The best Evolutionary Psychology books: Reddit reviews

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Understanding what leads to political polarization is a first step in building bridges. The moral psychology research exploring the moral differences between political and religious ideologies is explored in the book <em>The Righteous Mind</em> by Jonathan Haidt, and it is often used by non-partisan citizen groups (such as Citizens' Climate Lobby) as a model for building multipartisan coalitions.

eta: links, author of book

The book cited as evidence is by that well-known titan in the field of psychology, Anonymous Conservative:

https://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Psychology-Behind-Politics-Conservatism/dp/0982947933

It's published by Federalist Publications of MacClenny, FL. That publishing house does not appear to have published any other works.

Hilariously, this anonymously self-published 'science' book has been cited by blogger John Press in a screed about how the left hates science.

This is not about thinking. There have been studies showing that education can make you better at defending incorrect information.

We spread and defend incorrect information because it reinforces a pre-existing bias, often subconscious. Information that is shared virally tends to align with one of humanity's trigger points:

• Tribalism (racism, they tuk me jobs)
• Authority (support for police, borders, force)
• Purity ("dirty" immigrants, "bleeding from her whatever")
• Sexual dominance ("I just didn't like Hillary", "Pelosi is a bitch")
• Fairness ("Republicans are hypocrites", welfare queen myths)
• Loyalty (ok for my guy to break the law)

When we focus on intelligence, we are demonstrating the Democratic bias toward rules. Education = competence = success. The Republican brain wants to reward personal exceptionalism. "I succeeded, not because of how hard I worked, but because of who I am."

If we don't understand these triggers, we will continue to be manipulated by them.

Edit: thanks very much to my anonymous gilder, but the ideas are cribbed from Jonathan Haidt's work. Highly recommend you check out either his book or his TED talk.

https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777/ref=asc_df_0307455777/

You might be interested in The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt which has to do with the moral psychology of the left and right.

The main gist of the book is that people have several different hard wired foundations for morality... things that we are predisposed by human psychology to see as good vs. evil. He tentatively identified five of them as: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, and Sanctity/Degradation (and he later added another: Liberty/Oppression). He ran a variety of studies to get people to rank how important each of these foundations were to them and discovered that people on the left prioritized Care/Harm over all others (Fairness/Cheating was also important to leftists but less so... the other three were not important at all). The right surprisingly was almost as compassionate ranking Care/Harm only slightly lower than the left did but they ranked all others much higher to the point where all five (and later six) moral foundations are ranked roughly equally in the right wing world view. In instances where left and right disagree there is almost always one or more of the other moral foundations which the right is balancing against compassion and which the left is disregarding as unimportant.

The book is of course much more involved that that discussing where and how he came up with his thesis, the experiments he did and his speculation about the social utility of each of the moral foundations and why they appear to be hard-wired in our heads and changes he made to his theory along the way. It's definitely worth reading.

Hey, no problem: Here's a couple I really enjoyed that helped me learn how to really articulate what I think and understand what others were saying about politics in those sorts of discussions:

1. The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. This contrasts how liberals and conservatives think about politics in a way that I think makes sense of what can often be really frustrating arguments.
2. Justice by Michael Sandel. This walks you through different ways you can reason about politics so that you can develop sharper and more consistent opinions.

It's incredibly rare for people to be reasonable nowadays, especially on the internet.

Being reasonable and measured makes it very difficult to feel/signal virtuous and self-righteous and better than anyone else - and people do seek that sort of reward, especially in increasingly emotional societies. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Prof. Jonathan Haidt addresses this and why that addictive feeling of self-righteousness often drives people to zealotry and extreme positions - they want to be seen as "pure" and "uncompromising". It used to be typical adolescent/teenager behaviour but it's becoming increasingly generalized in adults.

Religion probably served a really important evolutionary function, as well, by ensuring social cohesion around a shared set of beliefs and identities, allowing for tight group bonding which gave some groups a selective advantage. Of course, in today's world this can actually become harmful- particularly when the shared beliefs require a suspension of the sort of objective and reasoned thinking necessary to function in this modern society, or when they inform or motivate antisocial economic or political activities- but I'm not sure it's fair to say that humanity would be better off without it. Maybe on net today, but it's also possible that we may have relied on it in our evolutionary past.

Source, a wonderful book which can really aid in understanding those with whom our worldviews disagree.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307455777/

> In a study I did with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, we tested how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. We asked more than two thousand American visitors to fill out the Moral Foundations Qyestionnaire. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as they think a “typical liberal” would respond. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as a “typical conservative” would respond. This design allowed us to examine the stereotypes that each side held about the other. More important, it allowed us to assess how accurate they were by comparing people’s expectations about “typical” partisans to the actual responses from partisans on the left and the right)’ Who was best able to pretend to be the other?

