from person after person. I'm like, "No, that's ..." You know, this is like- it's like there's a pie and this is, like, maybe a small slice of it that's kinda related to what people are talking about, but man, they hear that and they latch onto it, so, y-

Chris Williamson 14:20 Th- th- that's something quite interesting, 'cause a lot of the time when you bring up the fact that people who are perhaps on the left m- m- might have a- an issue with some of the conclusions that are drawn from evolutionary psychology, um, and most of the responses to that are, "These people on the left are idiots. They're denying the way that we work," blah, blah, blah. But another interesting way to look at this is you c- you also are not only getting a, perhaps overzealous response from the people, but you're also not showing everything from the subject area as well. There's another big bit of this which is being missed off. That's a- an interesting way to look at it. Yeah.

Glenn Geher 14:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:57 Some of the stats that you mention, you have it in the introduction, you have a couple of- a couple of interesting insights here. Men are more than twice as likely to experience early mortality, death, during young adulthood compared with women.

Glenn Geher 15:09 Sure.

Chris Williamson 15:09 Is that risk-taking?

Glenn Geher 15:10 It's related to risk-taking, yeah. This is the work of, um, Dan Kruger and Randy Nesse. Um, really super interesting, and I- I like to pre- present this, um, to give people a sense of how relevant and important evolutionary psychology is. 'Cause some- sometimes people say, "Well, that stuff doesn't really matter, doesn't pertain to the modern world. It's not- it doesn't address important social issues." And, uh, the stuff on male to female mortality ratio is, is huge. It's a very reliable set of findings. Um, so Dan Kruger, who's an evolutionary psychologist who works in a school of public health at University of Michigan, he has access to all kinds of health-related data, and started with his then mentor, Randy Nesse, um, who, you know, coined the term Darwinian medicine, huge, huge scholar in the field. He said, "Well, mortality is a pretty big health, health-related issue, and I have a whole bunch of evolution-based predictions surrounding mortality." And so, so Dan was essentially empowered to start looking at this, and what he found was, you know, it's- it's been known for quite a while that males, uh, in terms of- in terms of simply survival a- and mortality, don't do as well as, as women. M- men live shorter lives, they're more likely to die at different life stages than are, are women for various kinds of reasons, and that had been known. But what Dan added to it in his research was he said, "Based on e- evolutionary reasoning, since mating is so intensive and competitive, and mating, um, mate selection in particular sorta starts in the late teens and, and, you know, peaks in maybe the early to mid-20s, we would expect that to be as, uh, well, part of life where men are particularly more likely to outdie women."

Chris Williamson 17:06 Mm. Mm-hmm.

Glenn Geher 17:06 So, you know, I can't really- that's the best I can- in terms of how I can word it, and, and what he found was exactly that, that, that men always, males always, um, are more likely to die than women at every population that's been studied at every age. But when you get to the teenage, about 15 to 25, you see a big peak. Um, huge. Like, there's a huge spike in the data and then it kinda smooths- smooths out a little bit. And I'm like, "That's relevant." You know? If you think that's not- if you think that's irrelevant to, to societal functioning, you know, I got news for you. If, if, if it under- if it helps us understand life and death for (laughs) you know- you know, millions of, of people at any given time, I'd say that's highly relevant and something that w- we would do better just understanding, so.

Chris Williamson 17:53 Well, that's when men are getting into gangs. That's when men are doing antisocial behavior.

Glenn Geher 17:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:58 It's when their testosterone levels are highest.

Glenn Geher 18:01 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 18:01 And then it starts to taper off toward the end of their 20s. It's when they're getting into prison. It's when they're causing most violent crimes. It's when they're most likely-

Glenn Geher 18:08 Right.

Chris Williamson 18:08 ... I'm gonna guess probably to be killed or to kill someone.

Glenn Geher 18:10 Both. Both. And phy- physical causes, um, so, so Dan divided things into what he calls internal versus external.... causes of death, and these effects were, were big for both kind, but they were particularly exacerbated for what he called external causes. So that is, um, fights and, and murder and homicide, um, a- and things that he calls, like, like, um, risky kinds of things.

Chris Williamson 18:34 Car crashes, driving fast.

Glenn Geher 18:35 Car crashes. Yeah, exactly. The reason that, that men are paying higher ... you know, young men are paying higher insurance rates than, than young women is-

Chris Williamson 18:44 It's the boy races.

Glenn Geher 18:45 Yeah. It's all tied into this same exact thing. There's a, a phrase, um, to capture this put forward by, uh, Daly and Wilson and other, um, some other folks who sort of, uh, carved out the field, and the phrase is young male syndrome. Um, and the idea is that, you know, young men who engage in risky behavior to the point that it can be dangerous and lead to all kinds of adv- adverse outcomes, including premature death, um, that's, that's a natural feature of the male experience. Um, that, you know, in other words, when we see this kinda stuff, it's not like, "Oh, that guy is an idiot." You know? It's, it's ... what it is, is that that's part of the male developmental experience, and it's so common, um, those kinds of things are so common. And, and then if you think about, like, shows like, I remember I used to watch this show Jackass, so sh- I don't know if you remember, like, that's ... it's just guys, you know? It's guys being stupid. It's young men being stupid, um, and, and risky and, and all these-

Chris Williamson 19:47 But was young men being stupid?

Glenn Geher 19:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:48 But Johnny Knoxville's in his late 40s or 50s now, and they've come back and done Jackass 3, and Steve-O's back in it and everyone else is back in it.

Glenn Geher 19:55 Oh, really?

Chris Williamson 19:55 And that's just come out. So, uh- (laughs)

Glenn Geher 19:57 (laughs) Oh, that's good to know.

Chris Williamson 19:57 I think they might be outliers they just haven't learned their lesson. But I ... you, you're totally correct.

Glenn Geher 20:02 Sure.

Chris Williamson 20:02 What, what's adaptive about that risk-taking behavior for your ... or what would have been adaptive about that super high-risk taking behavior-

Glenn Geher 20:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:09 ... for young men?

