How does evolutionary psychology explain why we choose chocolate when we’re hungry and why religion arose?

How can evolutionary psychology explain why we choose chocolate when we’re hungry and why religion arose? Evolutionary psychology analyzes these behaviors in terms of survival and reproduction.

 

You came home after starving for two days and opened the refrigerator. Inside are 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 of this post suggests, is the intersection of evolutionary theory and psychology, explaining psychological issues through the lens of evolutionary theory, which is the idea that genes with traits that favor survival and reproduction continue to spread within populations through natural selection. In other words, the main idea of the book is that human psychology and the behaviors we observe today have been selected for through natural selection over time. I strongly agree with the book’s argument. Let’s take a look at evolutionary psychology through some examples from the book.
First of all, let’s take the example I mentioned above and explain it again by borrowing the author’s explanation: the reason why a hungry person reaches for chocolate before garlic is because most people prefer sweeter flavors when they are hungry. So why do we prefer sweeter flavors when we are hungry? The authors point out that most foods with a sweet flavor are high in calories. The authors go on to say that humans have evolved a preference for sweetness in order to remember which foods are high in calories and, by extension, to eat those high-calorie foods when we need calories. This is because humans who prefer sweet foods, which are high in calories, and humans who prefer spicy or bitter flavors, which have nothing to do with calories, would have lived longer and reproduced more.
There are many other evolutionary explanations for these examples in the book, and the one we’re going to look at now is religion. The explanations for many of the examples mentioned in the book seem to make sense: it makes sense that in order for humans to survive and reproduce as an entity, our current psychology and behaviors would be naturally selected for. However, there is one phenomenon that seems to have nothing to do with survival or reproduction: religion. In some ways, it seems that religion is not unrelated to survival or reproduction, and in some ways, it seems like religion would be detrimental to our survival and reproduction. Humans spend a lot of time and energy on religion. If religion is so detrimental to human survival and reproduction from an evolutionary psychology perspective, why has it become such an integral part of human society?
The book offers two possible explanations, one of which I’ll discuss first. Before we get to that explanation, let’s think about something called actor detection and folk psychology. Actor detection is the idea that when a phenomenon appears, humans instinctively look for the actor who caused it. This is necessary for humans because we need to know which actor caused the phenomenon so that we can determine whether it is a threat to our survival or not. Folk psychology refers to the ability to infer the minds of others through their behavior that we cannot directly feel. This private psychology is also essential for human survival. This is because we need to look at other people’s behavior to determine whether they are thinking thoughts that are helpful or harmful to our survival.
The book explains that this actor detection and folk psychology created a byproduct called religion. Humans look at natural phenomena, such as torrential rain or lightning strikes, and try to detect the actor that caused the phenomenon. We don’t know if there is an actor or not, but it would be safer for humans to think there is, because the actor that may or may not be there could be a threat to humans. Once humans believe that there is an actor in these natural phenomena, they then speculate about why the actor might have done this. Eventually, this actor detection, combined with folk psychology, leads humans to conclusions like, “An invisible actor called God is angry.” As these ideas and experiences accumulated and changed, religions were formed. Given that primitive religions based their beliefs on natural phenomena, this explanation seems reasonable enough.
Let’s consider one more possible explanation for how religion arose that’s not in the book: humans had very little compared to other animals: no sharp teeth or strong legs, no wings to fly, no tail or fins to swim. To overcome these innate disadvantages, humans acted in groups. One-on-one, they couldn’t take on a cow or a horse, but in groups, they could make that cow or horse their dinner. As they lived in groups, the strongest among them came to lead the herd and found that it was more beneficial to the survival of the herd as a whole. But as the leader tried to lead the herd, he realized that he couldn’t lead the herd for very long based on strength alone. If a younger, stronger human came along, he would soon be unseated.
So he came up with religion. By having a common set of beliefs or ideas, the herd became more united and stronger. Furthermore, the leader became the head of the herd’s religion, or a god, and had the tools to lead the herd even when his or her strength waned. This gave the herd, and the leader himself, many advantages for survival and reproduction. There are many examples in history of religious leaders being held in high esteem, or of powerful rulers trying to instill religion or faith in their groups. Thus, religion, which at first glance seems like a waste of time and resources that could be used for survival and reproduction, eventually became an evolutionary necessity for humans.
Next, let’s consider some common criticisms of evolutionary psychology. A common argument against evolutionary psychology is that it offers explanations that are too one-size-fits-all. For example, when it comes to people preferring a seat with a view in a cafe, the book says that humans evolved to prefer a seat with a view because they spent a lot of time on the savannah grasslands in the early days, where they could keep an eye on their prey and where the predators were, without being seen by them. Now, obviously, preferring a vantage point is a preference for certain people, but not for everyone – there are plenty of people who prefer to sit in a corner where they can’t see out – but this too can be explained by evolutionary psychology. It’s better for survival and reproduction to hide from predators than to be seen. In this way, evolutionary psychology provides a single logical explanation for seemingly contradictory issues: it’s good for survival and reproduction. Because of this, a critic of evolutionary psychology might say that a theory that explains everything is a theory that explains nothing.
However, there is something that is not taken into account when making this criticism, and that is the state of modern human society. What evolutionary psychology says is that individuals who engage in psychological mechanisms or behaviors that favor survival and reproduction are more likely to survive and reproduce more of those genes, but in modern human society, a person’s survival and reproduction is not significantly affected by any psychological mechanism or behavior. In a cafe, whether a person likes to sit in an open seat with a view or in a corner where they can’t see anything has little effect on how long they live or how many children they have. In a savannah grassland, the individual who prefers the seat with the view would be better at finding food and avoiding predators, and would therefore live longer and have more offspring than the individual who prefers the corner, out-of-the-way seat and avoids predators but is not as good at finding food, but this is not the case in modern human society, which protects humans from having no offspring or dying prematurely because of certain behaviors. So there is nothing wrong with having evolutionary explanations for conflicting behaviors.
It’s also important to note that evolutionary psychology doesn’t explain all behaviors as beneficial to survival. For example, imagine that some people are able to use language and others are not. Evolutionary psychology doesn’t say that not being able to speak a language is an advantage, and that it can be a survival advantage depending on the environment. Even in the most protective of modern societies, someone who obviously doesn’t speak a language is likely to be left behind. It will be much harder for them to get married than it would be for someone else. It will be harder for them to get through a crisis than it would be for someone else because they can’t communicate, so they’re not likely to live very long.
Evolutionary psychology seeks to provide evolutionary explanations for psychological states and behaviors that humans have come to take for granted. Evolutionary psychology’s explanations sound very plausible. At first glance, they may seem to fit the behavior we observe today. But if you think about the environment we live in, human society, it makes sense. For every opposing behavior, there is an environment that favors it. The society we currently live in doesn’t cull humans for any particular behavior, unless it’s very extreme, like not being able to speak, so there’s no reason for any of the opposing behaviors to be particularly favored.
Just because it can’t explain everything doesn’t mean that evolutionary psychology isn’t worth studying. We can use evolutionary psychology to predict which behaviors will be advantageous for survival and reproduction in which environments. It allows us to think about what environments humans lived in in the past. Studying changes in human behavior also allows us to think about how societies are changing.