Adaptive Behavior for Survival and Reproduction

ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR FOR SURVIVAL AND REPRODUCTION

The individual comes first

There's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.

• Margaret Thatcher (Former British Prime Minister)

Do people do what they perceive is in their best interest?

Yes, one basic trait that all individuals share is self-interest. We are interested in protecting our close family and ourselves. Why?

Since natural selection is about survival and reproduction, and individuals either survive or die and reproduce or not, it makes sense that individuals are predisposed to act in ways that enhance their own prospects for survival and reproduction. The ancestral environment consisted of limited resources, including reproductive resources, and fierce competition. Self-interest came naturally.

What if our ancestors were composed of altruists - individuals that helped others at their own expense? Altruistic individuals are at a disadvantage. They are always vulnerable to some mutants that take advantage of them. Altruistic behavior cannot evolve by natural selection since natural selection favors individuals that are best at promoting their own survival and reproductive success. Only behavior that is selfish or for the mutual good is in an individual's self-interest and therefore favored by natural selection. Some behavior may under certain conditions look like altruism but can often be explained by self-benefit. Social recognition, prestige, fear of social disapproval, shame, relief from distress, avoidance of guilt, a better after-life or social expectations are some reasons behind "altruistic" acts.

But how did our social and moral qualities develop? As Charles Darwin wrote in

chapter four of The Descent ofMan: "Whyshould a man feel that heought to obeyone instinctive desire rather than another? Why does he bitterly regret if he has yielded to the strong sense of self-preservation, and has not risked his life to save that of a fellow creature; or why does he regret having stolen food from severe hunger?" In chapter five of the book, Darwin wrote that there is a: "powerful stimulus to the development of the social virtues, namely, the praise and the blame of our fellow-men."

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The love of approbation and the dread ofinfamy, as well as the bestowal of praise or blame, are primarily due... to the instinct of sympathy; and this instinct no doubt was originally acquired, like all the other social instincts, through natural selection ... We may therefore conclude that primeval man, at a very remote period, would have been influenced by the praise and blame of his fellows. It is obvious, that the members of the same tribe would approve of conduct which appeared to them to be for the general good, and would reprobate that which appeared evil. To do good unto others -to do unto others as ye would they should do unto you, - is the foundation-stone of morality. It is, therefore, hardly possible to exaggerate the importance during rude times of the love of praise and the dread of blame. A man who was not impelled by any deep, instinctive feeling, to sacrifice his life for the good of others, yet was roused to such actions by a sense of glory, would by his example excite the same wish for glory in other men, and would strengthen by exercise the noble feeling of admiration. He might thus do far more good to his tribe than by begetting offspring with a tendency to inherit his own high character.

A high standard of morality would also benefit a tribe. Darwin continues:

It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet that an advancement in the standard of morality and an increase in the number of well endowed men will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another.

Often cooperation is in our best interest

If people aren't altruistic by nature, are they cooperative?

Mutual aid has tremendous survival value. But under what conditions do people cooperate? The game of the Prisoner's Dilemma may shed light on this: Suppose you and a partner commit burglary. Both of you are picked up by the police who then question you one by one. There is not enough evidence to convict you unless one of you confesses. The interrogator gives you a choice to cooperate or not.

''Jfyou both deny the crime, there is still enough evidence to put you both in jail for 1 year."

"If you both confess, you both go to jail for 3 years. "

''Jfyou confess but your partner denies, you will be free and your partner will go to jail for 10 years. "

''If you deny but your partner confesses, you will go to jail for 10 years. "

What should you do? The consequences for you depend on what your partner

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does. From an outsider's perspective, it seems that both of you would be better off denying the crime (1 year). But from your point of view, it seems best to confess (freedom). The problem is that you don't know what your partner will do. If your partner betrays you, it is better that you also betray him and get 3 years in prison, instead of the 10 years you get if you deny, but your partner ends up confessing. If on the other hand your partner denies, it is still better that you confess because this way you will be free, instead of the 1 year you get if you deny. Since both you and your partner follow this "logic" and confess, you will both go to jail for 3 years. Doing what you believe is in your best interest leads to a worse outcome than if you cooperate and deny. But here is the dilemma. You don't know if you can trust your partner. Cooperation only works if you and your

partner can trust each other.