Glenn Geher 20:10 Sure. Well, y- you know, as is true in, in most sexually reproducing species, um, not everyone gets to reproduce, you know, and from an evolutionary perspective, reproduction is what I like to call Darwin's bottom line. Um, and being shut out of reproduction, from an evolutionary perspective, is something that you would totally expect any and all kinds of adaptations to emerge to prevent being shut out of reproduction, 'cause any of our ancestors that didn't reproduce didn't become ancestors. So, the ones who did reproduce had whatever behavioral and physical, um, adaptations that ultimately cultivated reproduction. Um, so I think, you know, then you step back and be like, well, why are men like ... young men like this? And, and mathematically, the answer essentially is that it's a risky strategy. Under some conditions, it's gonna lead to early death or adverse outcomes, but it's also likely that the benefits, the reproductive benefits on average over large periods of time, likely outweigh the survival-related costs, you know? The same, same reason that the peacock's tail emerged, you know? A lot of peacocks died at the, at the teeth of tigers, you know, but the ones who reproduced, on average, you know-

Chris Williamson 21:39 They had the, they had the house edge equivalent.

Glenn Geher 21:42 Exactly. Exactly.

Chris Williamson 21:42 Yeah, dude. It's so ... I mean, that's a really good way to look at it, and I suppose this sort of summarizes one of the key issues that you find with the modern era, which is this mismatch, right?

Glenn Geher 21:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:53 Which is that we are designed for one particular type of environment, and now we're living in another, and this mismatch causes us unhappiness or trauma or, uh, uh, just a s- suboptimal, um, approach to the way that we live.

Glenn Geher 22:08 Yeah, definitely. Um, I feel like the, the idea of mismatch is so powerful, and it's (clears throat) , it is something that we've only scratched the surface. I feel like it is so relevant, it's so powerful, um, and what I like about it from a, from a PR perspective is it's very different. Like, once ... wa- when you start talking to, to students or other academics about a lot of the stuff, um, like the male/female differences and that kinda stuff, people start getting ... they politicize it and start going down all kinds of rabbit holes. But when you start talking to people about, you know, generally speaking, if you look at the human mind and our experience and the conditions under which our ancestors evolved, it- it's night and day. There are so many obvious and important mismatches between the modern world and the world that we evolved to live in. And, and I feel like people, people across, you know, all kinds of ideologies and backgrounds can really connect with this particular message. Um, I like to, to think about it as ... a very simple way to think about it is the fish in a ... a fish that gets out of the fishbowl. Um, I was teaching for a few years, it was a great experience, I was teaching evolution-based classes in China, and they were all second ... English as a second language learners. And I remember I gave a whole, what I thought was a really great lecture on mismatch, and a very bright student came up to me, um, her name was Vicky, and she said, "Professor, we don't understand what you just said." (laughs) And I was like, after an hour and a half of lecturing, I was like, "Aw, man." So, I went back to my hotel room, I thought about it. I came back the next day, and I'm like, "Raise your hand if you ever had a pet fish." You know, half the kids raise their hand. I'm like, "You ever see the fish, you ever have that experience where you go in your room and it's on the carpet dead?" And I'm like (laughs) the students made a face, like, a bunch of them, you know, are gonna raise their hand at that. I'm like, "Well, that's because the ancestors of the fish were completely aquatic, and all the adaptations of the fish were, are completely designed for a fully aquatic experience kinda thing." And, you know, so I use that as an example of n- now think about, um, then I think ... I, I talk about the monkey in the, the cage and, and, um, all the work by Henry ... Harry Harlow.

Chris Williamson 24:22 What's the story there?

Glenn Geher 24:23 Well, so he ... you know, he's, he's famous for showing how, um-... infant monkeys. He's kinda famous for traumatizing young monkeys, so he did research in, in labs at, at, I think it was one of the UC schools years ago, and if you take a monkey away f- a little baby monkey away from its mom ... These were rhesus monkeys and macaques he was using, um, and you give it a choice of a mother, a fake mother, that's either, like, a stuffed animal, kinda like a fluffy, monkey-like, um, s- stuffed animal, versus a m- a fake mother that's wire, like made out of metal and, but has milk on it. Um, like, the, the, the monkeys are torn because they, they feel the comfort of the one, uh, but they need the milk from the other, uh, but a secondary ... You know, so that's a lesson on, like, on, on natural impulses regarding need for, for maternal care kind of thing, but a secondary thing is all the monkeys that were in his research, um, who were taken away from their mothers for experimental purposes, when they were released with the rest of the colony that he had, they were messed up and they weren't able to, um, engage in regular, appropriate mating behavior or friendship behavior or coalitional behavior. They really showed just a deep set of problems. And if you think about it as well, their experiences were completely mismatched. Under ancestral conditions, little baby monkeys weren't taken out of their natural environment for several years, and then ... Sorry, my light goes off automatically. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 26:00 (laughs)

Glenn Geher 26:00 Modern technology, right? (laughs) Um, uh, you know, a- a- and so, and this is the reason, uh, um, in New York, the, uh, the Bronx Zoo ... When I was a kid, I would go to the Bronx Zoo all the time, and they had this great place called the Monkey House. And the Monkey House was just, like, this big old building and had maybe 50, um, cages, and the cages just had random monkeys. Sometimes they were with the same species, sometimes not. Sometimes there was, like, a log in there kinda thing to try to make it seem a little bit natural-ish. And in 2012, the Bronx Zoo closed the Monkey House, and worse, they turned it into administrative offices, um, but, you know, from a mismatch perspective, you can totally see it, you know? At some point, zoologists figured out, "Wait a minute, this is ... We're, we're torturing these animals. They're ... We're putting them in mismatched conditions. They're showing stress responses, they're showing anxiety responses," and so forth, and it, it only makes sense when- once you start to think about things from the evolutionary perspective and from the mismatch perspective in particular. So, the next step is, well, let's take a look at, at the modern human experience and look at us, you know, engaging in, like, a Skype conversation, um, look at us at, you know, sitting in our, our chairs, you know, with the-

Chris Williamson 27:21 With artificial light on a nighttime-

Glenn Geher 27:23 Artificial-

Chris Williamson 27:23 Yeah.

Glenn Geher 27:23 Sure. Uh, um, a- a- and engaging in interactions, l- lot of times, with strangers, so you were just saying before, you're in New York City. I mean, the number of strangers that you see if you walk down a block in New York City on a busy day, hundreds or even thousands, and you don't think anything of it, but under ancestral conditions, we didn't experience strangers regularly, and when we did, it usually meant that there was some danger or some kind of problem. So, you know, uh, modern evolutionary psychologists have really started thinking about how many, in how many ways are our modern conditions mismatched from, um, the environments that we evolved to be in, and maybe we're kind of l- like, like the fish in a fishbowl. Maybe it's like we're so surrounded by these conditions and have been our whole lives, uh, that it's hard to question it, you know? So, I feel like the evolutionary perspective gives us, like, the tools, the infrastructure, to actually question some of these things, and I think that's, that's really very, very powerful and can lead to a lot of positive changes.

