Positive Attitude versus an Adaptive Attitude

Being positive and happy is a good thing, but is being unhappy and negative always a bad thing? Evolutionary psychology would suggest that a positive or negative attitude is neither good nor bad, it depends on the situation.

To refresh, evolutionary psychology suggests that not only do creatures physically adapt to their environment they also adapt behaviourally. So when we look at a lizard that is green it is easy to understand that the lizard has evolved a green skin so as to blend into green leaves. However species also develop certain behaviours. Green lizards also understand that they must stay in the trees, if they venture out onto yellow sand they are instantly recognisable to predators. Most lizards are born from eggs with no care from the mother after birth, so how do they know this behaviour; it is encoded in their DNA. The behaviour of hiding in trees is as important to the lizard as being green and is a product of evolution.

The same process applies to humans; we have evolved behaviours that helped us survive. Each year thousands of humans are killed and maimed by cars and yet we are scared of spiders and snakes. This is because ten thousand years ago spiders and snakes were a real threat to humans. If there had been cars zooming around the plains of Africa ten thousand years ago we probably would be scared of cars as well.

The point being that negative emotions such as being scared, running away from danger were very valuable. Some researchers even think that depression might even have evolved as a response to times of scarcity, allowing humans to slow down and wait it out until good times returned. Hence being sad, frightened or unhappy is not allows bad; it might be the signal to our bodies to unleash a great human evolutionary advantage, the ability to emotionally adapt.

Of course we are living in a modern world and some of our inherited behaviours don’t serve us well today. Being depressed and sitting in a cave waiting for the monsoon rains is not really going to help. Being sad and eating a tub of ice cream again is not going to help it is maladaptive; it makes sense from an evolutionary psychology perspective. So we need to understand that we feel sad for instance and we may need to sit quickly for a short time and absorb that sadness. But, we also must override some of our natural instincts and use this time to change and adapt to our new situation.

So it has been a long way around to make my point. Humans do not always act logically. We often fall back onto old evolutionary behaviours which are maladaptive. We often feel that we are doing is getting us nowhere and yet we keep doing it. The good news is that humans are very adaptive. Once we understand that our behaviour is not serving us well we can adapt and change and we will feel very happy with our new adaptive behaviour. However it takes conscious effort we need to recognise our behaviour and plan to change.

Just one note, for some people maladaptive behaviour is so ingrained that they might need help to understand their behaviour and implement change.

Does it make sense to eat fat and sugar?

Does it make sense to eat a load of fat and sugar and spend the rest of the day lying on the lounge? Form a health and fitness perspective maybe not, however from an evolutionary psychology perspective it makes perfect sense. Remember that evolutionary psychology is based on the fact that humans evolved on the African plains tens of thousands of years ago, and that much of our current behaviour is based on those early survival strategies.

In the wild there is very little fat available. All possible prey is usually very lean; after all a fat zebra that could not run quickly would soon become dinner. If you every have every watched a David Attenborough show you might have noticed that when lions catch something, say a zebra, they don’t start by eating rump steak or eye fillet. The lions fight over the live or the kidney because these are the fatty parts of the catch. For a predator eating fat makes evolutionary sense as fat is energy.

Human behaviour and sugar are even more intertwined in our evolutionary past. The only sugar available in the wild is via fruit and fruiting plants and animals evolved together. Plants encase their seeds in soft fleshly fruits. Animals eat the fruit and excrete the seeds in a clump of soft damp poo, far from the parent plant. For the animals in the wild sugar is an incredibly valuable food source providing instant energy. Plants that offered the sweetest fruits stood the best chance of having their seeds distributed. Of course co-evolution meant that over time the sweetness of fruits increased and some animals, humans included, specialised in eating fruits. Of course in the wild fruit was only available for a very short period in spring and early summer.

So we are genetically programmed to eat fat and sugar. It appears that evolution that served us well on the plains of Africa when food was at a premium now works against us. However recent research might come to the rescue. It appears that when we eat fat we quickly become full; there is a limit to how much fat we can eat. The same seems to apply with sugar. As an experiment try eating a couple of spoons full of sugar and you will quickly realise there is a limit. However, and I not recommending this, you will be able to drink several cans of soft drink, with about ten teaspoons of sugar in each can. Recent research is showing that foods that combine both fat and sugar confuses our bodies and the automatic shut off circuit does not seem to activate. In nature, foods that combine high levels of both fat and sugar are extremely difficult to find. In the western diet food that contains both fat and sugar are very very common, as an example, ice cream. Ice cream is basically dairy fat, and sugar and we can eat buckets full of ice cream.

