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#515 - David & Douglas Kenrick - Evolved Psychology Vs The Modern World - Modern Wisdom | Wave AI Podcast Notes

#515 - David & Douglas Kenrick - Evolved Psychology Vs The Modern World

Sat Aug 20 2022

David Lundberg Kenrick is the Psychology Program Manager at Arizona State University and Douglas Kenrick is a Professor of psychology at Arizona State University. Our brains were designed to exist in a very different environment to the one they find...

Summary

Podcast Summary: Modern Wisdom #515

Evolved Psychology Vs The Modern World

Host: Chris Williamson
Guests: Dr. Douglas Kenrick & Dr. David Kenrick
Date: August 20, 2022

Episode Overview

This episode explores how evolved psychological mechanisms, forged in our ancestral environments, often conflict with and adapt to the modern world. Chris Williamson interviews Douglas and David Kenrick, co-authors of “Solving Modern Problems with a Stone Age Brain,” to discuss evolutionary mismatches, the nature of human motives, social status, relationships, well-being, and how understanding our instincts can lead to more fulfilling modern lives.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Human Motives: Beyond Maslow’s Hierarchy

[03:02—09:18]

The Kenricks criticize the common pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, noting Maslow himself never drew the famous pyramid.
They propose a model more aligned with evolutionary psychology, emphasizing that core motives—like affiliation, social status, mating, and kin care—are inherently social and interconnected.
- “At the end, the top of our pyramid is not self-actualization. It’s sort of what unfolds developmentally: first, after you’ve gotten some respect, you find a mate. After you find that mate, you need to keep the mate. And then if you have offspring, you need to care for your family—and even if you don’t have offspring, we’re probably motivated to care for our cousins and the other people in our group.” – A (Douglas) [05:15]
Three kinds of well-being are recognized:
- Hedonic (feeling good)
- Eudaimonic (meaning in life)
- Self-actualization (fulfilling potential)
Satisfaction and meaning are often found in social contexts, especially in family and community care.

2. Affiliation, Status & Work

[00:40—02:06]

People often derive more satisfaction from being productive and working with others than from leisure alone.
- “I like having a bit of fun, but there’s only so much of it I can take. I feel better when I’m being productive.” – A (Douglas) [00:40]
- “I like about work is the people I work with and getting to see them and that feeling of sort of purpose. I think we are sort of designed to want to contribute to those around us.” – C (David) [01:24]
Both status and affiliation are strong motivators, rooted in our social nature.

3. Evolutionary Mismatches in the Modern World

[12:23—20:23, 22:06—24:00, 33:57—38:36]

Modern technology hyper-stimulates ancient instincts: threats (news), status (social comparisons), mates (attractiveness), and social contacts (messages).
Competition for status is now global, not just with neighbors: “Now we’re competing with what, 7 billion people as opposed to 10.” – C (David) [13:49]
The abundance of food and safety means problems like existential crises and obesity emerge: “More people die from obesity than starvation now, according to the U.N.” – B (Chris) [22:06]
Cultural changes outpace biological evolution, thus producing continued mismatch between instinct and environment.

4. Threat Perception & Negativity Bias

[32:32—38:36]

Despite living in the safest era, humans remain hyper-vigilant to threats due to evolutionary benefits.
- “Part of it is...it’s advantageous to feel unsafe. There’s an advantage to just looking for threats and to being hyper aware of threats.” – C (David) [32:42]
Media amplifies this bias, leading to a persistent sense of danger: “Do I know anybody who was murdered? I do not know a single person.” – A (Douglas) [34:33]

5. Friendship, Affiliation, and Social Connection

[42:30—46:20]

Friendships formed through shared effort or goals are deeper, particularly for men.
- “It’s much easier to maintain friendships when you have common goals to accomplish.” – A (Douglas) [44:34]
- Virtual connections don’t provide the same benefits as real-life interactions.
- Female friendships often involve information exchange supporting mating and kin care.

6. Dominance, Prestige, and Social Status

[47:04—51:05]

Two routes to status: dominance (power, aggression) and prestige (skill, teaching).
- “Prestige, which is the idea that they can teach you skills and help guide you, is pretty key.” – C (David) [47:16]
- Dominance matters for hierarchy and conflict; prestige is preferred in most modern contexts.

7. Mating, Attraction, and Sex Differences

[56:27—63:19]

Women prefer confident, dominant (not domineering) men with status potential over mere looks.
- “For women, it mattered. They would actually prefer to date the dorky looking guy in the Wall street clothes to the handsome guy who was working at Burger King. For men, they prefer the good looking woman who worked for Burger King to the less attractive woman who was dressed to the nines.” – A (Douglas) [00:00, repeated at 58:48]
Women value “cool” jobs for men as status signals, not just income.
Artistic achievement can be a marker of genetic quality; the “starving artist” may signal future potential, not just resources.