Chris Williamson 28:30 But the question here

Chris Williamson 28:32 is which of the new adaptations, which of the mismatches are actually beneficial? The fact that I don't need to go and go to a stream to get water-

Glenn Geher 28:42 Mm-hmm. Sure.

Chris Williamson 28:42 ... I just have it in a bottle here, or the fact that I can be cooler when it's warm or warmer when it's cool. You know, those, those are good things. What are the things that we have as a part of society, and specifically for you, that are making us psychologically unhealthy? So, what would be some of the big, the big problems that you've got, or what would be the main-

Glenn Geher 29:02 Sure.

Chris Williamson 29:02 ... the main, uh, enemies in terms of mismatch?

Glenn Geher 29:05 It's a g- that's such a great question, um, and a- as you know, I've thought about this quite, quite a bit, um, over the past several years. A lot of the research in my lab has been on this question. We've demonstrated that modern public education is mismatched in a whole bunch of ways that, uh, can have adverse effects. Modern politics, um, is mismatched. We've done research showing that humans are not really good at processing large-scale politics, you know? So, if you see, like, why is the political world such a mess these days? Um, you know, part of the reason is 'cause our minds evolved for small-scale politics and not large-scale politics, and, and the one that I've focused on quite a bit of late that I'm really interested in is, um, I guess what we'd have to call, like, social media or, like, modern communication systems. Under ancestral conditions, if you were gonna communicate with someone, it was gonna be face-to-face and that was it. You know, that was the only choice for lion's share of human evolutionary history, and if you're face-to-face with, with someone that you know, your interactions are going to be very different than if you're anonymous and you're dealing with a stranger. And if you're anonymous and dealing with a stranger and you're communicating through a screen, y- you know, suddenly, like, the number of mismatches that creep into it are enormous. So, when I t- teach about this, I'll ask my students, I'll say, "Hey, what percentage of your ... Just write down, what percentage of your communications with other people in the last week-"... has been of the non-face-to-face variety. And on average, we usually see about se- they'll say 70%, 80%. You know? And I've, I've gotta tell you, you know, that's, it's for, for my generation, it's, that's starting to, to be true as well. You know, we used to sort of laugh at the young kids and their cell phones, and now everyone. You know, grandmas, grandpas, everyone's addicted to their cell phones. And, and it's such a problem because, you know, like you're saying, Chris, there are ... a number of benefits that come from this are obvious. You know, uh, the way, the simple way to think about it is, you know, with this, with this simple thing right here, I can ask and answer any question in the entire history of the world within one second. (laughs) You know? You know? Like, every, a- at any moment at any time. It's, it's crazy. Um, the, the power that that has. I can communicate with people immediately. If a, if I have a family member that, uh, that is in, in trouble, I can immediately provide kind of financial or some other kind of help. So, the benefits are all, I think, very obvious, and we think quite a bit about those benefits. What we don't see, because again, 'cause we're the fish in the fishbowl, what we don't see is the problems associated with it. And when you start thinking about it from a mismatch perspective, man, there are problems. So, I'll give one example. Anonymous communication. Um, under ancestral conditions, there wasn't anonymous communication. And in fact, we kind of evolved to be a little, a little skittish about anonymous communication. So, you know, when you go to the grocery store, someone has their, their name badge on. When a student comes into my class, I say, "Hi, I'm Glen." You know, "What's your name?" Your, your name's on the roster. Um, doctors introduce themselves by name. I- if you think about the professions where anonymity, um, is part of what they're doing, it's really rare. Um, I like to give the example of clowns. You know, I wrote a whole piece about why, why clown phobia is pretty common. I'm like, "Well, clowns are like ... That's like the only job where you're, you're hiding your identity." You know, they have a made-up name. They got this c- they're, they're in a mask. They're in a costume. They don't break character. Like, that's creepy, you know? But it's partly creepy because under ancestral conditions, we were only dealing with people f- in a face-to-face variety. On top of that, when you look at research on antisocial behavior, the best way to get people to do bad things is hide their identity. Um, so, and that's what-

Chris Williamson 33:13 Oh, you did a Halloween, there was a Halloween experiment about this.

Glenn Geher 33:17 Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Chris Williamson 33:18 What was that?

Glenn Geher 33:20 So, this is a study done by Diener in the 1970s, where they brought kids. Um, kids were trick-or-treating, and so the kids were going to this one particular house where they were videotaping the kids, and they measured whether the kids were wearing, um, a, a mask or not. You know, some, some Halloween, uh, costumes have masks, and some don't, of course. And they looked at whether kids were in a group or not, because when you're in a group, your own identity kind of gets diffused. And then they did the classic where they put out the bucket on the front porch, and that bucket almost without fail will have the phrase, you know, on a yellow Post-it saying, "Take 1." Like, you know, everyone knows the rule. And so, of course, kids are kids, and they're not gonna always take one. And what they found was that both of those variables, if they were in a group, kids, each individual kid was more likely to take a bo- whole handful, and if their identity was hidden. If, if their, if they were wearing a mask, people couldn't tell who they were, if they were Darth Vader, or this kind of thing. Under that condition, they were also more likely to engage in anti-social behavior, and just like snag, snag a whole bunch.

Chris Williamson 34:32 What do you think the effect on the group says? Is that just diffusion of responsibility?

Glenn Geher 34:38 Yeah. Yeah. So diffusion of responsibility is a phrase that a lot of behavioral scientists will, will use for that, where, um, you know, it's i- it's an ironic finding, and the finding essentially is that when there's more people and there's a bigger group of people, um, peop- e- each individual has less f- feels and experiences less responsibility for whatever's going on. So, people are more likely to do the wrong thing, especially if other people are doing it. They're less likely to help someone in need, and this kind of thing. One ironic thing on that is that if you need help, you want fewer people around rather than more people around. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 35:17 (laughs) There's those stories about, um, blocks of flats, and somebody being attacked downstairs, and nobody calling the police because everybody presumes that somebody else is going to call the police.

Glenn Geher 35:28 Yeah. A- absolutely. Absolutely.

Chris Williamson 35:30 Yeah. What do you think is happening ancestrally with that effect there? Is it the fact that reciprocal altruism, and sympathy, and empathy, and kindness, and giving, and stuff like that are less necessary if you're in a group because you already have support of other people? Therefore, giving away something when you already have that support, uh, to an extra person doesn't make as much sense?