Tests show that if people play the game over and over, they learn that it is more profitable to cooperate. Repetition tests trust. Trust is key and fragile. It can vanish in a moment. As the 19th Century American President Abraham Lincoln wrote: "If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem."

Another way to create cooperation is to let the partners communicate during the game. Talking encourages cooperation. Since people are social animals, they may change their behavior to keep others goodwill. In the end, it's a matter of trust and giving individuals an incentive to cooperate.

In chapter three of The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin wrote:

At the moment of action, man will no doubt be apt to follow the stronger impulse; and though this may occasionally prompt him to the noblest deeds, it will far more commonly lead him to gratify his own desires at the expense of other men. But after their gratification, when past and weaker impressions are contrasted with the ever-enduring social instincts, retribution will surely come. Man will then feel dissatisfied with himself, and will resolve with more or less force to act differently for the future. This is conscience; for conscience looks backwards and judges past actions, inducing that kind of dissatisfaction, which if weak we call regret, and if severe remorse.

But we also have to recognize that communication may be deceptive. People may bluff Also, communications are imperfect- mistakes are made or intentions are misunderstood.

The strategy that is effective in the long run is a modern version of"a tooth for a tooth" or TIT-FOR-TAT. It says that we should cooperate at the first meeting and then do whatever our "opponent" did the last time. When our opponent

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cooperates, we should cooperate. When our opponent doesn't cooperate, we should retaliate. Then forgive and go back to cooperating next round. This rewards past cooperation and punishes past defection. This assumes that the game is repeated time after time. In reality we never know if we meet our opponent again in the future. As long as neither our opponent nor we knows when the game ends, it pays to be nice. Of course, the game of the Prisoner's Dilemma is only a two-player game. Reality often involves many-person interactions.

There is one group that scientists say we treat better than others - our close genetic relatives. This is kin selection. We act altruistic to our kin because they share our genes. Studies show that in all social species, relatives are more likely to help each other. The greater degree ofgenetic relatedness between two individuals, the more likely it is that an individual treats the other individual better. If you sacrifice something for your children, it may harm you but since your children share your genes, the overall effect is positive. Scientists say that one test of kin selection is what we would do if a relative and a good friend were both close to drowning. We can only save one of them. What if oneof them was adistant cousin that you'd seen only twice in your life and the friend was a person you spent every day with? Who would you save?

What other behavior was appropriate for our ancestors?

A tendency for fear

Our fears are always more numerous than our dangers.

• Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Roman philosopher, c.4 BC-65 AD)

The passengers boarded flight 651 to Chicago. Two hours after takeoff, the flight attendant heard suspicious noise ftom the lavatory. The passengers started to talk among themselves. Panic erupted.

We fear dramatic and threatening events. We fear the loss of our health, family, friends, security, money, social status, power, or jobs. We also fear violence, crime, punishment, rejection, failure, the unknown, the immediate, the unpredictable or the uncontrollable. Studies show that even witnessing a traumatic event can produce the same fear response as experiencing the event ourselves.

Fear is our most basic emotion. Fear has evolved to help us anticipate danger and avoid pain. As science writer Rush Dozier writes in Fear Itself "Fear is fundamental because life is fundamental. If we die, everything else becomes irrelevant."

Humans have developed a strong emotion for fear. Our ancestors environment was fraught with dangers. Fear of physical danger, social disapproval, lack of food,

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no mate, predators, etc. Self-survival was a powerful incentive. Mistakes could be extremely costly. Assume two individuals heard a strange sound behind the bushes. One of them looked behind the bushes, was bit by a poisonous snake and died. The other one saw what happened, ran away and survived. To always assume there was a threat behind the bushes and run away could save an individual's life. The cost of being wrong and running when there was no snake was minimal. But the cost of staying around when there was a snake could be life threatening. Failure to detect threats is often more costly than false alarms. Our ancestors learned through trial and error that in the long run, pain could be avoided if they were fearful. They survived the dangers because they learned how to respond.

If pain and pleasure are guides to the behavior that leads to survival and

reproduction, fear is our biological warning signal for avoiding pain. Fear warns us of potential harm and keeps us from acting in self-destructive ways. It helps us avoid threats and makes us act to prevent further damage. Fear guides us to avoid what didn't work in the past. Fear causes worry and anxiety, a normal response to physical danger. It activates hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which keeps us attentive to harm since we need full attention to escape from a threat.

