bump this thread every time a connection is made between the life we lead now and the life we led 10000-10000000 years ago

hate this usually (no disrespect intended towards all my paleo nn's)

Researchers say there is an evolutionary rationale for the pressure this barrage puts on the brain. The lower-brain functions alert humans to danger, like a nearby lion, overriding goals like building a hut. In the modern world, the chime of incoming e-mail can override the goal of writing a business plan or playing catch with the children.

Q: wouldn't the lion just barge into the hut and wreck shit up

because my new mail alert sounds exactly like a lion stalking around a hut... actually, who the fuck other than somebody's grandad still has an email inbox noise these days?

Correct answer: my manager

my... SELF

there is an evolutionary rationale for the email inbox noise

what if the email you've received is from the lion?

Huron also sees an evolutionary link in his findings. When we respond to music with chills down the spine, for instance, we may be experiencing something akin to what a mother would feel hearing the cry of a lost child: we become hyperalert and focused, with adrenalin at the ready — whatever it takes to find and protect the child.

Great thread idea. This needs to be on new answers more often to pick up steam.

With a convenient "Evolutionary Psychology Bingo" card!

http://www.boingboing.net/201004071446-tm.jpg

I just ate some meat.

About 24 straw men in that bingo card.

Judge: Mr. Cirroc, are you ready to give your summation?

Cirroc: [ stepping out] It's just "Cirroc", your Honor.. and, yes, I'm ready. [ approaches the jury box ] Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice and was later thawed by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me! Sometimes when I fly to Europe on the Concorde, I wonder, am I inside some sort of giant bird? Am I gonna be digested? I don't know, because I'm a caveman, and that's the way I think! When I'm courtside at a Knicks game, I wonder if the ball is some sort of food they're fighting over. When I see my image on the security camera at the country club, I wonder, are they stealing my soul? I get so upset, I hop out of my Range Rover, and run across the fairway to to the clubhouse, where I get Carlos to make me one of those martinis he's so famous for, to soothe my primitive caveman brain. But whatever world you're from, I do know one thing - in the 20 years from March 22nd, 1972, when he first ordered that extra nicotine be put into his product, until February 25th, 1992, when he issued an inter-office memorandum stopping the addition of that nicotine, my client was legally insane. And, for that reason, I ask that you find him.. not guilty. Thank you.

oh man cant believe i never saw this thread.... hate this shit

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11223473

Dr Neave's aim was to establish whether young men exhibited the same courtship movement rituals in night clubs as animals do in the wild. In the case of animals, these movements give information about their health, age, their reproductive potential and their hormone status.

"People go to night clubs to show off and attract the opposite sex so I think it's a valid way of doing this," Dr Neave explained.

"In animals, the male has to be in good physical quality to carry out these movements. We think the same is happening in humans and certainly the guys that can put these movements together are going to be young and fit and healthy."

Dr Neave also took blood samples from the volunteers. Early indications from biochemical tests suggest that the men who were better dancers were also more healthy.

These English psychologists—what do they really want?

please also play the included video

I once saw some esteemed professor put forward the argument that everything in Shakespeare can be found in chimp societies (or something like that). Good stuff.

evolutionary psychLOLogy

lol @ evolutionary psychology bingo card

This should probably be on the "Guardian can't get any worse" thread but I'm avoiding it, but this is the sort of utter and complete shite that makes me want to get out the Evolutionary Psychology Bingo card

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/09/baby-husband-evolutionary-psychology

Just tooth gnashingly fucking awful. Evolutionary Agony Aunt, my fucking rectal bateria's DNA!

that whole thing is... just...

In general women have evolved to be superior at mind reading

Still, she says the strike-zone glance isn’t necessarily a sign of sexual attraction. Instead, men might be pre-programmed to check out their competition or determine whether someone (or something) is suitable for mating.

“Survival can be eating the right berries in the woods, not getting hit by a bus or not clicking on a blinking mortgage ad,” said Coyne. “I think the body part study is the same [evolutionary] idea: The behavior is hard-wired into us and we’re checking people out to see if we can mate with that thing.”

Erica was impressed by him: women everywhere tend to prefer men who have symmetrical features and are slightly older, taller, and stronger than they are. But she was more guarded and slower to trust than Harold was. That’s in part because, while Pleistocene men could pick their mates on the basis of fertility cues discernible at a glance, Pleistocene women faced a more vexing problem. Human babies require years to become self-sufficient, and a single woman in that environment could not gather enough calories to provide for a family. She was compelled to choose a man not only for insemination but for continued support. That’s why men leap into bed more quickly than women. Various research teams have conducted a simple study. They hire a woman to go up to college men and ask them to sleep with her. More than half the men say yes. Then they have a man approach college women with the same offer. Virtually zero per cent say yes.

on a related note I heard christopher ryan on savage love the other day and his theories didn't seem completely insane http://www.sexatdawn.com/

but still fuck evolutionary psychology

Given the enormity of this adaptive problem for ancestral women, it is plausible that human females would have evolved a set of counter-adaptations to protect them from being raped, and that these anti-rape adaptations would be activated, specifically, during the woman's most fertile period, the periovulatory phase of her reproductive cycle.

jesse bering needs to remind you that he is gay so that you don't get the wrong idea about what he is saying