Monkey See, Monkey Do
By Christopher Ryan
 
As this review is being written, there is legislation pending in seven states that would prohibit the teaching of evolutionary theory in public schools. If humans were indeed created in the image of God, as the anti-evolutionists insist, then God must look an awful lot like a monkey, because people surely do.  This is the obvious point the anti-evolutionists seem desperate to deny.
In the past few decades, psychologists and other social scientists have begun moving beyond questions of anatomy and applying Darwinian insights to their investigations of human behavior.  Evolutionary Psychology has spawned its own critics, vehemently insisting that although we may look like monkeys, we definitely don’t act like them!
But of course, we do.  To be more specific, we sometimes act like baboons, often  like chimpanzees or orangutans and, if we’re lucky, like bonobos – the most sexually liberated of the primates.  Occasionally, it is true, we have moments of near-enlightenment when we respond to a situation using our most complex mental and spiritual capacities.  But far more often, our responses are grounded in the millennia of programming that have gone into our brains and bodies.  If we feel threatened for example, we sweat, the heart races, pupils dilate, what little body hair we still have stands on end, and so on – even if we consciously know the threat exists only in our imagination.  Although we go to great lengths to convince ourselves otherwise, we are undeniably primates and have as much in common with the other great apes (both genetically and behaviorally) as dogs do with wolves.
Although genetics is certainly in its infancy, it appears that the study of the ways in which genes influence human behavior is moving toward a difficult adolescence.  Since its earliest days – when it was known as sociobiology – evolutionary psychology has been controversial. Why it took over a century for psychologists to begin explicitly applying Darwinian principles to the investigation of the origins and nature of human behavior is a complex, highly political question.  But whatever the cause of the delay, to many observers, a century was too brief a wait.  In one regrettable incident, E. O. Wilson (author of Sociobiology and considered by many to be one of the first to explore these matters) had a pitcher of ice-water dumped on his head at a conference.  One can only imagine that the protesters’ ire was fueled by some inner hunch that what Wilson was proposing was too obvious not to be true.  Wilson may have been “all wet”, as the protesters charged so graphically, but that didn’t change his rather obvious point that human behavior must be impacted by the same sorts of environmental factors influencing other animals.  This is really no more outlandish than the idea of evolution itself.
Critics of evolutionary psychology, like critics of evolution, tend to be offended by the imagined contention that they are being told that they are nothing more than animals.  Of course, this is offensive only if one has a very low opinion of “animals.”   In reality, human behavior all too often descends into realms far below those to which any “animal” would sink.  In any case, this is a false argument in that evolutionary psychologists do not argue that we are merely slaves to our inherited drives.  In fact, we can respond to these drives in many ways, ranging from outright repression or denial to using them as motivation for artistic creativity.  But however we respond, these impulses  remain deep within, urging us toward that option which is in the best interest of the gene – if not always of the individual.  As we are seeing in genetic research  in the medical realm, absolute genetic destiny is very rare; most genes transmit tendencies or vulnerabilities that can manifest in many different ways.  Just as a genetic predisposition toward diabetes can be lessened or neutralized with modified behavior, gene-inspired tendencies toward certain types of behavior (gambling, alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, etc.) can be modified through conscious decisions.  However, these modifications are not without costs.  And these costs are sometimes arguably far greater than those incurred by the behavior itself. Moreover,  the ability to anticipate and outsmart ourselves in this way may be all we have left to distinguish ourselves from the other inhabitants of this planet, for better or worse.
In the past few years, dozens of books explaining the principles of evolutionary psychology have been published, of varying quality.  To my mind, The Moral Animal (1994) by Robert Wright still stands as the best general introduction to the field published thus far.  Wright cleverly alternates chapters in which he outlines some insights into a particular area of human behavior, followed by others in which he applies these concepts to Darwin’s life.  Thus, chapter 4 is “The Marriage Market,” and chapter 5 is “Darwin’s Marriage.”  So the reader gets an education in evolutionary psychology while also having a peek into Darwin’s personal life.  Wright –  a journalist who was a senior editor at The New Republic, and currently writes a regular column in the on-line magazine Slate.com – isn’t a scientist, and doesn’t write like one.  I don’t mean to disparage scientific writing by saying this; However The Moral Animal is lots of fun to read because its author is full of the enthusiasm of a recent convert, and is not the least bit shy about showing it.  And the enthusiasm is leavened with a sometimes dry wit.  In a discussion of the evolutionary origins of jealousy, Wright suggests that, “for the average husband, the fact that his wife inserted a diaphragm before copulating with her tennis instructor will not be a major source of consolation” (p. 67).
Wright suggests that, “perhaps the primary promise of evolutionary psychology is … to generate good theories of personality development.  In other words: evolutionary psychology can help us see not only the ‘knobs’ of human nature, but also how the knobs are tuned” (p. 82).  Authors Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan have recently published a book that proposes to help readers to retune these knobs.  The authors claim that Mean Genes (2000) is the first book of applied evolutionary psychology, an area that promises to be interesting and potentially quite lucrative.