Glenn Geher 35:52 That's, that's super interesting. I had never thought about it quite that way, but I think that certainly might contribute partly to this. Um, so this idea of reciprocal altruism, um, came from Trivers, who's huge, huge renowned, uh, figure in the field, and essentially said that we evolved a lot of adaptations around the fact that humans engage in reciprocal altruism, and that's a very basic feature of, of who we are and what we do. So, I help you, you help me. And, and our species fits a lot of the criteria of that, which is we generally live in stable groups, so we see the same individuals over and over. We have good memory for individual faces and voices, and that kind of thing. Um, and we live relatively long lives, so there's like a long, you know, arc of time to sort of pay people back. But, but that gets screwed up when we're dealing with strangers, right? Because reciprocal altruism evolved under conditions where we were surrounded by members of-... our clan, you know, small clans where you knew every individual.

Chris Williamson 36:54 It's a long-term game, yeah.

Glenn Geher 36:56 Yeah. Exactly, exactly. So once we're, once we're dealing with strangers, everything gets... Ev- A lot of our evolved psychology wasn't, it wasn't designed for that. So, things like reciprocal altruism, um, like if I'm in a group and we're all part of a team and we know each other and we're gonna see each other tomorrow, and then there is someone who needs help who's outside the group, I'm like, "Well, that's a stranger who's never gonna help me and might even be dangerous for me." So so many of these, these things that, that we might get, like, outraged about, and I can't believe people did this or that or didn't help, a lot of it can really be understood by this idea that so many of the modern situations we might run into are outside the bounds of what our minds would have evolved to experience.

Chris Williamson 37:39 That's just in-group, out-group mentality. But I suppose if you're part of a group, it's easier to find an out-group. As opposed to if you were on your own, if there was just two of you, then you might behave in more of that sort of reciprocally altruistic

Chris Williamson 37:53 way. What did you learn about education?

Glenn Geher 37:57 Yeah. So that, that was a really fascinating area to get into. Um, so, you know, we have public, um, obligatory public education, and, and that's true in so much of the modern world these days. And I had a student named Katy Gruskin who was, um, she was in my evolutionary studies seminar, and became super interested in... She just started thinking about education. She was an ed major, and she was thinking about education from an evolutionary perspective. So I pointed her toward the literature of Peter Gray, um, who's at Boston College, who's written extensively about education from an evolutionary perspective. The skinny of what he finds is that modern, um, public school systems have very mismatched and unnatural ways of educating young kids. This idea of sitting, you know, having, um, kids in the same age, so, like, age stratification is one problem. Everyone here is 10, and there's 30 of you, and there's one 30-year-old woman over there, and you're gonna sit there for eight hours every single day and listen to what that person says. And the knowledge that you're gonna get is what we might call secondary instead of primary knowledge. So instead of, like, learning how to do something, which is under ancestral conditions what education would have looked like, we're, like, writing about it um, instead of, like, you know, throwing a ball and seeing what happens. We're, like, writing about the physics of it and arcs and the math of it. That stuff's, you know, it's important, but we have such a, such a focus on that kind of secondary knowledge, um, there's less time for play, there's, there's less time for natural interactions, there's less time for mixed-age kinds of groups. And, you know, one of the outcomes associated with that is you tend to see tons of kids, and it- it seems to increase every year, um, are diagnosed with attentional kinds of problems and are given prescriptions for, for pharmaceuticals. And, you know, maybe the problem is not the kid. Maybe the problem is the situation. So my student, Katy, did a whole study that really took this approach of thinking of schools, um, as a, as derivative of factory mindsets. And so when you look at, at when public schools were started, largely in the UK, actually, is, is, um, where her research took her, um, it was, you know, the bell rings at the factory, and everyone's gotta start working, and the bell rings again, and then it's, it's lunchtime, and this kind of thing. And now the bell-

Chris Williamson 40:23 I heard that they used the same bells in schools as they did in factories.

Glenn Geher 40:28 That's what Katy had said, yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Chris Williamson 40:30 The same bells. I mean, if that's not showing-

Glenn Geher 40:33 Right (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 40:33 ... the hand of the ruthless capitalists that are trying to compromise-

Glenn Geher 40:36 Right.

Chris Williamson 40:36 ... the proletariat's labor, I don't know what is.

Glenn Geher 40:38 Exactly. Exactly. Um, and you know, there are so, so many mismatches. So that's, like, the entire idea. And now we don't even question it. You know, it's like I was saying, that I think that whole thing about, like, we're s- So much of, of what we have is just, you don't question it. You know, most of us don't... Like, public school is public school. You gotta go to school, you gotta do this, you gotta learn that, because that's, because that's what we do. But if you step back and be like, "Wait a minute, where did this come from?" Y- you know, "Why is it like this?" And what Peter Gray did, and, and Katy leaned a lot on his research for her work, what he did was he looked extensively at what does learning and education look like in, uh, pre-Westernized societies, or nomadic societies, of which there's, you know, lots of examples of nomadic societies in Africa, in, in the Pacific Islands, in South America. You know, lots of places. And the common theme he found was there's not a single thing that looks at all like public, um, like public education. Um, that kids, that the word learning and playing and education, none of those concepts are teased apart in, in these, uh, pre-Westernized groups. And regularly, kids are learning from other kids, that the main teachers in pre-Westernized nomadic societies aren't adults, but they're kids that are usually slightly older. So an eight-year-old might learn from a 12-year-old, and a 16-year-old might, might be teaching something to a 15-year-old or a 14-year-old. And they're, they're learning while they're playing and while they're just kind of out for the day and interacting. Wow, that is wildly different than sit down and take this standardized test and use a number two pencil, and if you can't do it, take this pill. You know? And, and we're gonna have to talk to your mom and dad because there's something the matter with you. And, you know, it's i- I feel like this mismatch perspective really forces us to step back and, and just look at the problems we have, and just step back and think about them from this, this deeper level. And I feel like it's, it's powerful. Um, and what Katy found, the short version of her work, and she published it in Evolutionary Behavioral Science, Sciences, um, was-... that she asked people, she gave a whole list of things that n- that are typical of nomadic education, nomadic learning contexts, um, learning in groups, learning in mixed age groups, um, less, more project-based kinds of, kinds of experiences, and what she found was people who reported a higher proportion of those experiences in their own elementary school experiences liked school better later and did better at school at all levels later than that. So, to the extent that we can, like, step back and, and this kinda goes to your original question about, like, paleopsychology, like, how can we use this perspective not just for what we eat and nutrition and that kind of thing, but for sort of our broader-

Chris Williamson 43:42 Paleo education.