> The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal.” The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. When faced with questions such as “One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal” or ”Justice is the most important requirement for a society,” liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree. If you have a moral matrix built primarily on intuitions about care and fairness (as equality), and you listen to the Reagan [i.e., conservative] narrative, what else could you think? Reagan seems completely unconcerned about the welfare of drug addicts, poor people, and gay people. He’s more interested in fighting wars and telling people how to run their sex lives.

Nope!
Far far less often.
Immediacy, more comprehensive reporting, and the complete lack of any kind of geographic filtration just make it seem like things are getting worse, when it is in fact the exact opposite. There's plenty of good statistical analysis to back it up, but the easier solution is to just pick up a copy of 'Better angels of our nature' by Stephen Pinker. It does a good job of breaking down the trends on different comparative perspectives, analyzing different interpretations of the data, and highlighting the most compelling conclusions we can draw from it: https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0143122010

When I was growing up, we didn't really hear much about most murders or other violent crimes any further away than the next town over...

Se está interessado em se aprofundar no assunto de por que violência aumenta ou diminui. Sugiro ler esse livro do Steven Pinker que é referência mundial no assunto.

O livro foca mais no cenário global como um todo. Aonde a violência está diminuindo na média. Mas reconhece que em alguns focos na América latina violência está indo em direção contrária.

O livro é extremamente extenso, a explicação não é simples, são diversos fatores diferentes. Mas uma das teclas que ele bate bastante e nos parece bem familiar no Brasil, é um Estado ineficiente na área de segurança. Apesar de alguns políticos populistas estarem apelando pra sugestão de que deveria ser responsabilidade de cada indivíduo se defender sozinho. O que o livro mostra é que historicamente a evidência é bem forte de que quem faz segurança é a polícia. Os estados brasileiros aonde a polícia está mal paga, com greves, paralisações, é justamente aonde estão os piores focos de violência.

> If we all just fuck off to do our own thing and leave idiotic and/or dangerous claims undisputed, shit's going to hit the fan even sooner and harder.

I have a book recommendation for you:

THE RIGHTEOUS MIND by Jonathan Haidt

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777/

As someone left of center and an environmentalist.... Free markets and enlightenment values have lifted humanity out of squalor and superstition into modern day lives of plenty and comfort. Check out Steven Pinker's works if you don't believe me.

As long as we bring both to Mars with us, we'll be fine.

I'm sorry? Wars in the past were way more horrific and casualties were significantly higher than they are now, we are living in one of the most peaceful eras in history.

https://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/0143122010

Here is a good book that discusses this exact subject.

Not sure why this is getting downvoted. Cephalopods have the most developed nervous systems and brains of any invertebrate. They really do deserve special legal protection, especially w.r.t. experiments in scientific studies.

A particularly interesting book on the topic, if you care to read it is Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness. Despite the title, the book covers cephalopods in general.

I'm not sure about those "poor results"?

Violence is lower than ever. Unless you count exceptions like Baltimore, which we are not allowed to talk about.

I think abortion should be legal and widely available. But it's at an all time low. Birth control is getting better.

It's not a study so much as a thesis that analyzes many different studies, but I would highly recommend Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature as a jumping off point.

Would like to know about your paper. I am a neuro optometrist who treats patients with this condition and also lectures to other doctors about it. While it has a number of names, we now like to call it unilateral spatial inattention (USI) as it's not purposeful neglect. It can also present in systems other than visual processing. Check out Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by V. S. Ramachandran. He's been researching this for at least 30 years.

I feel like reciting the usual tropes about viewing 'others' as a threat rather than extended family, hierarchy & authority vs individual expression, resistance to change & so on is unhelpful at this point. Are you looking for something in a particular direction? Jonathan Haidt wrote the book on this, although I tend to get dragged if I bring him up around liberals.

Conservative lurker here: Assume conservatives are reasonable people with rational reasons for believing the things they believe. Listen to those reasons and debate them from there. Don't assume your ideas are self-evidently true and that only people who are stupid or have bad motives can disagree.

Also realize that a lot of political debate is driven by disagreements that go deeper than policy to moral values or beliefs about human nature. Disagreements over such fundamental premises bubble up into disagreements about particular policies but can't be resolved at that level because the real disagreement is about something deeper.

Other Minds, it’s about the consciousness of octopuses and consciousness in general. It’s a very well written and fascinating book.

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/15/other-minds-peter-godfrey-smith-review-octopus-philip-hoare

https://www.amazon.com/Other-Minds-Octopus-Origins-Consciousness/dp/0374227764

You should really check this book out. It should answer (or attempt to answer) these questions for you.

