The Evolutionary Mismatch: Why Your Brain Thinks It's Still in the Stone Age скачать в хорошем качестве

The Evolutionary Mismatch: Why Your Brain Thinks It's Still in the Stone Age

Psychopathology through the lens of Evolutionary Life History Theory (LHT). Core Thesis: Mental disorders are not biological errors but are extreme expressions of ancient, sex-differentiated survival strategies mismatched with the modern environment. Framework: 1. Life History Theory (LHT): Organisms allocate finite resources between self-preservation (Somatic Effort) and reproduction (Reproductive Effort), creating inescapable trade-offs. 2. Fast vs. Slow Strategies: Fast Strategy (High-Danger Environments): Prioritizes immediate gains, high-risk behavior, and early reproduction. Linked to externalizing disorders (ADHD, psychopathy). Slow Strategy (Safe Environments): Prioritizes long-term investment, caution, and delayed gratification. Linked to internalizing disorders (Anxiety, OCSD). 3. The Smoke Detector Principle: Anxiety is an over-calibrated defense mechanism. The high cost of a missed threat (false negative) justifies the low cost of many false alarms (false positives). OCSD is its pathological extreme. 4. Mismatch Hypothesis: These evolved survival programs (e.g. hypervigilance, impulsivity) become dysfunctional in today's safe, predictable, but novel world. Summarizes the application of evolutionary life history theory (LHT) to modern psychopathology, proposing that many mental health conditions are not biological malfunctions but rather highly specialized, sex-differentiated survival programs adapted for a Paleolithic environment, now mismatched with the modern world. Main Claim: What are currently diagnosed as mental health disorders (e.g., anxiety, ADHD, OCSD, externalizing disorders) are often the pathological extremes of evolutionarily adaptive, resource-allocation strategies (Fast and Slow life histories) that were selected for maximizing reproductive success in ancestral environments, not for individual happiness or modern social stability. Logic: 1. Evolutionary Context (LHT): All organisms have finite resources (time, energy) that must be allocated between Somatic Effort (self-maintenance, growth, embodied capital) and Reproductive Effort (mating, parenting, nepotism). These allocations involve inescapable trade-offs (e.g., current vs. future reproduction, quantity vs. quality of offspring). 2. Fast vs. Slow Strategies: Environmental cues, particularly extrinsic morbidity and mortality (danger/unpredictability), drive the adoption of either a Fast or Slow life history strategy. Fast Strategy: Favored in dangerous, unpredictable environments with short expected lifespans. Prioritizes immediate gains, high-risk behavior, early reproduction, high mating effort, and heavy future discounting (associated with impulsivity, sensation seeking, externalizing disorders like conduct disorder and psychopathy). Defined by down-regulated defenses. Slow Strategy: Favored in safe, predictable environments with long expected lifespans. Prioritizes long-term investment, delayed reproduction, high parental effort, and accumulating embodied capital (associated with conscientiousness, stability, risk aversion, and internalizing disorders like anxiety and OCSD). Defined by upregulated defenses. 3. The Smoke Detector Principle (SDP): Anxiety and related disorders (Slow Strategy) are explained by the SDP, where the psychological defense system is calibrated to over-respond to low-probability threats (false positives) because the cost of under-responding to a high-impact threat (false negative) is catastrophic. The distress is the cost of ultimate safety. OCSD is the pathological extension of this hypervigilance and conscientiousness. 4. Sex Differences: Biological asymmetry in reproductive investment (higher minimum cost for females) leads to different selection pressures. Males generally favor higher mating effort (steering them toward Fast spectrum disorders), while females are highly sensitive to environmental cues for timing reproduction and somatic maintenance (steering them toward specific Slow spectrum disorders). 5. Mismatched Adaptation: The traits that define these strategies (e.g., hypervigilance, impulsivity) become pathological when expressed at the extreme or when they fail to calibrate to the relatively safe, stable, and hyper-digital environment of the modern world. The brain is running a powerful, expensive, but mismatched survival program.