Download adaptations to harsh environments

Evolving the Future
Toward a Science of Intentional Change
ACBS World Conference IX
Parma, Italy
July 14, 2011
David Sloan Wilson
President, Evolution Institute
SUNY Distinguished Professor
Binghamton University
Published by Little, Brown in August 2011
Change
• We crave it.
• We fear it.
• We’re not very good at managing it.
Can There Be A Science of Change?
• Yes.
• It must be centered in evolutionary theory.
• This means that achieving a science of change will
be both difficult and easy.
Why It Will Be Difficult
• Darwin’s theory, which has unified the study of life,
has been avoided for the study of humans for the
last half century.
• This avoidance is based on complex histories in
which evolutionary approaches of the time were
rejected for good reasons (e.g., Social Darwinism
plus much more).
• An ACT-like process is required for a science of
human change to become centered in evolutionary
theory.
Why It Will Be Easy
• Evolutionary Science offers a powerful toolkit for
the study of all traits in all species.
• The toolkit is easily learned.
• The tools can be applied right away.
• Some of the most recalcitrant problems can not only
be solved, but easily solved, when they are
approached in the right way.
• ACT provides outstanding examples of this
difficult-made-easy phenomenon.
Why I Know
• Trained in evolutionary biology
• Involved in the academic study of human biocultural
evolution throughout my career.
• Became involved the applied study of human
biocultural evolution app. 5 years ago.
• The Evolution Institute: The world’s first
evolutionary think tank.
• The Binghamton Neighborhood Project:
Community-based research from an evolutionary
perspective.
Nature, 9 June 2011
A little help from my friends
Tony Biglan
Dennis Embry
Steve Hayes
Some Tools from the Evolutionary Toolkit
• Multilevel selection and major evolutionary
transitions.
• Evolutionary mismatch.
• Adaptations to harsh environments.
• Learning and symbolic thought
• Using the tools to solve real-world problems
• What a society such as ACBS can do
Multilevel Selection
A Simple Subject with a Complex History
Individual level adaptations
are locally advantageous.
• Sharp teeth
• Thick fur
• Cryptic coloration
Multilevel Selection
A Simple Subject with a Complex History
Social adaptations tend to be
locally disadvantageous.
• Altruism
• Public good provision
• Most behaviors that are “for
the good of the group”
The Fundamental Problem
How can “for the good of the group” traits evolve
when they are locally disadvantageous?
The (Partial) Solution
• Because “for the good or the group” traits are
advantageous at a larger scale.
• Groups whose members behave “for the good of the
group” will survive and reproduce better than
groups whose members are more self-serving.
• The solution is only partial because positive
between-group selection must be strong enough to
prevail against negative within-group selection.
Sociobiology, standing on one foot
• Selfishness beats altruism within single groups.
• Altruistic groups beat single groups.
• Everything else is commentary.
New Scientist, August 2011
Major Evolutionary Transitions
1) The balance between levels of selection is not
static but can itself evolve.
2) When between-group selection becomes
sufficiently strong, the group becomes so
cooperative that it becomes a new higher-level
organism in its own right.
3) The fact that evolution takes place, not only by
mutational change, but also by groups turning into
organisms, is one of the most profound
developments in evolutionary thought.
Major Evolutionary Transitions
• The origin of life
• The first cells
• Nucleated cells
• Multicellular organisms
• Social insect colonies
Major Evolutionary Transitions
• The origin of life
• The first cells
• Nucleated cells
• Multicellular organisms
• Social insect colonies
• Human biocultural evolution
This comparison needs to be taken very seriously
The Ancestral Human Social Environment
• Small groups
• Important shared objectives
• Low-cost social control
Modern Relevance
• Elinor Ostrom
• 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics
• Showed that groups are capable of
managing their own affairs, but
only if certain conditions are met.
• These conditions are highly
consilient with evolutionary
science and provide a practical
how-to guide for most groups
attempting to achieve common
goals.
