1 EVOLUTIONARY FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS
The study of social mentalities, social rank and caring-compassion
Paul Gilbert
The context of the research
The chapters of this book are designed to explore a focus on specific scientific approaches to mental health problems, noting their origins, development and implications for intervention. With that in mind this chapter offers a personal overview of my interest and research in evolutionary and social contextual approaches to mental health problems (Gilbert, 1984, 1989, 2019a). Special interest is given to social mentality theory that is focused on social motives, social cognition and reciprocal dynamic interpersonal behaviours associated with the co-creation of social roles (e.g., status, sexual, friendly, caring) (Gilbert, 1989, 1992, 2017a). It will outline the historical context for the research program of the last 40 years (Gilbert, 2007). I will be reviewing my own research program but not the substantial literature on evolutionary psychology and approaches to mental health problems (see BrĂźne, 2015; Dunbar, 2017; Dunbar & Barrett, 2007; McGuire & Troisi, 1998; Nesse, 2019; Sapolsky, 2017; Sloman & Gilbert, 2000).
Personal journey
My story begins with my first PhD studies in the 1970s at the University of Edinburgh on the psychological and physiological reactions of anxious and depressed people to success and failure events. Using the galvanic skin response, I found that they respond similarly to failure events but depressed people under responded to success events supporting the idea that depression was linked to problems of positive affect and poor responses to rewards (Gilbert, 1980). What intrigued me then, and has for the rest of my research life, is why would such a mental state like depression, which seems so maladaptive, cause such misery and can end in suicide, be so prevalent in humans? The World Health Organisation (2018) estimates there are well over 300 million depressed people in the world today, and that suicide âwas the second leading cause of death among 15â29 year-oldsâ. In addition, many millions more suffer from sub-clinical syndromes and can find life hard and miserable. These questions began my first steps into what is called evolutionary functional analysis (EFA), the need to understand the evolved functional systems underpinning distressing mental states (Gilbert, 1984, 1992, 1989, 1998, 2019a; Buss, 2015).
Working at the Edinburgh Medical Research Council unit in the 1970s, which was doing considerable work in the psychopharmacology of depression, I was interested in exploring the psychosocial processes that might drive some of the physiological underpinnings, vulnerability, triggering, maintenance of and recovery from depression (Gilbert, 1988, 1995, 2013, 2016, 2019a); hence the title of my first book Depression: From Psychology to Brain State (Gilbert, 1984). It reviewed the literature on how psychological processes and social contexts could drive physiological ones such as reductions in dopamine and serotonin, elevate cortisol and knock out frontal cortical function. This book also looked at factors that produce discontinuities and non-linear changes in brain state patterns of activation, using what was then called catastrophe theory. The idea was to move away from the concept of fixed states, that change could be non-linear and discontinuous, and consider the ways in which mental states can move dynamically, and at times erratically, with sudden switches rather than smooth transitions. These can all be seen as ânormal functionsâ of a brain under certain types of contextual stress.
EFA was a steppingstone into a biopsychosocial approach (Gilbert, 1984, 1989, 1995, 2013). It offers a way of thinking about the origins and nature of physical and mental characteristics and asks questions like: why do we have (say) two legs, two arms, sensory faculties, a digestive tract, cardiovascular and immune systems; what is the value of a physical system that can vomit, have diarrhoea and raise temperature, which in certain contexts can also kill us (Nesse & Williams, 1995)? Psychological processes can also be viewed through an evolutionary lens in terms of their distal and proximal origins. So we can ask questions like: why do we have the set of emotions, motives and cognitive competencies that we do? How and why did they get built like that? What are they designed to do? How do they function? What are their underlying mechanisms? How are they regulated? How do different environments impact on their development and function? What do they need in order to function optimally? And of course, why can they be the source of so much mental pain and suffering? EFA today is now helping us understand the nature of many basic motives, emotions and competencies, including processes such as attachment, morality, sexuality, status seeking, affect regulation and competencies like empathy and our unique form of consciousness and conscious awareness (Bernard, Mills, Swenson, & Walsh, 2005; Crawford & Krebs, 2013; Dunbar, 2017; Dunbar & Barrett, 2007; Gilbert, 2019a; Nesse, 2019; Panksepp, 1998; Sapolsky, 2017; Zeigler-Hill, Welling, & Shackelford, 2015). Linking evolution dispositions with life history and maturation trajectories, which vary according to social contexts, gives insight into the sources of a range of mental health difficulties as well as prosocial and antisocial behaviours (Del Giudice, 2016). Indeed, we now know that social contexts can actually shape our genetic expressions, the genes that get turned on and off in us (Cowan, Callaghan, Kan, & Richardson, 2016).