Jonathan Haidt is brilliant. Look up some of his stuff on YouTube as well, if you're so inclined.

I studied Neuropsychology in college and there is a great book I'd recommend about this very topic. It's one of those books that is a classic in the field; some would say its the unofficial sequel to The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks (I've never read it but heard great things). The book I recommend is Phantoms of the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran. It's a little dated as far as psychological trends go, but since Neuroscience changes more slowly, a lot of the topics are still relevant.

As for your exact question, the final chapter (Chapter 12: 'Do Martians See Red?') should satisfy your question/appetite. It's one of those that still impacts me today and how I view and question my world around me.

Leia o livro &quot;The Better Angels of Our Nature&quot; do Steven Pinker

Foi indicado pelo Bill Gates em um Gates Notes. O impressionante é o cara mostrar, com dados científicos e históricos que no momento atual, mesmo com toda a merda que vemos diariamente e mundialmente, estamos em um dos momentos mais pacíficos possíveis.

There are some interesting theories about this. Many argue that humans are predisposed to believe in supernatural things. There is also some evidence that a group that believes a common set of supernatural things may be more highly cohesive and therefore more likely to thrive and survive. (I just finished The Righteous Mind, which is absolutely fabulous, and it talks about this.)

I'm about two chapters into The Righteous Mind https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777 and I think your psychiatrist is right on the money. You cannot reason with Qs. At least not right out the gate. They don't work like that. Nobody works like that but especially Qs. We are attached to a myth of ourselves as rational beings and its absolute nonsense. We feel then rationalize after the fact. Changing our minds is actually a process of reconditioning how we respond to different things in our social, informational, and material environment.

Something about Q or the wider world they are living in has triggered a profound fight or flight instinct in the Qs and you cannot reason them out of it until you calm them down, somehow. Which is likely to be an extended process of social change involving long, slow, subtle changes to the world around them to where they feel they have the security to start questioning and overturning truths that were previously held very deeply. Something has to change in their perception of the world to cause them to experience mistrust of Q coded information. In the long run there may be hope that a feeling of isolation and alienation from friends and family will make the experience of engaging with Q stuff too disheartening but there's always the risk that QAnon simply fills the void left by the alienated social network with a social network of loyal Qs.

Adding for a further resource and reference, an excellent Ted Talk by Steven Pinker on the surprising decline of violence

Also, I cannot recommend highly enough his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature - Why Violence Has Declined If you want a book that is chock full of stats that can just straight up nuke the entirety of WT’s narrative about the state of the world, this is THE book for that.

I highly recommend you read chapter 17 (on violence) of The Blank Slate even if you read nothing else in the book. Hobbes, human disposition for violence, and the state, are what the entire chapter is about.

Sam's quote almost echos Pinker. Pinker says:

> A governing body that has been granted a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence can neutralize each of Hobbes’s reasons for quarrel...Adjudication by an armed authority appears to be the most effective general violence-reduction technique ever invented.

this book changed the way I think about politics and people. You’re sweet to ask on behalf of your niece! Good luck

Check out Blank Slate book, it has a ton of material on personality traits are inherited (dna dependent) - probably most of them.

https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344

Having said that - some of the brain development is environment-based, and a lot of brain function has to do with macro structures of the brain - those are based on dna, but changing dna once the brain is fully grown wouldn’t change the structure.

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My personal bet: intelligence-related stuff wouldn’t change much. Everything else like emotionality, empathy, reasoning - a lot. A simple proof: try feeding a homophobe with MDMA :)

Well how do you define "best"?

For me, it means somebody focused on:

1. Climate change
2. Climate change again
3. A Federally-funded healthcare option
4. More climate change
5. Racial, LGBTQ+, and reproductive justice
6. Clean infrastructure including significant investments in rail
7. Investments in science R+D
8. A bit more on climate change for good measure
9. Positive, functional international relationships
10. Education

However, this list will look very different for other folks. So the "best" candidate for me may not be in the top 3 for you. That's fine, it's how democracy works.

The end result of hundreds of millions of Americans narrowing down the pool of candidates to one person for each party ultimately means that we end up with somebody who only sorta pleases each of us- the candidate who's most squarely in the middle of all our interests. There's simply no way to make all of us happy at the same time.

Add in the fact that very few Americans actually take the time to learn even the basics about economics, history, geopolitics, social issues, basic sciences, etc, let alone advanced perspectives required to compare and contrast differing and nuanced arguments, and it's easy to see why we end up with pretty "meh" candidates on the left.

For those on the right, moral values tend to dominate. So complex, nuanced policy debates matter far less. Conservatives tend to value social cohesion more than liberals, so rallying behind a single candidate, regardless of their ideological or policy agenda, is simply easier. Liberals always have the harder battle to fight in this regard.