The degree of fear we feel depends on our interpretation of the threat and our perception of control. The more helpless and vulnerable we feel, the stronger our emotion for fear becomes.

Assume that you are walking alone late at night on a deserted street in New York City. Suddenly, you hear steps behind you. What happens? Immediately you fear the worst - robbery, assault, etc. Your autonomic nervous system takes over and prepares you for fight or flight. Your response begins in your brain and activates a biochemical process. Your heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, pulse and blood sugar increase. Normal behavior when you are the victim of stress, either perceived or real. You reacted with fear on the deserted street because evolution equipped your brain to register pain more sensitively than any other emotion. You were using the "memory" of your ancestral past - your primitive fear system of fight or flight.

What we fear and the strength of our reaction depend on our genes, life experiences, and the specific situation. You may react instinctively at first, but if the situation is one that you've experienced before (since our brain is continuously being "rewired" with life experiences), the final reaction may be to calm down. You could turn around to find an old lady walking her dog. Or you may run away, because you avoid situations that in the past have been painful. The more we are exposed to a stimulus, even a terrifying one, the higher our

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threshold of fear becomes.If you for example had walked the same deserted street many times before but found out each time that the noise was the old lady walking her dog, you would be less careful. Until something terrifying happened. Often our emotions provide affective information that helps us make better decisions. For example, guilt may make us regret doing wrong things, and correct them. It may also induce cooperation. Disgust seems to be a response to danger to protect us from disease or harm. Shame may help us avoid certain temptations or reduce the risk of group-conflict. People who can't experience emotional responses because of brain damage seem unable to learn from their mistakes or

to make choices in a coherent manner.

Seeking explanations

'1 ate a plant and now I feel sick. Therefore, I believe the plant was not good for me. " In chapter two of The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin wrote: ''As soon as the important faculties of the imagination, wonder, and curiosity, together with some power of reasoning, had become partially developed, man would naturally have craved to understand what was passing around him."

We don't like uncertainty or the unknown. We need to categorize, classify, organize, and structure the world. Categorizing ideas and objects helps us to recognize, differentiate and understand. It simplifies life. To understand and control our environment helps us to deal with the future. We want to know how and why things happen and what is going to happen in the future. To understand how an event happened helps us predict how it could happen again. This is why we always look for patterns and causal relationships among objects, actions, and situations. This makes it easier to identify and understand things and to make predictions based on similarities in patterns. Finding and recognizing connections between things and events in our environment helps us to learn what does and does not work. Patterns also give us comfort, making our need to find them even more important.

To learn what works and does not and what is good or bad for us means we have to explore. Exploring our environment successfully enables our survival and reproduction.

Remembering places, facts and events is important. But sometimes, the brain seems particularly attracted to new information and novel experiences. Recent studies suggest that the brain responds to novelty. The unknown is potentially rewarding, thereby motivating us to explore our environment and learn for the future.

We must be flexible in order to deal with constant change and unpredictability. We often explore the unknown in a random fashion. For example, many animals,

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when foraging, start with a random search, and only change their behavior when they find a rewarding stimulus. Then they move towards it.

Being flexible and learning a variety of options to choose from to deal with the world is of great value. This implies that finding new ways to deal with the world is superior to overtraining old patterns. For example, studies of honeybees show that they navigate according to a map-like organization of spatial memory. When bees are over-trained to find a single nectar site, it is easy for them to find their way back to the hive from that site, but not very well from other sites. But when the same bees are trained to many nectar sites, they are much better in finding their way home to the hive from a range of different locations. Further studies suggest that we learn better when we mix new information with what we already know.

Making fast classifications

There is a story about a man who went to visit a professor at his home. Outside the house a dog was playing on the lawn. When the professor opened the door to let the man in, the dog ran into the house. Later the professor asked the man, "Do you always travel with your dog?" The man replied, "It's not my dog. I thought it was yours."

Our brain is wired to perceive before it thinks - to use emotions before reason. fu a consequence of our tendency for fear, fast classifications come naturally. Limited time and knowledge in a dangerous and scarce environment made hasty generalizations and stereotyping vital for survival. Waiting and weighing evidence could mean death. Don't we often draw fast conclusions, act on impulse and use our emotions to form quick impressions and judgments?

