The Old Toolbox is a book that explains human psychology and behavior from an evolutionary psychology perspective. It explains why we reach for chocolate when we’re starving in terms of caloric preference, and why religion has become essential to society despite seemingly disadvantageous to survival and reproduction, using actor detection and folk psychology. It also shows how evolutionary psychology’s conflicting explanations of behavior and the protective nature of modern society justify these explanations.
I came home after two days of starvation and opened the refrigerator. Inside the fridge were chocolate and garlic. Which one would you reach for first? Most, if not all, people would reach for the chocolate first. After starving for a while, it seems natural to reach for the chocolate rather than the garlic. But why is it natural? Why do we reach for something sweet rather than something bitter or spicy when we’re hungry?
A book that looks at these questions from an evolutionary perspective is The Old Toolbox, a book in a field called evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology, as the title suggests, is the intersection of evolutionary theory and psychology, where psychological problems are explained in terms of evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory in this context includes the idea that genes with traits that favor survival and reproduction spread within a population through natural selection. In other words, the main argument of the book is that human psychology and related behaviors that we observe today have been selected for through natural selection over time. The author of this article agrees with this argument. Let’s take a look at evolutionary psychology through some examples from the book.
First, let’s revisit the example mentioned above with the author’s explanation: the reason why a hungry person reaches for chocolate before garlic is because most people prefer sweeter flavors when they’re hungry. So why do we prefer sweeter flavors when we’re hungry? The authors point out that sweet-tasting foods are usually high in calories, and they explain that humans have evolved a preference for sweetness so that we can remember which foods are high in calories and reach for them when we need calories. This is because humans who preferred sweet, high-calorie foods were more likely to live longer and reproduce than those who did not.
There are many other examples in the book that are explained in evolutionary terms, including the example of religion. Many of the examples in the book are explained as if the current psychology or behaviors were naturally selected for in order for human individuals to survive and reproduce. But religion doesn’t seem to have anything to do with survival or reproduction. On the contrary, religion can be detrimental to human survival and reproduction. Humans spend a lot of time, energy, and even their lives practicing religion. Why has religion become such an integral part of human society when it seems to be detrimental to survival and reproduction from an evolutionary psychology perspective?
The book offers two possible explanations, one of which we’ll look at first. To understand this explanation, it’s important to understand the concepts of “actor detection” and “folk psychology. Actor detection is the instinctive tendency to look for the actor responsible for a phenomenon when it occurs. This is essential for humans to identify threats to our survival. Folk psychology refers to the ability to guess the mind of another person based on their behavior. Being able to look at someone’s behavior and determine whether they are helping or hurting your survival is also essential to survival.
The book explains that this actor detection and folk psychology created a byproduct of religion: humans look at a natural phenomenon, such as pouring rain or lightning strikes, and try to find the actor responsible for it. We don’t know if the actor actually exists, but it’s safer for humans to instinctively assume that it does, because it’s wise to be on the lookout for it, in case it poses a threat to humans. In this way, humans who assume that there is an actor in a natural phenomenon will speculate about why that actor caused the phenomenon. This leads to conclusions such as “an invisible actor called God is angry. As these ideas and experiences accumulated and changed, religions were formed. This explanation makes a lot of sense when you consider that primitive religions based their beliefs on natural phenomena.
There are other possibilities for how religion arose that aren’t in the book. Humans were at a disadvantage in nature compared to other animals: we didn’t have sharp teeth, strong legs, wings to fly, or fins to swim, so we had to act in groups. As individuals, we couldn’t take on cows or horses, but in groups, we could make them dinner. Living in herds like this, they realized that it was advantageous for the survival of the herd to have a strong leader, but they also realized that a leader could only lead a herd for so long, as a new, stronger individual would easily usurp their position.
So they came up with the idea of religion. By having a common belief, the herd became more united, and the leader became the head of the herd’s religion, or a god, giving him a tool to lead the herd even when his strength waned. Religion thus provided favorable conditions for the survival and reproduction of the herd and its leader. History is full of examples where religious leaders were held in high esteem, or where powerful rulers tried to instill religion or faith in a group. In this way, religion, a seemingly unfavorable condition for survival and reproduction, can be understood as an evolutionary phenomenon that was bound to happen to humans eventually.
Now, let’s look at a common criticism of evolutionary psychology. One of the common criticisms of evolutionary psychology is that it tries to explain certain phenomena by fitting them together. For example, in explaining why people prefer a seat with a view in a cafe, the book explains that humans evolved to prefer a seat where they could watch for prey and predators while living on the savannah grasslands and not be seen by predators. However, not everyone likes a seat with a view, and many people prefer to sit in corners where they can’t see outside. So how do we explain this? Evolutionary psychology explains that hiding from predators was advantageous for survival and reproduction. Because evolutionary psychology can explain these opposite behaviors with the logic that it was advantageous to survive and reproduce, some people criticize evolutionary psychology for trying to explain everything and actually explaining nothing.
However, this criticism fails to take into account the nature of modern society. Evolutionary psychology explains that individuals with psychological mechanisms or behaviors that favor survival and reproduction are more likely to survive and spread their genes, but in modern human society, certain psychological mechanisms or behaviors don’t have much of an impact on survival or reproduction. Whether you prefer a seat with a view or a corner seat at a cafe doesn’t affect your lifespan or the number of offspring you have. In the past, an individual who preferred a seat with a view would have been better able to find food, avoid predators, and live long enough to leave many offspring, but in the modern world, this choice has little effect on survival and reproduction. In other words, in the modern world, evolutionary explanations can explain contradictory behaviors simultaneously because some behaviors have no direct effect on survival.
Furthermore, evolutionary psychology does not explain every behavior as beneficial to survival. For example, suppose there are some people who speak language and some who do not. Evolutionary psychology doesn’t explain that people who can’t speak have an advantage, which can be a survival advantage depending on the environment. Even if modern society has become a protective environment for humans, people who can’t communicate are unlikely to live long because they have trouble getting married or surviving crises.
Evolutionary psychology seeks to provide evolutionary explanations for psychological states and behaviors that humans have come to take for granted. This explanation sounds plausible – on the surface, it seems to explain all behavior – but it doesn’t explain why certain behaviors don’t thrive in the protective environments of modern society. Evolutionary psychology allows us to understand that certain behaviors were advantageous for survival and reproduction in certain environments, to speculate about what environments humans lived in in the past, and to see how society is changing through changes in human behavior.