How To Make Groups Work
1) Strong group identity and
purpose
2) Proportional equivalence of
costs and benefits
3) Consensus decision making
4) Monitoring
5) Graduated sanctions
6) Fast, fair conflict resolution
7) Local autonomy
8) Polycentric governance
among groups
Multilevel Selection and the Invisible Hand
• Invisible hand metaphor states that the pursuit of
self-interest robustly leads to a well-functioning
society.
• MLS states that adaptation at any given level
requires a process of selection at that level and
tends to be undermined by selection at lower
levels.
• Taking MLS alters the discourse about what’s
required for society to function at a large scale
(consult Tony Biglan for more)
Evolutionary Mismatch
• All evolutionary processes can only
adapt organisms to their past
environments.
• Can go tragically wrong when the
environment changes.
• Only solution is to engineer the
environment so that this doesn’t
happen or to adapt to the new
environment.
• This has profound implications for
understanding and improving the
modern human condition.
Evolutionary Mismatch
• Diet
• Exercise
• Immune system dysfunction
• Our built environment
• Our social environment
• Mechanisms of social learning and
cultural transmission
Mechanisms of social learning
and cultural transmission
• The concept of reinforcers from learning theory can be
elaborated to include copying behaviors from others.
• Examples: Conformance bias, Prestige bias.
• Our instincts for cultural transmission evolved to
facilitate the spread of the most adaptive behaviors in
the ancestral social environment, but can seriously
malfunction in modern environments, leading to the
phenomenon of practices that work but don’t spread.
The dysfunctional consequences
of harsh environments
• Many problems result from harsh environmental
circumstances.
• It’s easy to conclude that human development and
psychological functioning are optimal in benign
environment and become compromised in harsh
environments, so that the problems are similar to a car
that has broken down.
• Evolutionary science offers another possibility…
The dysfunctional consequences
of harsh environments
• Like all species, humans have experienced a range of
environmental conditions, from benign to harsh, throughout their
evolutionary history.
• When the environment becomes harsh, people don’t fall apart—
they exhibit adaptations to harsh environments. They are like a
car that is functioning well for its given purpose.
• Adaptations to harsh environments are oriented toward immediate
survival and reproduction, often at the expense of societal and
long-term individual welfare.
• The need to address these problems is just as important as before,
but recognizing their adaptive nature leads to new solutions.
The Adaptive Calibration Model
of Stress Responsivity
• Highly sophisticated set of mechanisms operating throughout
development, including before birth.
• The key to healthy development and psychological functioning is
to provide a safe, secure, and nurturing environment.
• The importance of genetic variation in sensitivity to the
environment.
Sensitive to
Environment
FUNCTIONING
High
Insensitive to
Environment
Low
Harsh
Benign
ENVIRONMENT
Learning and symbolic thought
• B.F. Skinner, evolutionary
psychologist.
• Clearly regarded learning as
both a product and process
of evolution.
• His tradition, which is now
represented by ACBS,
deserves to be central to the
evolutionary perspective.
Learning and symbolic thought
as different inheritance systems
• Both count as inheritance systems that can result
in the transmission of traits across generations.
• The learning inheritance system exists in many
species.
• Symbolic thought more uniquely human.
Where contextual psychology comes in
• RFT is consilient with an emerging paradigm of
human symbolic thought as an inheritance system
with the same kind of combinatorial possibilities
as genetic evolution and the immune system.
--Nearly an infinite number of genotypes, antibodies,
and “symbotypes”
• Each is heritable and has phenotypic consequences
that are subject to selection.
• RFT provides mechanistic detail and real-world
applications that are far ahead of the evolutionists.
The Power of Narrative
• Long appreciated by social constructivists who
regarded their position as opposed to “genetic
determinism.”
• Now firmly a part of the evolutionary story.
• Accounts for some of the “difficult-made-easy”
success stories of ACT, which helps people create
new “symbotypes” for themselves, which can
sometimes be done in as little as a single hour.
• Major ACBS theorists such as Hayes, Biglan, and
Embry are now integrating ACT and RFT with
modern evolutionary science.