We are especially wary of things that move. They may imply danger. That is why we automatically assume agency - someone was responsible - when we detect motion. Better safe than sorry.

Males and females have different priorities

"What is the brain for?" asked Neuroscience Professor Michael Gazzaniga in The Mind's Past. "The smart-aleck answer to the question is sex. Put more completely, the brain exists to make better decisions about how to enhance reproductive success." Reproduction is the central act in the life of every living thing. Once an individual has survived past the age of reproduction, the individual is evolutionarily useless.

The struggle to reproduce can sometimes have peculiar effects. In nature, things are not always what they seem.

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An ant climbs to the top ofa grass stem, falls down and tries again and again... until a sheep comes along and eats the grass (and the ant}. WHY does the ant persist in climbing the grass? How does the ant benefit?

There is no benefit to the ant. Its behavior was manipulated by a parasitic flatworm that needed to get into the gut of the sheep in order to reproduce. By commandeering its intermediate ant host to climb to the tips of the grass blades, the parasite increased the ant's chances of being eaten by a grazing animal. The benefit was to the reproductive success of the parasite, not the ant. Another parasite, Toxoplasma, can only reproduce within cats. It causes rats to lose their inherited fear of cats (cat scent) and thereby makes the rat more likely to end up as cat dinner. Another parasite causes fish to swim in shallow waters so birds can eat them, this parasite's final host.

Most animals (including humans) do something to attract the opposite sex. Since natural selection is ultimately about reproduction in a world of limited mates, some individuals were better at getting mates than others. The individuals that had an advantage in attracting prospective mates were "selected." What characteristics gave them the advantage? What anatomical features or behavioral traits attract the opposite sex or intimidate rivals?

Darwin realized that many anatomical and behavioral characteristics didn't have any survival value but could play an important role in attracting mates. Strength and beauty were such signals. He called this mechanism sexual selection. It has for example been shown that colors spark sexual interest among butterflies. And peahens prefer peacocks with big, colorful tails.

In Parental Investment and Sexual Selection, biologist Robert Trivers says that

the force behind sexual selection is parental investment, or "any investment by the parent in an individual offspring that increases the offspring's chance of surviving (and hence reproductive success) at the cost of the parent's ability to invest in other offspring."

Men need to attract women. But they also need to keep other men away from "their" woman. A woman must invest in each of her children. There is a nine month pregnancy and thereafter many years of child-caring. She invests time, energy and increases her chance of earlier death. There are limits to how many children she can produce during her lifetime. A man has less costs of reproduction. He can interact with many women and produce an enormous amount of children. He doesn't need to be around all the time. Many women can raise their children without help.

Since the goal of evolution is reproduction, a man should want to have sex with as many women as possible. This causes competition among men for women.

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How does a man eliminate this competition? He can either make himself more attractive to the woman or he can eliminate or reduce the competition.

The reproductive success of women doesn't depend on how many men she has sex with, but on her ability to get access to resources (like food, shelter, and protection) for herself and her children. Women are therefore more discriminating than men. She won't pick the first guy around. This causes women to compete with each other for access to resources. A man that is perceived as wealthy and having status has an advantage. So mating choices (showing up as unconscious preferences) are influenced by the fact that women have more at stake than men do.

In 1989, Psychology Professor David Buss published a study of thousands of men and women from 37 cultures around the world showing the ranking of qualities that are most important in choosing someone to date or marry. Women placed more emphasis on a potential mate's financial prospects. Women also preferred ambitious and industrious men. Women preferred older men. Men preferred younger women. Men ranked physical attractiveness higher than women did. The study also showed that a man felt most jealous when his woman was having sex with someone else. A woman felt most jealous when her man became emotionally attached to someone else.

Studies show other differences between the sexes. Women are less inclined to take risks. They are more influenced by the chance of loss. They are less competitive and status-conscious. Other studies show that men and women differ in their behavioral and cognitive capabilities. Some of this reflects varying hormonal influences on brain development. Like most things, this is context dependent.

The Social Animal

We do not care about our reputation in towns where we are only passing through. But when we have to stay sorne tirne we do care. How rnuch tirne does it take?A tirne proportionate to our vain and paltry existence.