Glenn Geher 43:43 Paleo education, exactly, exactly. And there's, you know, there's something to it.

Chris Williamson 43:48 Going on to the emotions that you looked at, what did you learn about kindness? I find this quite an interesting, um, a- a- an interesting thing to think about evolutionarily because kindness is one of those... It's quite bizarre why you would decide to give away some of your time or feel a compulsion to help another person. We're told, you know, survival of the fittest, that evolution is this sort of ruthless tool. Kindness appears to be a little bit of a, a- an interesting dynamic in that.

Glenn Geher 44:18 Absolutely. Absolutely. So, uh, kindness from an evolutionary perspective is, is super interesting for all the reasons that you just pointed out. And, uh, you know, one of the things about kindness is we like it in mates. You know, let me just kinda start there. I'll sorta unpack things a bit more from there, but when David Buss, you know, probably the, the best known figure in the field or certainly one of them, and he's a great guy and a great researcher, you know, when he did his famous research in the late '80s, early '90s about what do people want in mates, what got famously amplified from that was how men and women want different things across lots of cultures, and that's true, but the, the headline, the, um, that really got sorta dismissed is that kindness and mutual love were, for both men and women, across pretty much all these cultures, number one.

Chris Williamson 45:17 That was ubiquitous. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Glenn Geher 45:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And, and you know, there's something very, um... It's not as sexy, you know? (laughs) It's, it's, it's, it's, you know, people are like, "Well, that's, that's fine, but wow, men like this and women don't, and women like this and men don't."

Chris Williamson 45:31 Yeah, it's much easier to say, "Oh, men are after youth and fertility, and women are after resources and status-"

Glenn Geher 45:36 Uh- is-

Chris Williamson 45:36 ... than both of them-

Glenn Geher 45:37 Yes.

Chris Williamson 45:37 ... are after kindness and... I saw a recent study on this, uh, that just came out, uh, last month and, um, humor is up there for both, both men and women-

Glenn Geher 45:48 For both. For-

Chris Williamson 45:48 ... yeah.

Glenn Geher 45:48 Absolutely. For, for lots, yeah, for lots of good reasons. So, you know, one of the reasons that kindness exists is, you know, if, if it's effective in securing a mate and if it's effective in maintaining a, an effective mateship, then it's gonna be selected, you know? That's kind of Evolution 101, um, be- in a re- in a sexually reproducing species. So, even though that didn't get a lot of airtime with, with the, the findings from what Buss and his colleagues found, you know, it's really, really critical and it makes, it makes a lot of sense. You know, if you have a kind mate, then that means that that's someone that you can trust your feelings with, you can be vulnerable with, you can expect that person to help you and to provide you benefits, and then it becomes a reciprocal altruism kinda thing where, you know, you're providing benefits back and forth and that kinda thing, so... Uh, and again, kindness doesn't exist in every species, but we're a species where we evolved to be surrounded by the same individuals over long periods of time, and that s- social ecosystem has to be considered strongly when we think about our evolved psychology. So, under that kinda condition, it makes sense that kindness would evolve, because individuals n- need to get along with one another, and if someone gets a reputation as exploitative, um, or, or, you know, s- stealing from others and not putting in their fair share, they're gonna be outed by others, you know? And they might end up being ostracized or punished in various kinds of ways, um, so I think that the importance of kindness as essentially an adaptation, um, that helps make people attracted as, as, attractive as mates, as friends. We're doing a study right now about leadership, um, and there's multiple paths toward, toward leadership. Some leaders become leaders because they're, they're ruthless and intimidating and selfish and scary, um, and some le- people become leaders because they're so kind and genuine and other-oriented that people trust them and are like, "Yes, this person has my interests in mind." Um, so I, I think that, that kindness certainly has a place in the, in the human evolutionary story for, for lots of different reasons.

Chris Williamson 48:07 I suppose that you can see quite easily here how the evolutionary mismatch is, is at play, because in the modern world, we can live on our own in an Airbnb, getting food delivered to us, and we're safe because the police have the streets, and we're warm because there's electricity and heating, and we don't need other people, you know? I- if you-

Glenn Geher 48:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 48:29 ... have sufficient resources, you can go through your entire life basically not interacting with other people and apart from maybe over the internet at your remote work job, um, but the difference is-

Glenn Geher 48:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:38 ... we would have never been able to survive on our own previously, and that kindness would have engendered other people to want to help us. It would have meant that we would have been less likely... Speaking of that actually, what, I, I know

Chris Williamson 48:51 this isn't specifically what you looked at, but I'm fascinated by the evolutionary, um, explanation for depression and anxiety.... have you ever looked at that?

Glenn Geher 49:00 Sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, and that's something else that we, we cover a bit in the book. Um, it's really interesting because from a, a positive psychology perspective, generally speaking, um, eradicating negative affect, negative emotional states seems to be a, a paramount goal. You know, and, and trust me, I don't like anxiety or depression as much as, as the next guy, um, but, you know, there's a great anecdote that I include, um, I included in, in part of the book by Randy Nesse. So, Randy coined the term Darwinian medicine, is published extensively including several books on Darwinian psychiatry, um, and how all the mental and physical health fields will benefit from being Darwinized and evolutionized. And his background's as a psychiatrist, and he had this great anecdote that led him to thinking this way, which was, um, he was working at the University of Michigan, and one of his, he was doing therapy in addition to his, his faculty position. And he had a, a client who was also a professor in a different department, and the client said he was pretty anxious. And so, Randy talked to him and, and then prescribed him some anti-anxiety pills, um, you know, the equivalent of Xanax at the time, and said, "Come back in a month and talk to me." And the guy came back and he said, "All right. Well, how you doing?" He said, "Well, I feel, I feel good. I'm not anxious anymore." And so, Randy's like, "All right." And he said, "But there's still a problem." He's like, "Well, what is it?" And he's like, "Well, I got a pile of, of papers this big on my desk, and I don't care (laughs) to grade them whatsoever. And the students are knocking on my door and 'How come you're not doing your work?' and 'What's up with you?'" And, and apparently that motivation to sort of get that stuff done w- w- went away with the anxiety, which gave Nesse the insight of, wait a minute, maybe the negative affective states, such as anxiety, as unpleasant as they may be, have a very important evolutionary function. And, you know, once you start thinking from an evolutionary perspective, if there's some feature of the organism that is species-typical, if humans across the world have tendencies toward anxiety, especially under certain kinds of, the same kinds of conditions, then instead of just saying, "Oh, anxiety feels bad. Let's get rid of it," you know, w- well, why don't we step back and say, you know, "What is this? Why... What's the function of it? What is the evolutionary function? Why is this part of our evolved psychology?" And then in treating it, you have a different perspective. You know, you can step back and say, "We don't wanna just get rid of anxiety. We wanna keep it controlled so it's not, like, running someone's life." But this idea of making everyone just as happy and free of anxiety and so forth as possible, that doesn't make any evolutionary sense.