Notable Quotes & Moments

“You're raising an interesting question...those different kinds of well being, what gives me those, might vary as a function of, you know, who I am and maybe what my major goal in life is right now.” – A (Douglas) [11:12]
“Our ancestors were not surrounded by strangers unless they were about to die.” – A (Douglas) [17:33]
“If you have a murderous sibling who lives nearby, you reap the benefits...there may be some advantages to having an aggressive person.” – C (David) [77:17]
“Selfishness itself is not a good thing in a whole human being...our genes may instruct us to be cooperative in order to promote their survival.” – A (Douglas) [81:41]
“Being nice to other people is actually in some level being nice to yourself.” – Mark Schaller, as cited by Douglas [82:55]

Timestamps for Key Segments

00:00–03:02: Status and mate selection, work vs leisure, social motives
03:02–09:18: Revising Maslow, hierarchy of motives, new pyramid
12:23–14:30: Modern comforts, existential problems, psychological mismatch
17:33–20:23: Ancestral environments vs. modern context; kin networks
22:06–24:00: Obesity, abundance, mismatch
32:32–38:36: Why we fear when safer than ever; negativity bias, media incentives
42:30–46:20: Evolved friendship patterns, male and female differences
47:04–51:05: Dominance, prestige, and leadership preferences
56:27–63:19: Evolution of mating preferences, occupation and status, “starving artist”
65:51–68:20: Menopause, kin support, evolutionary explanations
71:41–77:50: Kin vs. society dilemmas (Whitey Bulger, Unabomber)
80:01–84:14: Evolutionary justification for kindness and prosocial behavior

Evolutionary Justification for Kindness

[80:01–84:14]

“Being nice to other people is actually in some level being nice to yourself.” (Mark Schaller, via Douglas)
Cooperative behavior helps individuals meet their needs in social groups, which is ultimately adaptive.
The Kenricks advocate being “helpful,” rather than simply “nice”—goal-directed benevolence is most adaptive.

Conclusion

The Kenricks weave together research, evolutionary theory, and practical examples to illuminate ways in which our Stone Age brains struggle in the modern world. They encourage listeners to recognize mismatches, seek affiliation through purposeful activity and relationships, pursue prestige over dominance, and anchor well-being in communal, not merely individual, satisfaction. Kindness and helpfulness, they argue, are adaptive—not just morally good, but fundamentally effective for thriving as humans.

Further Reading:
Find their book, Solving Modern Problems with a Stone Age Brain, for a deeper dive into these themes.

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Transcript

A (0:00)

When people were asked, would you want to date this person? For women, it mattered. They would actually prefer to date the dorky looking guy in the Wall street clothes to the handsome guy who was working at Burger King. For men, they prefer the good looking woman who worked for Burger King to the less attractive woman who was dressed to the nines.

B (0:20)

Doug, you just mentioned that you'd taken two months away from working and this is one of your first days back. Talk to me about what it feels like to take such a long break when you're used to doing so much work. Do you ever get the compulsion to go and do stuff? Do you get antsy about the fact that you're not working?

A (0:40)

Yes, I like having a bit of fun, but there's only so much of it I can take. I actually feel better. I feel better when I'm being productive in some way. Although my work is, you know, writing books and being a college professor and talking to students, it's a pretty cushy job and, you know, it's in some ways more pleasant than actually being on vacation. Although being on vacation was fun.

B (1:14)

What do you think that says adaptively about humans? The fact that you can take more pleasure from doing work than from leisure?

A (1:22)

What do you think, Dave?

C (1:24)

Well, I mean, I think a lot of it is the affiliation factor, right. I know for me, one of the things I like about work is the people I work with and getting to see them and that feeling of sort of purpose, right, that it's like, I think we are sort of designed to want to contribute to those around us. And hopefully if someone is in a job that they like, then they'll feel like, oh, I'm working with a group of people to improve the world for people. So I think that's.

A (2:06)

I like Dave's answer because I wouldn't have pointed to affiliation right away. I would have thought of status in terms of our hierarchy of motives. But I like what David's saying because it strikes me that in the ancestral environment, if you took two months off, the people in your group might have started to get a little annoyed at you. You know, what, are you going to start to catch some fish? And so I like the fact that Dave connects it to people, because it does. I especially like, I do like that as well. In fact, the first thing I did after having this, an interview this morning is I went to a meeting and our graduate students were there and my co author on a number of papers, Steve Newberg, was there and it did feel good. Felt good to be doing something with the group. And so I guess we're sort of wired up to connect those two things

A (3:24)