• Blaise Pascal (French mathematician and philosopher, 1623-1662)

Isn't it likely that a good reputation, status, resources and being socially accepted helped our ancestors survive, get a mate, and reproduce?

In a small hunter-gatherer society, what was good for the group often paid off for the individual. Cooperation was critical in an environment with limited resources, individual weaknesses and many dangers. Isolation from a group or society could mean destruction. There was safety in numbers. The group protected the individual against predators, hunted together, exchanged

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information about where food was, cooperated to defend food from enemies, and was a key resource for mates and help with infants. Together the group stood a greater chance of survival.

If we help another member of the small society, he may help us when we need it. If he doesn't, we may never help him again. This behavior is called reciprocation

• the idea of "I scratch your back and you scratch mine." A reputation for being reliable and trustworthy is important because how we acted in the past is the only guide to how we act in the future. Ifwe fool someone, he tells his friends, destroying our future possibilities for cooperation with others. Isn't that why we trust our friends but are careful when we meet strangers whom we know nothing about?

We have a strong concern for fairness. We get upset when things are unfair. We sometimes even punish others at a cost to ourselves. Maybe we don't want to appear weak or easily taken advantage 0£ Since we evolved in small communities with repeated interactions, it made sense to build up a reputation for not appearing weak. We wanted to encourage people to treat us better the next time around.

What happens if we help someone but the next time we need help, this person conveniently disappears? What about people who don't return favors? True reciprocity only works if (1) we live in the same small society so we recognize each other, can keep track of "services" given and received, and have future opportunities to interact, and (2) the cost of the act is pretty much the same as the future favor the recipient receives. One-shot encounters encourage selfishness as told by Biology Professor Lee Alan Dugatkin:

At a small dinner gathering... one of the dinner guests noted that when he looked for a mechanic, he always stayed away from garages on big highways and near "strips." Such mechanics, he said, knew that they were never going to see you again and were notorious shysters. Go to a neighborhood garage, where word of mouth serves as advertising, and they know you will be a long-term customer.

''Do good when others can see it. "

Reputation matters. Do we behave differently when we are watched or when our identities are made public? It pays to be nice when others are watching. One lab study showed that people gave much more to charity when they were "watched" by images of a robot. A real-world setting showed that people nearly trebled the amount of money they put in a psychology department coffee room box when they were watched by a pair of eyes on a poster, compared with a poster with an image of flowers. Further studies have shown that we donate more when we get public recognition for our good deeds. American 20th Century writer Henry

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Louis Mencken said: "Conscience is the inner voice that tells us someone might be looking."

Traits like fear of failure, losing social status or reputation were important because they affected an individual's standing in the ancestral hunter-gatherer society. Access to food and sex depended on it. Survival and reproduction could be threatened. Social punishment was dangerous. It could lead to exile. According to Human Ecology Professor Garrett Hardin, it is the same today:

Fear of disapproval is the major force that keeps a society intact: fear of God, fear of the police, and fear of the judgment of neighbors. Religious authorities want the fear of God

to be the predominant controller. Civil authorities want fear of police and court to

dominate. But, says Locke [John], the opinion of one's neighbors trumps all others.

Providing resources is another behavior that increases chances of survival and getting a mate.The better our ability to provide, the higher our status would be in the community.

As we saw earlier there is competition among men for women. Women compete with each other for access to resources.Women wanted males who could take care of the children. Resources like food, lodging, and status attracted them. Striving for authority, dominance, esteem, position, and respect were advertisements for wealth. Charles Darwin said: "Man admires and often tries to exaggerate whatever characteristics nature may have given him."

What other evidence is there that humans are social animals? One study of a group of men whose wives suffered fatal cases of breast cancer showed that the widowers had lower immune system activity. Another study showed that men who were socially isolated were more likely to die than more socially integrated people were. It has also been shown that social rejection feels similar to physical pain. Rejection hurts!

Pecking order also matters. As we strive for status, hierarchies emerge.

Norwegian zoologist Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe discovered that in the world of hens there is a linear hierarchy where every hen knows its place. Science writer Robert Wright says in The Moral Animal: "Throw a bunch of hens together, and, after a time of turmoil, including much combat, things will settle down. Disputes...will now be brief and decisive, as one hen simply pecks the other, bringing quick deferral."