Chris Williamson 51:56 What about depression?

Glenn Geher 51:58 D- depression's, uh, v- I'd say very similar, um, very similar. There's a, a guy, Matt Keller, who I think... I know he was at the University of Colorado. I think he may still be there. Very bright scholar. Um, published research a wh- while back really extensively looking at depression from an evolutionary lens. And it was... he was asking the same questions. He was like, "Well, instead of just getting rid of depression," which obviously, you know, depressions can be, can be debilitating and, and have all kinds of adverse outcomes. He's like, "But what, what might be the evolutionary function of depression?" It's essentially the, the question. And what he found was even though the DSM, which is, um, the main book that's used for diagnosing mental psychopathologies and mental health issues, um, on a large global scale, the DSM at, at that time, when it talked about depression, it, it did not take, and it still doesn't, it didn't take an evolutionary approach. So, it just had all these symptoms, and if you've had these sp- symptoms over this amount of time, then, you know, we're gonna call you depressed. And, and what, what Matt Keller found was that depression can actually come about by multiple pathways. And probably the best way to address depression is to think about the pathway that led to it. The two specific contrasting examples he gave, one was the loss of a loved one. So, loss of a loved one is a classic catalyst for depression. People might become depressed depending on the, the closeness of the, of the relationship and so forth for extensive periods of time. And when people lose a loved one, they tend to reach out to others and try to form social connections. So, a common thing that's found in people who have depression caused by loss is a reaching out to others. Whereas, another catalyst for depression is an error, a major error. You mess something up, there was something that was your fault, you failed at something, um-

Chris Williamson 54:05 Cheat on a partner.

Glenn Geher 54:07 Yes. Yeah. You messed up, you can't take it back, it becomes public, this kinda thing. And with this kinda thing, with depression that follows from that, people don't reach out to others. People withdraw. People stay, stay in bed late. People stop eating. People, like, just, "I don't wanna talk to anyone." They really... I- and the way he puts it is... a- and you also see a lot of obsessive thinking. And he says people are like, um, it's like your mind goes into overdrive of h- l- let me replay that and let me figure out what can I do in the future to not do that again. So, a l- a lot of the symptoms will look the same, but they're actually very different kinds of experiences, and the specific patterns that go with those two different forms of depression seem to be adaptive given the sort of, um, context under which they each came about.

Chris Williamson 54:59 So, the grief depression, that is, I've lost somebody that was close to me, presumably this person would have provided me with support and maybe food and maybe attention and s- status perhaps also-

Glenn Geher 55:11 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 55:12 ... it is in my interests to reach out to other people because I need to...... become more integrated into the tribe, the group around me, and I'm going to do that by reaching out more. Whereas, if I'm out on a hunt and I mess up and somebody gets hurt, or I cheat on my partner and I get found out, reaching out to other people in the tribe when they might think of me badly is probably-

Glenn Geher 55:37 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 55:37 ... not going to be tremendously effective. So, something that I can-

Glenn Geher 55:40 Right.

Chris Williamson 55:40 ... do is keep myself to myself, reduce my energy expenditure, try and-

Glenn Geher 55:44 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 55:45 ... overthink whatever it is that's just gone on in a desperate attempt to try and drill that lesson into me-

Glenn Geher 55:50 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:50 ... and then move forward. Dude, that's so-

Glenn Geher 55:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:52 ... interesting.

Glenn Geher 55:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:53 That's so fascinating that I, I didn't think about the, the adaptive effect of depression in that way.

Glenn Geher 56:01 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:02 Here, here was one thing that

Chris Williamson 56:03 I thought.

Glenn Geher 56:03 Sure.

Chris Williamson 56:04 What emotions do you think we would have felt in ancestral times that are more rare now in the modern world?

Glenn Geher 56:13 I- interesting question. Um, I, I know there's, there's a guy who passed away recently un- unfortunately, John Montgomery, um, neuroscientist who became super interested in evolutionary psych. Um, moved to New York at some point from California, and was doing research in my lab, actually, for a while, and he, he wrote pretty extensively about affective states and emotional states across nomadic versus Westernized kinds of societies. And, his main claim, it's probably overstated, but he essentially made the case that what we call mental illness and things that, especially emotional-based mental illness, um, severe depression, um, severe anxiety, um, mood stability issues, w- what his claim was is that these are relatively rare in pre-Westernized societies. Um, so, getting it's kind of, like, uh, in a somewhat roundabout way, getting to your question of what emotional states would we have experienced in different proportions, I think that-

Chris Williamson 57:22 Less of the extreme depression-

Glenn Geher 57:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:24 ... anxiety, loneliness.

Glenn Geher 57:26 E- exactly. Exactly. A- and I think part of it is, um, that we now have these contexts, these social contexts where we're, um, we're not constantly surrounded by support. We're not constantly surrounded by family, we're not constantly surrounded by, um, secondary family or friends that we've, um, been connected with over and over again extensively. Like, we're now running into all kinds of situations where we run into people that are non-relatives, we run into people that are strangers. Um, so, we have all these environmental conditions that are, especially socially, that are so different from ancestral conditions. And, what you find is anxiety and depression are way more common in urbanized areas than even in suburban areas or rural a- areas, or certainly in nomadic kinds of environments. And, I feel like, from an evolutionary perspective, we can totally understand this, you know? So, people are, like, asking, like, "Why?" Well, maybe we need more psychiatrists in large cities. Maybe we need better pharmaceuticals, you know, this kind of thing. Maybe we need more group therapy. And, I'm not saying that these are, are bad things, and certainly could, you know, could be beneficial. But again, the evolutionary perspective really encourages us to step back and say, "Wait a minute, let's take a big picture look at this and see why is this happening in the first place?"

Chris Williamson 58:47 Mm. I wondered whether awe would be an emotion that we might feel a little bit more ancestrally. Just that, you know, people try and chase that down now by going to a movie and seeing really cool special effects.