Mean Genes is a curious, and ultimately rather disturbing book.  It is entertaining, and marked by the same sort of enthusiastic wit one finds in The Moral Animal.  Although I agree with much of what the authors had to say, I found the basic premise of the book – that we are at war with ourselves – to be needlessly conflictive.  While it is true that, as mentioned above, and explained brilliantly by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976), the interests of our genes and our own interests sometimes diverge, these are exceptional cases. This conflict hardly calls for a “war on genes.”  To hear Burnham and Phelan tell it, we’re in big trouble from the get-go: “Battles for self control are not defects of personality, nor can they be won in the sense that the foe is vanquished.  To take control of our lives, we need perpetual vigilance and an understanding of the enemy within” (p. 11).  I don’t like being encouraged to think of myself as a battleground.  Nor do I agree that my genes are mean and that my life is destined to be a never-ending struggle for control against this satanic possession.  Are we talking about genes or viruses?
Curiously, the authors never entertain the possibility that much of the conflict between our desires (the “enemy”) and our intentions is generated on a cultural level, rather than being something inherent in the genes themselves. I found the book to be somewhat naïve in terms of politics and culture.  Throughout the book, there is an unacknowledged bias in favor of the status quo.  Nowhere in the chapter on infidelity, for example, do the authors question whether monogamy is a realistic expectation of the bonobo-like creatures that we are.  Rather, we are told that, “the temptations we all face are deeply-ingrained in the genes of our hearts and minds, and both parties should take steps to fight these mean genes” (p. 195).  They go on to suggest that couples listen to their phone messages together, avoid seeing friends of the opposite sex, and so on.  Leaving aside whether or not such things as “genes of our hearts and minds” actually exist, some discussion of ways in which relationships can be modified to fit psychological reality seems essential.  But all we’re offered is the sort of advice that strikes this reader, at least, as being somewhat infantile.  This chapter ends on the same false note: “As long as we remain interesting dynamos, there will be no conflict between monogamy and our infidelity-promoting mean genes” (p. 195).  Really?  So if a powerful middle-aged man has an affair with a young woman – an intern, say – then this must be because his wife isn’t an “interesting dynamo?” I don’t think so.  And the problem is, the data don’t support this perspective either.  On the contrary, study after study has demonstrated men and women simply approach and experience their sexuality in very different ways.  The point should be to use evolutionary psychology to help us understand and accept ourselves and each other, and not to escalate an already destructive situation. 
Earlier in the same chapter, we are told that, “Because male attractiveness is increased by wealth, men cheat most between the ages of forty and sixty, when they finally have the opportunity.  These are their peak years of income.  More than a third of the sex they have during these two decades comes with women other than their spouses” (p. 180).  Here we have another example of the authors’ tendency to present their own reading of the data as the data themselves.  If this is true – and it’s impossible to confirm this from the references (more on that in a moment) – could we read these data differently?  Is it so obvious that men don’t get a chance to “cheat” until they’re in their  40s, and that this is a function of income?  And if it is true that a higher percentage of male sexual activity takes place outside of marriage later in life, couldn’t this be for other reasons having more to do with having been married for several decades, as opposed to economically-inspired “opportunity?” The admittedly distressing fact of the matter is that male sexuality is highly oriented toward female fertility – youth being one of the primary indicators of such fertility.  Telling a middle-aged woman that her husband of 30 years is sexually attracted to a younger woman because his wife is no-longer an “interesting dynamo” is not only a complete misreading of the situation; it is tragically misguided advice on how to best resolve it.
Also strange is the way the references were handled.  In the introduction, the authors tell us that “every fact has been assiduously researched.  There are more than a thousand citations, verifying every aspect of the book.”  We are then told that these references haven’t been included because they “would fill more pages than the text itself” – and we are directed to a web site to see the notes.  I went to the web site, downloaded all the reference notes, and printed them.  They filled 26 pages, including several full-page photos (the book has 260 pages).  Many of the “facts” I wanted to verify were not cited in these notes at all.  Others referred to defunct web sites, or merely to huge studies.  For example, the contention I mention in the previous paragraph, that more than a third of male sexual activity between the ages of 40 and 60 is outside marriage, is referenced simply as The Kinsey Report.  No page numbers.  To their credit, the authors responded promptly to my email asking about these lapses, and provided me with some of the specific references I was seeking.  I was told that they haven’t had the time to put the rest of the references on the web page, and as the notes page is receiving about 1/100th the amount of traffic as the purchase site, they didn’t think it was important.
This rather cavalier attitude toward providing references is all the more distressing in light of the authors’ tendency to interpret the data surreptitiously – consciously or not – and to present the most extreme possible reading of these data.  For example, in the chapter on drugs, we are told that, “over the course of an addiction (heroin addicts) may increase their dose ten-thousand-fold” (p. 72).  I checked this “fact” with about a dozen experts, ranging from drug counselors to professors of psychopharmacology at major universities.  All agreed that this number is absurd – off by at least two orders of magnitude.  The works cited (not on the web page) are all secondary sources.  There are dozens of examples of this sort of sloppiness I could mention.
I am distressed to be writing so negative a review of a book I wanted so much to like.  Before reading the book, I was impressed by the authors’ responsiveness to my questions and I remain impressed by their openness to my criticism.  But the book feels unfinished (and as far as the references go, it actually is unfinished).  On the back cover, we read that E. O. Wilson considers Mean Genes to be “brilliant – well-grounded… delightfully readable.”  I wish I could agree.