So although we are genetically programmed to eat fat and sugar it is processed food that causes us problems.

Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology is simply the application of the theory of evolution to personality and behaviour. Firstly, there are multiple theories of personality and behaviour. The brain is very complex and the functionality of the brain is not fully understood. Some theories of personality seem to explain behaviour better than other in certain situations. Hence we can pick and choose whatever theory of personality seems to be the most appropriate at any particular time. As I explained in an earlier blog even the definition of personality is somewhat difficult. We often describe personality in terms of behaviour. If someone acts aggressively we might say they have an aggressive personality, the problem arises then if that same person acts in a co-operative manner; has their personality changed?

The theory of evolution, or natural selection, states that not all individuals in any species are identical; and those individuals who are more suited to their environment will do better and reproduce more often. Hence, successful genes are transmitted to the next generation. Over time, successive generations will become more adapted to their environment. Note, evolution relies upon reproduction not survival; it is quite possible that very very risky behaviour that might result is death could lead to more reproduction opportunities. The Black Widow spider is called the black widow because the female spider eats the male after mating.

Initially, the theory of evolution focused on the physical properties of species. Charles Darwin measured the differences in the size, speed, colour and diet of the closely related species to show how different species were adapted to their environment. However, psychologists wondered if behaviour and personality could also be a result of evolution. Once psychologists began to consider personality as a result of evolution the supportive examples began to come quickly and easily. As an example, many animals rely on camouflage to hide from predators; however this camouflage only works if the animal remains still and remains in an area that supports the camouflage. A green tree frog blends into green foliage; however the same frog on a sandy beach would stand out and be an easy meal for some predator.

Psychologists then began to wonder if human behaviour was also influenced by evolution and if behaviour could be in inherited. Some of the findings about the inheritability of behaviour are a little controversial and require more time than available in this blog to explain. However, study of identical twins have shown that many attitudes can be inherited including; belief in religion, support for political parties, even crime appears to be inherited. The gold standard of this type of research is to find identical twins raised apart and then to measure their attitudes and behaviour, of course identical twins raised apart is incredibly rare. However, where identical twins are raised apart the similarity in behaviour, attitudes and life styles is remarkable. Hence, there is very good scientific evidence that much of our behaviour is encoded in our genes.

The question is how does evolutionary psychology effect our health and fitness outcomes? Also if behaviour is encoded into people genes are people really able to change? In the next few blogs I will attempt to answer these questions in simple, not to scientific language.

The Psychology of Personality

It might seem funny reading about the psychology of personality in a blog about health and fitness. However it is our personality that really creates who we are. If you were describe yourself you might use a range of physical descriptions, such as age, height, weight etc. However, eventually you would start describing yourself in terms of your behaviour, what you do for a job, what your hobbies are, likes and dislikes etc. So much of you, is your personality and how you approach life, it is therefore not surprising that personality effects our health in two ways. Firstly, personality effects our behaviour, our motivation and how we approach problems. Hence, our personality effects the health and fitness choices we make. Secondly, research has shown that certain personality types directly effects our health. A term used by psychologists is psycho-education. Psycho-education is a process where people are educated about their personalities, the aim being that if people understand their personalities they can take more control over their lives.

Personality is a funny thing, we all intuitively know what personality is and yet it is very hard to define.  Personality is often defined in terms of behaviour. Someone might be said to have a happy personality, so you expect this person to be happy. However what happens at a funeral you would not expect a person with a happy personality to be happy at a funeral. So does personality rely on the situation, do we have different personalities in different situations?

The other thing about personality is that it originates in the brain. The brain is made up of billions of neurons. Now I won’t go into the detail about neurons, you can simply ‘google’ neuron to learn more, but take it from me a neuron is not all that complex in the way it operates. A neuron is a simple switch, on/off. The operation of a neuron is similar in many ways to a computer, a series of switches are either set to zero or one. In fact scientists build computers that mimic the operation of the brain. The problem comes when we try to understand how the brain forms though and creative ideas. If the neurons are so simple, how can the brain be so complicated and hard to understand? Hence, it is intrinsically difficult to understand personality and, importantly, why there is not just one theory of personality.

Over the next few blogs I will present several different theories of personality. The important thing to remember is that no one theory of personality is right or wrong. Also, just about all the theories I will discuss have some common features. It is the case that different theories of personality tend to describe some behaviour better than others. The theories that I will present will include, Behaviouralism, Social Learning, Evolutionary Psychology and the Narrative perspective. The aim is allow readers of these blogs to look at their behaviour in a slightly different ways and hopefully that will allow readers to be better equipped to make more appropriate fitness and health choices.