Glenn Geher 59:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:03 But I think our, um, awe radar has been, uh, tuned down a little bit because of what we can have delivered to us by technology and also-

Glenn Geher 59:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:13 ... a detachment from the natural world. It's very rare that you would see a beautiful night sky. And yet, the times when you do, or at least for me, I look up and I think, "Oh, God, I need to do this more."

Glenn Geher 59:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:23 "I have- I must spend more time staring at the night sky." And then you don't, and I think, "Well, why? What is it about that?" The same as a, a big field, a beautiful wide open space. Why is it that I like the look of that? Well, probably because I could see predators and prey from an-

Glenn Geher 59:37 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:37 ... absolute mile off.

Glenn Geher 59:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:39 And yet, for the most part, I, my vision is constrained by walls or buildings or-

Glenn Geher 59:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:44 ... the pillars of my car. And-

Glenn Geher 59:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:47 Yeah, I, I felt like awe would be, would perhaps be one of them.

Glenn Geher 59:52 Yeah. I think that's a great question. You know, there's this concept of a supernormal stimulus, and a supernormal stimulus is something that an organism evolved to respond to, and it's like, it, for some reason or another, usually artificially by human means, there's, uh, um, a, an expanded or amplified version of the stimulus is, is made. And a lot of times, you know, we can think of, of companies as, as making all kinds of products that are just, like, like, amplified versions of things that we gravitate towards. So, you like food that's high in carbohydrates and, and sugar and salt. Well, here's McDonald's, you know? And it's, and it's cheap on top of that kind of thing. So, I feel like, um, in the modern world, we have things that are just, like, like, would have been unbelievable under ancestral conditions, would have been, you know ... A, a McDonald's milkshake 20,000 years ago would have been by far and away the sweetest thing anyone on Earth would have ever experienced. And now, you can get one every single day for, like, $2. Um, you know, and so we get a little bit desensitized to it, you know? And then the other part of what you're talking about, Chris, and I'm a huge advocate of, of the outdoors, um, and, you know, I lead hikes on our campus. We have great mountains right here in, in New Paltz, and try to get outside as much as I, as I can. That it, there's something to it, you know? There really is. And I know E. O. Wilson, who passed away recently, unfortunately, um, huge-

Chris Williamson 1:01:18 Post- posthumously canceled as well. Passed away and then got posthumously canceled.

Glenn Geher 1:01:22 Oh, gosh. Oh.It's- it's- it's too easy. He'll- he'll come back, though. He'll come back.

Chris Williamson 1:01:25 (laughs) Yeah.

Glenn Geher 1:01:27 Um, but he, um, you know, he wrote about biophilia, which is essentially what you're, exactly what you're talking about, which is, we have an inherent natural love of the living world, and we do because our ancestors needed that. We needed to know flora and fauna. We needed to know where- where the water was and when the water was gonna be at a high point versus a low point, you know, and eventually, we became very sensitive to solar events and knowing, "Okay, the sun's rising here. That means the days are gonna get longer, the days are gonna get shorter." Um, and I feel like the experience of awe ... Because it's funny, at- at- at 52, I feel like I find myself chasing those kinds of experiences. And I had this insight the other day. I was talking with a good friend about the sun, you know, and it's- it's- it's funny because, like, where I live, I can actually watch the sunrise right over the Hudson River, which on mornings where I catch it, it- it's just, like, magical. Like, there's nothing that beats it. And I can track it. I can see now it's starting to come northward every morning just a little bit more and a little bit earlier. And, like, these things are so ... Like, imagine if you had never seen or experienced the sun, and at some point, just someone unveiled it, and it's like, "There's the sun." Like, nothing in the world could be that amazing, you know? It's so beautiful, so powerful. And when you think about so many, like, nomadic groups and ancestral groups that were, like, sun worshipers, like, yeah, 'cause that thing, that's- that's the energy for all of us, that's providing everything for all of the food that we're gonna need, for our sustenance. Um, following that is something that, of course, our ancestors would have been highly attuned to, so, you know, getting ourselves ... The real short message, I guess, if there is a message, is step back and think about, how can I make my life more similar to what it would have been like under ancestral conditions? Eating natural foods, being surrounded by people who I feel real, genuine loyalty to- toward, and friendship with and kinship with. Um, finding... See if that works. Find- finding, you know, finding real love where there's someone that you actually really appreciate in a very deep way and connect with in a, in a deep kind of way, getting into the out-of-doors, you know, eating natural foods. It's- it's so easy to just kinda look at your phone and just, you know, eat fast food, and- and get into these- these habits. The modern world, you know, makes it so easy to sort of just sit on your butt and do nothing. But there's- there's costs associated with that that are, I think, very hard for us to see. So, this evolutionary perspective really, I think, gets us to sort of step back and open our eyes and think about liabilities of modern technologies and modern living, but also think about, well, what can I do to sort of really live a richer life today?

Chris Williamson 1:04:17 It- it's something that I think about a lot, and I think it's something that everybody thinks about. Everybody knows that the things that they do on a daily basis are probably not all the best for them, right?

Glenn Geher 1:04:28 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:28 We- we constantly have this tension inside of our minds. This, uh, whether it be productivity guilt, or connection with family guilt, or overwork guilt. Whatever it is, right, there's some sort of shame or resentment that we have for the way that we've spent the last 24 hours, because we could have got up earlier and seen the sun, or we should-

Glenn Geher 1:04:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:47 ... have gone out for a walk more, or we should have called, uh, our parents, or we should have done whatever. And, y- you know, previously, there wouldn't have been anything else to do that wasn't that.

Glenn Geher 1:04:56 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:04:56 It would have been, the majority of your life would have been spent outdoors with your family, eating natural food, because there was no alternative.

Glenn Geher 1:05:02 That was it. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:05:03 And it- it, very much is. Increasingly, I'm thinking about this, that we are kind of trying to reinvent a happier version of life. That's- that's generally what modern, the modern world is, right?

Glenn Geher 1:05:17 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:05:17 We've tried to create a happier, safer, more convenient version of life for us, because otherwise, we'd just still be living on- on fields and plains.

Glenn Geher 1:05:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:27 And it is very much the job, I think, of the modern human to try and think, "Right, what has the world thrown out? Which- which part of this bath with bath water was baby, and which bit of it-

Glenn Geher 1:05:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:38 ... should I have held onto?"