How to Make the Difficult Easy
• Suppose you wanted to change
the color of this lizard species
.
• How easy would it be if you
didn’t change the background
environment?
• How easy would it be if you did
change the background
environment?
How to Make the Difficult Easy
• Changing the lives of at-risk
adolescents is one of the most
difficult problems of modern
life.
• High school programs for at-risk
youth succeed only through
heroic efforts, such as
extended days, extended
years, and so on.
• Can this difficult problem be
made easy by applying
evolutionary insights?
Regents Academy
• Program for at-risk 9th and 10th graders in
Binghamton, NY.
• Explicitly tries to apply the following evolutionary
principles:
1) The optimal human social environment, including
the Ostrom design features.
2) A safe, secure, and nurturing environment
conducive to “broaden and build” human
development.
3) Principles of “selection by consequences” for both
behavior management and academic learning.
The distinction between design
features and their implementation
DESIGN FEATURES
1) Strong group identity and
purpose
2) Proportional equivalence of
costs and benefits
3) Consensus decision making
4) Monitoring
5) Graduated sanctions
6) Fast, fair conflict resolution
7) Local autonomy
8) Polycentric governance among
groups
IMPLEMENTATIONS
• Self-contained program with
own principle, teaching staff,
and location (1,6,7).
• T-shirts, eating together, a
successful image, other
group-building exercises (1).
• Involving students in decision
making and the formation
and enforcement of norms as
much as possible (3-6).
The one-to-many relationship between
design features and their implementations
• In general, there are many ways to implement any
particular design feature.
• The best way is highly contingent on local
circumstances, cannot be provided by a cookiecutter approach.
• It is therefore important to distinguish between
design features, which are relatively invariant, and
implementations, which are highly variable.
• E.g., “You must have monitoring but how you
accomplish it is up to you.”
Randomized Control Trial
• Students who entered the program must have failed
at least three of their basic classes during the
previous year.
• Randomly divided into Regents Academy (RA) and
comparison group that experienced the normal
high school routine.
• Outcome variables:
Quarterly grades
State-mandated exams
Developmental assets (non-academic)
Class grades
State Mandated Exams
Too Good to be True?
• Seems like a miracle, compared
to previous efforts.
• Previous efforts were like trying
to change the color of the
lizard species without
changing the environmental
background.
• Group-level equivalent of the
“too good to be true” results
achieved at the individual
level with ACT.
What can a society such as ACBS do to
accelerate the science of intentional change?
2007: Tony Biglan reads Darwin’s Cathedral by
chance. Get’s excited. Invites me to SPR meeting.
I learn about his domain. I get excited.
2009: Tony, Dennis, Steve and I start interacting in a
number of contexts. We’re all excited.
2011: Here we are at the ACBS annual meeting. Are
you excited?
What can a society such as ACBS do to
accelerate the science of intentional change?
2007: Tony Biglan reads Darwin’s Cathedral by
chance. Get’s excited. Invites me to SPR meeting.
I learn about his domain. I get excited.
2009: Tony, Dennis, Steve and myself start
interacting in a number of contexts. We’re all
excited.
2011: Here we are at the ACBS annual meeting. Are
you excited?
THIS ISN’T FAST ENOUGH!
The Need to Operate in Catalytic Mode
• Catalysis: A
substance, usually used in
small amounts relative to
the reactants, that modifies
and increases the rate of a
reaction without being
consumed in the process.
Cultural processes can be catalyzed, no less than chemical processes
The role of programs and societies for
operating in catalytic mode
• EvoS (higher education)
• The Evolution Institute
(public policy)
• The Binghamton
Neighborhood Project
(community-based research)
The role of programs and societies for
operating in catalytic mode
• I invite a collaboration with
ACBS to make a science of
intentional change a reality
sooner rather than later.
Evolving the Future
Toward a Science of Intentional Change
ACBS World Conference IX
Parma, Italy
July 14, 2011
David Sloan Wilson
President, Evolution Institute
SUNY Distinguished Professor
Binghamton University
Published by Little, Brown in August 2011