The pecking order determines who gets the first chance to eat, and which hen can peck the other hens.Each hen knows who it can dominate, and in turn, who will dominate it.

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Status hierarchies aren't only valid for hens. Studies show that when we put a group of children together, they will shortly fall into separate grades. The ones at the top are best liked, most often imitated, and most obeyed.It is painful to lose status once it has been obtained.

Studies show that where we stand on the social ladder influences our health, well-being and length of life. The higher our status in the pecking order, the healthier we are likely to be.

We must be careful not to carry these evolutionary explanations about adaptive behavior too far. There are many causes for behavior. We can't extrapolate the conditions of the ancestral environment to explain every behavior. No one knows what the ancestral environment was like. Unlike bone and tissue, there is no fossil evidence of behavior. Neither is there any neurological or genetic evidence for or against certain behavior. And evolutionary explanations about the brain can't be experimentally tested. A trait that is found everywhere isn't necessarily genetically specified. But much of the behavior described is consistent with evidence we have from other organisms and documented human history.

Let's go back one million years and assume you were living in a small community with 150 people where everybody knew each other, and where the mating opportunities were limited. The environment was fraught with danger and challenges. The key was to avoid danger, get food and attract a partner. What behavior was critical to survival and reproduction?

Isn't it rewarding to make fast judgments?- "If noise behind the bush, then run." It is a natural tendency to act on impulse - to use emotions before reason. The behavior that was critical for survival and reproduction in our evolutionary history still applies today. Wouldn't being fearful help you survive? Social failure be costly? Maintaining status, resources and social approval help you survive and get a mate? Wouldn't you present yourself as honest, nice and trustworthy so others will cooperate with you? Wouldn't a common threat or a common goal make people cooperate? Wouldn't following social norms make sense? Wouldn't you have a strong aversion to losses and only take big risks when you were threatened? Wouldn't you be concerned with the short-term interest of yourself and loved ones?

Much of our psychology is the result of cultural influences

Human society is not only shaped by the evolution of genes, but also by cultural evolution. Practices, methods, tools, myths, ethics, and social norms that are important in the evolution of our behavior. Customs that we learn from the experience of our parents and others - either by teaching or observation.

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Cultural evolution is faster than genetic evolution since it allows much of what we learn to be passed on and combined with what others around us have learned. Unlike biological evolution, cultural evolution is not inherited. We don't inherit our parents' habits. We learn from them.

In a sense, genetic and cultural evolution interact. Biology influences our culture. Take language as an example. We come equipped with an anatomy, physiology and biochemistry that give us the ability to learn a language. But we are not born with a language. The language we speak is a product of our culture. Our culture also influences our biology by creating the environment in which natural selection is tested. If a certain behavior proves to be beneficial generation over generation, that behavior is favored by natural selection. Assume individuals over time make certain social behavior choices. These choices were transmitted through learning and culture. Over time, they will be favored by natural selection

since they positively influence survival and reproduction.

Our basic nature

Men's natures are alike; it is their habits that carry them far apart.

• Confucius

What is our basic nature?

Our nature is a product of our biological and cultural history. Evolution explains how we are shaped and biologically constrained. Like our bones, kidney, eyes, and legs, our brain has been shaped by natural selection. Natural selection equipped us with traits that increase our chances for survival and reproduction. It then follows that we consciously or unconsciously behave according to what we perceive is in our own best interest. This is our biological base nature. It is strengthened or weakened depending on our life experiences. If we assume that people on average act out of self-interest we'll be less disappointed than if we assume that people on average act out of altruism. This does not mean that we can't make things better. But doing so demands that we first understand why we are the way we are. Richard Dawkins said in The Selfish Gene: "Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish."

Let's summarize the forces that influence and set the limits for our judgments. Genes- environmental stimuli cause response tendencies from our genes. Our genes have evolved and their functions are primarily based on what was beneficial in the hunter-gatherer environment - the environment where humans spent

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most of their time. To survive, we must avoid all perceived threats to our survival and reproduction. Evolution has developed a value system based on pain and pleasure that help us deal with the environment. Since the ancestral environment consisted oflimited resources and danger, we developed a strong aversion for loss and a tendency for fear. We made fast evaluations and became social animals. We were predisposed to evaluate situations by being fearful. To not respond with fear could be more costly than responding with fear and being wrong. We also acted in ways where the reward was important and the cost was minimal.