Glenn Geher 1:05:40 Sure. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:40 And, um, you know, that's the, sort of the perennial challenge that everybody has at the moment, you know? How- how much am I supposed to ... How much is it worth me chasing down this new job role or this new bit of status when I don't need any more status, when I- I genuinely might take more pleasure from just getting home an hour earlier-

Glenn Geher 1:06:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:03 ... and spending it with my kids. Or, I might, I genuinely might prefer to just get a job that is five minutes down the road, because I already have enough money, I already have enough whatever else it is, and it means that I can spend my time training, or- or doing whatever else it is that I really, really enjoy to do-

Glenn Geher 1:06:19 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:19 ... which is, again, more naturalistic. People that choose to spend ... I've been spending a bit of time around people in New York who have some very, very expensive apartments, in d-

Glenn Geher 1:06:27 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:28 ... one- one of them in Tribeca. I thought, for this sort of money, you could probably have a house and the flights to be able to get there on three different continents in some-

Glenn Geher 1:06:38 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:06:39 ... small, little place. And which one's going to give you more satisfaction? And i- it really is. And- and that's not to say that there isn't value in having a- a beautiful apartment that's convenient and downtown, and your kids can have good education, and all that stuff. But we do get lied to, both by ourselves and by what the people around us do, and by what culture tells us-

Glenn Geher 1:06:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:58 ... that we're supposed to do. And, you know, very much the- the most effective people that I know aren't people that are going out and seeking new information. They're ones that are fantastic at filtering the information that they get. They're the ones that are able to really discriminate the signal from the noise, and they go, "Okay, this is something that I need. This is just, this is horse shit. I don't need this."

Glenn Geher 1:07:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:20 "This is point- this is pointless. It doesn't add anything to my life." And, um-That convenience is the final sort of nail in the coffin, that when you mix hyper-normal stimuli with always on availability, it's really difficult.

Glenn Geher 1:07:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:33 I'm walking down the street, I was going to the gym earlier on, I walked past a Krispy Kreme in Times Square.

Glenn Geher 1:07:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:38 And I thought, "I'm, I'm on my way to the gym, why am I looking at this Krispy Kreme place-"

Glenn Geher 1:07:41 (laughs) Right, right.

Chris Williamson 1:07:41 "... as if I want to go to it." Like, I'm literally going to offset it. Well, it's because it's there.

Glenn Geher 1:07:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:46 It's because it's directly in front of me, and because there's m- basically no benefit in the here and now for me doing it. There'll be benefit, there, there'll be a, a, a pain, sorry, for me to pay tomorrow, or b- in a couple of weeks' time when I'm not as lean as I want to be. But, yeah, man, I think, um, I really hope that paleo-psychology becomes more of a, uh, more of a field that people pay attention to, because I, I genuinely do think it's probably got a lot of the answers to questions that people feel are super existential and are actually just mismatches between what their system is used to and what they're doing now.

Glenn Geher 1:08:18 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I appreciate that. I think you've articulated that really well. And, and, you know, certainly a lot of the work that I've done in the last few years has really been trying to advance exactly this. O- one, one angle that, you know, I've thought about quite a bit has to do with government and business organizations where, especially like producers of technology, um, so you can imagine, you know, the companies that are social media companies, or, or Apple, or, or companies that are making these technologies, wouldn't it be great if they had trainings or personnel or something, some structure that connected with, explicitly connected with an evolutionary approach? Wouldn't it be great if Snapchat and Instagram had people at, at a very high level with an understanding of, you know, this stuff can be addictive, this stuff can be problematic, um, and what can we do understanding human evolved psychology, what can we do with this product to help minimize those, those unforeseen liabilities? And so I, I guess-

Chris Williamson 1:09:22 Well, I think, I think what they're, what they're doing, what these people are doing, they do understand the evolution or at least in part they understand it, but they're using it to further magnify-

Glenn Geher 1:09:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:33 ... the revenue and the time on sites-

Glenn Geher 1:09:36 Yep, the revenue. Absolutely.

Chris Williamson 1:09:36 ... that they do with these apps. So yeah, I think, uh, first off, you would need to have a change of philosophy.

Glenn Geher 1:09:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:41 You know, if you give these people a deeper understanding of how the human brain works, to me that just seems a lot like y- you're g- giving them more leverage to be able to take people's time away. But I, dude, I, I think that you're right with that as well. It'd be fantastic if these technology companies could use the insights around how our minds work to make our lives better because they have, it's their choice-

Glenn Geher 1:10:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:02 ... what we do with our devices. They could make the apps less addictive. They could make the time that we spend on them more meaningful to us. They could connect us with stuff that makes us feel better rather the more outraged and blah, blah, blah. And I wonder whether we're going to look back in 50 years time at this period in the same way as us looking back at those ladies that used to lick the nibs of, uh, the paintbrushes that had radium on them and think-

Glenn Geher 1:10:31 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:31 ... "What the, what were you doing?"

Glenn Geher 1:10:32 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:10:32 Or the people-

Glenn Geher 1:10:33 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:10:33 ... that worked in, in, uh, next to factories that were spewing out smoke, and just see it as-

Glenn Geher 1:10:38 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:38 ... uh, you know, this was a perhaps necessary cost on route to finding a more refined version of something that would later be a completed product, but God, I'm glad that I didn't live through that time.

Glenn Geher 1:10:49 Wow. That's a very powerful idea. And, uh, and to be honest, I think what you're painting is almost a best case scenario.

Chris Williamson 1:10:55 Oh, that it gets better? That's presuming that it gets better-

Glenn Geher 1:10:57 Right, right. (laughs) Right.

Chris Williamson 1:10:58 ... or worse, yeah, with VR and metaverse-

Glenn Geher 1:10:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:59 ... and augmented reality and Neuralink-

Glenn Geher 1:11:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:01 ... and stuff like that. Yeah, when you can't escape it anymore, if we don't fix the philosophy problem around this misalignment between what we want and what the tech, what the apps do, yeah, it just gets deeper, right? It just gets more embedded.

Glenn Geher 1:11:12 Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I think you're ab- absolutely right on that.

Chris Williamson 1:11:16 Glenn Geyer, ladies and gentlemen. If people want to keep up to date with the work that you do, where should they go?

Glenn Geher 1:11:21 Oh, well, I've got my website glenngeyer.com, uh, and I also have a Psychology Today blog called Darwin's Subterranean World, and I would be more than happy to connect with people who have questions or want to engage in discussions.

Chris Williamson 1:11:35 Dope. Thanks, Glenn.

Glenn Geher 1:11:37 Yep. Thanks so much, Chris. Appreciate being on the show.

Chris Williamson 1:11:39 What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.