Posts Tagged ‘evolutionary psychology’
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 by Mel Konner
Obesity is unnatural, but it’s natural to try for it.
This morning I sat on a panel for medical students; the subject was obesity. Nationally, as anyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock knows, the picture is not pretty-in fact it’s pretty ugly. By the standard definition, obesity means a Body Mass Index (BMI; weight in kilos over height in meters squared) above 30, and in about 15 years starting in 1990 we went from 22 percent to 33 percent obese.
Now, I don’t care what you call it or (more…)
Tags: Add new tag, BMI, diabetes, diet, disease, epidemic, evolutionary psychology, health, health habits, human nature, hunter gatherers
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Saturday, August 14th, 2010 by Mel Konner
Statesmen understand human nature. Why not psychologists and social scientists?
Most psychologists don’t like human nature, or at least not the idea of it. Clinicians, life coaches, and corporate motivators dislike it because it implies unchangeability. Anyone who took college psychology knows how to modify behavior, from direct instruction to manipulative advertising.
And then, what fool surveying the huge variety of human personalities, needs, and tastes would dream of trying to characterize all that as one thing? Well, some fool might, but not the philosophers, evolutionists, historians and political leaders who have long used the phrase. They’ve always meant something complex, varied, and big-but not limitless.
Barack Obama, for instance. (more…)
Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Darwin, evolutionary psychology, George Washington, human nature, Obama, Politics, slavery, Thomas Jefferson, war, Winston Churchill
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Sunday, August 8th, 2010 by Mel Konner
Note: By invitation, I’ve started a blog on the Psychology Today website, and my latest post can be read there or here, although different (and likely more numerous) comments will be posted there. This entry resembles and updates one I posted here in March 2009, which was followed by an interesting exchange on “insatiable widows” and other cross-cultural myths.
We hear a lot about sex differences, and arguments rage over which are real. Evolutionary theorists weigh in about why this or that difference should be expected, while some anthropologists say cultures vary so much that generalizations are folly. But of all Darwinian predictions about la différence, few are as logical as the one about sex differences in sexuality. Here’s why.
(more…)
Tags: evolutionary psychology, gender, sex, Sex differences, sex drive, sexual desire, sexuality
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Thursday, March 11th, 2010 by Mel Konner
Is Barack Obama an evolutionary psychologist?
Since I criticized President Obama’s speech last year in Cairo (and even “rewrote” it) and later pointed out the names and deeds of those who did not get the Nobel Peace Prize because he did, I think it’s only fair that I resume this blog after a long hiatus by writing about his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in December.
I have to say that it stunned me. (more…)
Tags: Darwinian views of violence, evolutionary psychology, human nature, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Obama, Oslo, peace, sociobiology, violence, war
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Sunday, November 15th, 2009 by Mel Konner
A couple of weeks ago I posted some musings about “the self” in anticipation of being on a panel with Steven Pinker (author of The Blank Slate and The Stuff of Thought) and Noga Arikha (author of Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours) at Tufts University. The panel, convened by Jonathan Wilson, was titled “The New Biology and the Self,” and what follows was my contribution. The graduate student referred to is Monica Chau of Emory University.
I told a very smart neurobiology graduate student named Monica yesterday that I’d been asked to speak on “The New Biology and the Self.” She said, “What’s the new biology?” I said, “I don’t know, but that’s the least of my problems. What’s the self?” (more…)
Tags: bioethics, brain, brain imaging, enhancement drugs, evolution, evolutionary psychology, genes, genomics, human nature, philosophy, sociobiology, the self
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Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 by Mel Konner
Our innate fear and contempt of strangers often turns ugly. Now it’s China’s turn.
A charismatic president who blends two major races has had a healing effect on the wounds of a secular racial conflict in the United States. At the moment he is in Ghana visiting and speaking—eloquently as always—
(more…)
Tags: China, ethnic conflict, evolutionary psychology, race, sociobiology, Uighurs, Urumchi, violence, war
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Monday, June 29th, 2009 by Mel Konner
My friend and colleague Prof. David Blumenthal wrote this comment on my last posting, and I try to answer it below.
Dear Mel,
I’m not sure I agree that educating women is the way to go. As long as Islamic
men have the following cluster of problems, no amount of women’s education
will work:
(1) Islamic men have no empowerment - not economic, not religious, not
political, etc. This is also why Arabs can’t negotiate a peace; they have to
be empowered, to win. (2) Islamic men believe that submission is the
ultimate value - for themselves and especially for those who defy them. (more…)
Tags: Arab cultures, educating girls, evolutionary psychology, gender, gender gap, Iran, Iranian protests, religion, Sex differences, sexism, women's rights
Posted in My Blog | 3 Comments »
Sunday, June 7th, 2009 by Mel Konner
In the Darwin bicentennial, new insights into fossils, genes, birdsong, and cancer.
The latest issue of Nature to land in my mailbox-the May 28th one-was not a tribute to Darwin in honor of his 200th birthday and the 150th of The Origin of Species; Nature has been there, done that. But it might as well have been another celebration for him, (more…)
Tags: birdsong, cancer, cultural evolution, Darwin, Darwin's Birthday, evolution, evolutionary arms race, evolutionary medicine, evolutionary psychology, fossils, genes, genetics, microbes, natural selection
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Sunday, May 31st, 2009 by Mel Konner
Obesity is an evolutionary legacy, which is why it’s so hard to control.
I said a few weeks ago (before I was rudely interrupted by the swine flu epidemic) that I would try to explain why the battle against overweight is such a hard and so far losing one, for the species if not for the individual.
(more…)
Tags: BMI, Body Mass Index, diet, evolution, evolutionary psychology, fat, health, health habits, obesity, overweight
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Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 by Mel Konner
In response to my last posting, “Sex Lives, Male and Female,” reader Clare wrote this thoughtful comment:
“I’m curious what you make of the ethnographic accounts from cultures where widows are considered to be insatiable sex fiends? Is this how fear of women expresses itself, that they become more interested in sex than is considered usual? Or is there some truth to the folklore? Is there any evidence that sexual interest waxes and wanes (so to speak) over the life course of men and women?”
I thought it well worth answering at length: (more…)
Tags: education, evolutionary psychology, female sexuality, gender, gender gap, male dominance, Pakistan, patriarchy, polygamy, sex, Sex differences, sexism, sexual desire, sexual drive, suttee, Taliban, widows
Posted in My Blog | 4 Comments »
evolutionary psychology 