Life experiences - upbringing, nutrition, education, social stamping, physical,

social and cultural settings create certain convictions, habits, values, attitudes and character traits. This in turn creates our individual beliefs and assumptions. Our judgments are influenced by our state of mind.

Present environment - outside factors like the environment, the context or circumstances, or the specific situation.

Randomness - we are prepared to be open minded to new experiences since environments vary; handling new challenges is a means of adaptation.

The consequences of our actions reinforce certain behavior. If the consequences were rewarding, our behavior is likely to be repeated. What we consider rewarding is individual specific. Rewards can be anything from health, money, job, reputation, family, status, or power. In all of these activities, we do what works. This is how we adapt. The environment selects our future behavior. But it's not just what happens to us that counts. It's what we think happens.

When we face a situation, our brains create an expectation. We can act in ways contrary to our self-interest if we don't understand the consequences.

Our behavior creates feedback from our environment. If we do dumb things and suffer the consequences, we may still do dumb things in the future even if it causes pain. Either because we don't understand the cause of our mistake, or the pain is less painful than other behavior.

Our experiences are stored in the brain and influence us in the future. New connecting patterns between neurons are created.

Some decisions are not in our best interest

There must certainly be a vast fond of stupidity in human nature, else men would not be caught as they are, a thousand times over, by the same snare, and while they yet remember their past misfortunes, go on to court and encourage the

causes to which they are owing, and which will again produce them.

• Marcus Porcius Cato (Roman statesman and writer, 234-149 BC)

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If we often act out of self-interest, why do we make decisions that are clearly not in our best interests?

There is a disconnect between the ancestral world to which our brains adapted and today's world. Many of our traits are better adapted for the demands of the ancestral world such as: keeping away from predators, risking social exclusion, finding mates, getting enough food, maintaining relationships, acquiring status and a safe place to live, and bearing children.

Genetic and cultural evolution equipped us with behavioral tendencies (like the tendency for fear, reciprocal cooperation, fast classifications, concern for social approval, etc.) that help us interact with our environment. These tendencies are on average more helpful than not (otherwise we wouldn't be here today). Sometimes they lead us astray and cause us to make misjudgments.

For example, we may be biased by our automatic tendency to trust the people we like. Liking is often based on first impressions. We are superbly equipped to read other people for signs of trustworthiness. We look at their emotional state - their voice and general expression. However, it is often difficult to spot the difference between a good and bad actor. An individual may be secretive and hostile, or warm and open. What consequences would these different behaviors have on our perception of that individual? We forget to think about other factors that are important in evaluating a person or a situation. Appearances may be deceiving. The best con artists always behave as though they are not acting in their best interest. The 16th Century Italian political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli said in The Prince: "Princes who have achieved great things have been those who have given their word lightly, who have known how to trick men with their cunning, and who, in the end, have overcome those abiding by honest principles."

In Part One we have learned about our nature and our limitations. With this background let us now look at how our psychological abilities affect our decision making.

Warren Buffett gives us some introductory remarks on why even smart people get bad results:

It's ego. It's greed. It's envy. It's fear. It's mindless imitation of other people. I mean, there are a variety of factors that cause that horsepower of the mind to get diminished dramatically before the output turns out. And I would say if Charlie and I have any advantage it's not because we're so smart, it is because we're rational and we very seldom let extraneous factors interfere with our thoughts. We don't let other people's opinion

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interfere with it... we try to get fearful when others are greedy. We try to get greedy when others are fearful. We try to avoid any kind of imitation of other people's behavior. And those are the factors that cause smart people to get bad results.

I always look at IQ and talent as representing the horsepower of the motor, but then in terms of the output, the efficiency with which the motor works, depends on rationality. That's because a lot of people start out with 400-horsepower motors and get a hundred horsepower of output. It's way better to have a 200-horsepower motor and get it all into output. So why do smart people do things that interfere with getting the output they're entitled to? It gets into the habits, and character and temperament, and it really gets into behaving in a rational manner. Not getting in your own way.

In Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four we use two fictional characters named John and Mary. At 40, John is a senior executive ofTransCorp; a US company engaged in widely varied businesses. John is married to Mary, a part-time schoolteacher.