Yeah, well, no, it was a hierarchy. He did actually say that there were a set of goals. He was arguing against behaviorists. The behaviorist thought that everything we do can boil down to satisfying thirst and hunger. Even our social motives, the behaviorists argued, were connected to secondary reinforcement. We come to like people because our mother nursed us. And Maslow was a student of Harry Harlow, who did those classic old studies with the baby monkeys that were separated from their moms and so forth. And Harlow was arguing against the behaviorist that no, we have. We at least primates have other social motives. And Maslow just made a more complicated model and argued that developmentally, first we have to just get fed and get warm, but then we get stranger anxiety, we have to protect ourselves, and then we want to make friends, and then we want to steam, which is what we would call status. So we agree with him up to that point. Where we disagree with Maslow was that he thought, then we move to non social things. We move above that. We want to go off and play the guitar by ourselves or writes poetry just for our own intrinsic satisfaction. And from an evolutionary perspective, it seems extremely unlikely that we would be designed that we got here because our ancestors, once they had managed to solve those lower motives, went off and, you know, beat on the beat on a log just for their own entertainment. If they beat on a log, it was probably to entertain the other members of their groups so that they could achieve, you know, acceptance and respect and find mates. And the other thing that Maslow skipped out on completely was the importance of mating. He was an evolutionary psychologist before the modern day, and he didn't think about the fact that in some sense, organisms are all designed to reproduce. And so at the end, the top of our pyramid is not self actualization. It's sort of what unfolds developmentally. First, after you've gotten some respect, you find a mate. After you find that mate, you need to keep the mate. And then if you have offspring, you need to care for your family. And even if you don't have offspring, we're probably motivated to care for our cousins and the other people in our group. And so we're not arguing in some Sense that it's ideal, that we all, in the same sense, it's self actualization. Painting, a beautiful painting is somehow intrinsically satisfying. What we're arguing is that that's the natural course of things is to move on to reproduction. Maslow had, the only time he talked about sex was as a lower physiological need. And so on that model, you could just masturbate and then be done with it, and then you can move on to playing the guit. But we, we disagree with that part of it.

A (48:02)

Yeah, let me just expand on what you just said, Dave. Let's define those terms. A prestige leader is someone who, as Dave just said, there was a paper by Joe Henrick and Francisco Gill White that made this distinction and said that as far as they could tell, at least among chimpanzees and most other mammals, the top of the status hierarchy is occupied by an aggressive, competitive individual who you won't mess with. You don't want to go near them because they'll bite your, you know, they'll bite your head off, you know, and we do have that. We have that kind of, you know, the tough schoolyard bully type of thing in human beings as well. And that individual, if they want to take something from you, you know, they're in a better position to do it if they're the big tough bully. And a lot of times, for a long time, people would read evolutionary literature like chimpanzee politics. There was the head of the Newt Gingrich used to give it to incoming Republican representatives and say, this is the way it is, man. It's all about blood, you know, and, you know, take what you can. Don't give, though. Don't give in. Bond together to kick ass on anybody who gets in your way. And that's one view of things. It may be why the American Congress doesn't do so well in getting anything done. But another thing that's unique to humans is that we share information with one another. And so a prestigious leader is someone who is given status because we want them to be in the decision making. We want them to be driving the car because they've got the skills and you get prestige if you deliver goods and if you can train other people. And so that's just to kind of clarify that distinction. And so, as Dave was saying, the research evidence suggests that we do like the bullies as leaders. If we're about to go to war and that's Mark von Vucht, did a lot of that research. He's at the V Free University in Amsterdam. But we've done a lot of research here, and a number of people who, like Henrik's colleagues and John Maynard, have done research suggesting that we really do like prestigious leaders. If I'm going to work for you, if you're going to be my boss, I don't want you to be the big bully. I want you to be somebody I can get close to, who can take me and show me the ropes and how to get things accomplished and can lead me in a. You know, lead me in a direction I'll trust.

A (56:33)

Yes, many, many years ago. It was one of the first studies that was published in our major journal, the Journal of Personality and Social Psych. From an evolutionary perspective. It took us 10 years to get it published because people didn't like the idea of comparing us to other animals. With Ed Sadala did some research where we actually just. We had been, you know, Ed had been reading Sociobiology and I'd been reading a book by Jane Lancaster called Primate Behavior and the Emergence of Human Culture. We thought, well, let's start to apply this to humans. And so we did some, what would now seem very simple studies where we showed people, potential partners, who were either dominant in the sense of they'd go into an office, they'd sit up, right? They'd lean in towards the person in the desk, or they'd sit meekly over in the corner. And we did a number of ways. We had, sometimes we had a psychologist described you as dominant. And what we found in all of those studies is that for women judging men, they judged the guy as sexier when he was dominant. Not when he was domineering, incidentally, not when he was pushy and aggressive and nasty kind of dominant, but when he was confident and, you know, that kind of dominant, you know, men didn't care one way or the other. They asked the question of, was she attractive? I don't know if you know, the study by John Marshall Townsend, I think his name is. He did a study where he brought people into the lab and showed them potential. I think maybe it was like a simulated dating study. And I'm not exactly sure the context, but you would look at a photograph of. If you're a man, you would look at a picture of a woman who either looked gorgeous or who looked average. And she was either wearing a Burger King server's outfit, okay. Or she was wearing a dress to the nines. Wall street fancy suit and Rolex. Watch the female guy or the guy, same thing. You'd see a guy and he either looked like a movie star or he looked like a dorky guy, but he'd be dressed for Wall street or for the Burger King server. And it turns out that when people were asked, would you want to date this person or have amorous relationships with this person, for women, it mattered. They would actually prefer to date the dorky looking guy in the Wall street clothes to the handsome guy who was working at Burger King for men, they didn't care what if she was good looking? They prefer the good looking woman who worked for Burger King to the less attractive woman who was dressed to the nines.