Specialised minds: extending adaptive explanations of personality to the evolution of psychopathology
Traditional evolutionary theory invoked natural and sexual selection to explain species- and sex-typical traits. However, some heritable inter-individual variability in behaviour and psychology – personality – is probably adaptive. Here we extend this insight to common psychopathological traits. Rev...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Cambridge University Press
2022-01-01
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| Series: | Evolutionary Human Sciences |
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| Online Access: | https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2513843X22000238/type/journal_article |
| _version_ | 1827995075711336448 |
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| author | Adam D. Hunt Adrian V. Jaeggi |
| author_facet | Adam D. Hunt Adrian V. Jaeggi |
| author_sort | Adam D. Hunt |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Traditional evolutionary theory invoked natural and sexual selection to explain species- and sex-typical traits. However, some heritable inter-individual variability in behaviour and psychology – personality – is probably adaptive. Here we extend this insight to common psychopathological traits. Reviewing key findings from three background areas of importance – theoretical models, non-human personality and evolved human social dynamics – we propose that a combination of social niche specialisation, negative frequency-dependency, balancing selection and adaptive developmental plasticity should explain adaptation for individual differences in psychology – ‘specialised minds’ – explaining some variance in personality and psychopathology trait dimensions, which share various characteristics. We suggest that anthropological research of behavioural differences should be extended past broad demographic factors (age and sex) to include individual specialisations. As a first step towards grounding psychopathology in ancestral social structure, we propose a minimum plausible prevalence, given likely ancestral group sizes, for negatively frequency-dependent phenotypes to be maintained as specialised tails of adaptive distributions – below the calculated prevalence, specialisation is highly unlikely. For instance, chronic highly debilitating forms of autism or schizophrenia are too rare for such explanations, whereas attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder and broad autism phenotypes are common enough to have existed in most hunter-gatherer bands, making adaptive explanations more plausible. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-10T04:50:59Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-e0ab254ceeb04d38bbf1897b1737ad1d |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2513-843X |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-10T04:50:59Z |
| publishDate | 2022-01-01 |
| publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Evolutionary Human Sciences |
| spelling | doaj.art-e0ab254ceeb04d38bbf1897b1737ad1d2023-03-09T12:32:20ZengCambridge University PressEvolutionary Human Sciences2513-843X2022-01-01410.1017/ehs.2022.23Specialised minds: extending adaptive explanations of personality to the evolution of psychopathologyAdam D. Hunt0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8923-5812Adrian V. Jaeggi1https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1695-0388Institute of Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zürich, SwitzerlandInstitute of Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zürich, SwitzerlandTraditional evolutionary theory invoked natural and sexual selection to explain species- and sex-typical traits. However, some heritable inter-individual variability in behaviour and psychology – personality – is probably adaptive. Here we extend this insight to common psychopathological traits. Reviewing key findings from three background areas of importance – theoretical models, non-human personality and evolved human social dynamics – we propose that a combination of social niche specialisation, negative frequency-dependency, balancing selection and adaptive developmental plasticity should explain adaptation for individual differences in psychology – ‘specialised minds’ – explaining some variance in personality and psychopathology trait dimensions, which share various characteristics. We suggest that anthropological research of behavioural differences should be extended past broad demographic factors (age and sex) to include individual specialisations. As a first step towards grounding psychopathology in ancestral social structure, we propose a minimum plausible prevalence, given likely ancestral group sizes, for negatively frequency-dependent phenotypes to be maintained as specialised tails of adaptive distributions – below the calculated prevalence, specialisation is highly unlikely. For instance, chronic highly debilitating forms of autism or schizophrenia are too rare for such explanations, whereas attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder and broad autism phenotypes are common enough to have existed in most hunter-gatherer bands, making adaptive explanations more plausible.https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2513843X22000238/type/journal_articleEvolutionary psychiatryneurodiversityevolutionary psychologyhunter-gathererspersonality |
| spellingShingle | Adam D. Hunt Adrian V. Jaeggi Specialised minds: extending adaptive explanations of personality to the evolution of psychopathology Evolutionary Human Sciences Evolutionary psychiatry neurodiversity evolutionary psychology hunter-gatherers personality |
| title | Specialised minds: extending adaptive explanations of personality to the evolution of psychopathology |
| title_full | Specialised minds: extending adaptive explanations of personality to the evolution of psychopathology |
| title_fullStr | Specialised minds: extending adaptive explanations of personality to the evolution of psychopathology |
| title_full_unstemmed | Specialised minds: extending adaptive explanations of personality to the evolution of psychopathology |
| title_short | Specialised minds: extending adaptive explanations of personality to the evolution of psychopathology |
| title_sort | specialised minds extending adaptive explanations of personality to the evolution of psychopathology |
| topic | Evolutionary psychiatry neurodiversity evolutionary psychology hunter-gatherers personality |
| url | https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2513843X22000238/type/journal_article |
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