Today there is plenty of information on “unhealthy” relationships and how to build secure and stable attachments to people. However, despite it being so good, a large portion of the human population do not form “healthy” relationships. How does this fit into an evolutionary perspective?
A paper came out by Ein-Dor et al. trying to address a proposed paradox, that individuals who form secure attachments have an evolutionary advantage but almost half of the human species can be classified as insecure in attachments. This group proposed that while insecure individuals have a lower fitness, mixed groups of individuals are better adapted for survival than groups of only secure individuals. Their hypothesis depends on the assumption that these traits evolved in closely related groups, and that forming insecure attachments is always detrimental to the individual. Frankenhuis published a response arguing against this hypothesis, or at least in favor of further testing. According to him, the tendency to form insecure attachments could have developed as an individually advantageous trait in environments where help is less often offered. He argues that there are several holes in Ein-Dor et al.’s hypothesis. For one, they tested homogeneously secure groups and heterogeneous groups, not homogeneously insecure groups. They also did not consider the effect of the kinds of environments where insecure attachment patterns are more prevalent or provide evidence that social groups were comprised of individuals closely related enough to support a group benefit hypothesis. In more simple terms the debate is whether “unhealthy” relationships can be traced back to a time and place in human history where people who tried to create “healthy” relationships were hurt and trust was a disadvantage.
The original paper:
http://pps.sagepub.com/content/5/2/123.short
Commentary by Frankenhuis:
http://www.frontiersin.org/Evolutionary_Psychology/10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00172/full
- Nicole Scott
Have we really ever trusted others? I just think back to the game theory example we looked at in class with the prisoners. Our first instinct is to distrust people, which is why the two prisoners always choose the rat each other out. Perhaps distrust is instinctual and trust is something that's evolving. Perhaps healthy relationships are evolving because not many individuals have had them. For most of recorded human history, relationships have been predetermined, at least marital ones, and often they are unhealthy (perhaps not on the surface because of societal expectations. Now that the idea of marrying someone you want is starting to spread, healthy relationships are starting to emerge. I guess I'm saying is let time promote the growth of healthy relationships.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, the development of society up to this point would have been completely stunted without a tendency to unite and fight alongside fellow members of society. I think kin selection definitely shows that healthy relationships have existed in the past.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, the development of society up to this point would have been completely stunted without a tendency to unite and fight alongside fellow members of society. I think kin selection definitely shows that healthy relationships have existed in the past.
ReplyDelete