Trade-offs, compromises and constraints
What is crucial to the EFA is the recognition that evolution doesnât build organisms that are designed to be happy, âmentally wellâ or always prosocial. Evolution can even create physical forms that donât function that well. This is because evolution is driven by building organisms that pursue survival and reproductive strategies, but in the process there are trade-offs where an advantage in one area can give disadvantages in another. The classic example of a problematic trade-off is the evolution of walking upright and hands-free, which had the downside of narrowing the female birth canal just at the time when the babyâs head was evolving to get larger. The unfortunate consequence is that humans have the most dangerous and painful births of all primates. Consider another problematic trade-off, human cognitive competencies. These make it possible for us to be extraordinary in how we impact the world and pursue our survival and reproductive strategies. But they have made us into a species of extremes (Gilbert, 1989, 2018; Marsh, 2019). We are the most caring of species, not only within close relationships but in professions like medicine. Yet for every pound we spend on medical research we spend far more on tribal violence. We are a terrifying, sadistic and destructive species with our inventions of horrendous ways of killing and torturing each other, the Roman games, the Holocaust and slavery to mention some of the most obvious. These are all consequences of trade-offs arising from the advantages and disadvantages of human intelligence linking up with evolutionary old motivational processes (Gilbert, 2018; Sapolsky, 2017).
Importantly, adaptive function can easily become dysregulated and dysfunctional. For example, diarrhoea and vomiting are the bodyâs natural way of removing toxins; they are adapted defences and are not the âillnessâ (Nesse, 2019). However, when they become dysregulated people will die from dehydration and nutrient loss. The downregulation of positive emotion as occurs in depression and various anxieties can be seen as useful defences in some contexts. But they can become dysfunctional, particularly in a mind that is able to consciously experience its own mental states, consider its future and ruminate on stressful themes (Gilbert, 1992).
Another aspect of evolution is that it doesnât always go well, because it has to work with major constraints from whatâs gone before. It cannot go back to the drawing board and start again even if the basic design is no longer that adaptive. Evolution canât suddenly design a completely different skeleton which would be better for upright walking and wouldnât give us the associated hip, knee or human birthing difficulties. Given the high prevalence and incidence of mental health problems, not to mention forms of antisocial and immoral behaviour, evolutionary approaches address the issue explored by many evolutionary theorists, and was the subject of a paper over 20 years ago of âWhy isnât the mind better designed than it is?â (Gilbert, 1998). Strategies that are primarily intended for gene survival and reproduction/replication, along with organisms that are built with trade-offs, compromises and constraints, are part of the answer.
Serious too is the way that modern environments, of megacities with multiple strangers that we have created because of our intelligence, are now contexts that can bring out the worst in us; increasing social wariness and intensifying self-focused competitive psychology and tribal violence (Gilbert, 2018; Sapolsky, 2017). So EFA has little trouble with social constructivist approaches to motivation and emotion that highlight their contextual processes, flexibility and variation (Barrett, 2017; Zeigler-Hill et al., 2015). Many phenotypes for psychosocial functioning are highly sensitive to social contexts in regard to their expression (Sapolsky, 2017). This makes social contextualism powerful because it choreographs our needs, motives and algorithms that are wired into our brains.
EFA also suggests that concepts like depression are abstract concepts, with dubious reliability in terms of specific syndromes. What is important are the highly variable underlying processes that give rise to those mental states we label depression. Indeed, Akiskal and McKinney (1973) wrote a very influential paper on the heterogeneity of depression highlighting the fact that depressed states represented final common pathways from multiple interacting factors.
EFA can help distinguish between genuine pathologies (e.g., dementias; deficient B12) and variations in phenotypic function in response to environmental contingencies, particularly along dimensions of prosperities verses adversities (Nesse, 2019; Nesse & Williams, 1995). This is reminiscent of Hillâs (1968) famous question of whether depression is a âreaction posture or diseaseâ which is still debated today (Gilbert, 2006). Given that most concepts of depression place loss of positive affect central to the difficulty, and indeed my PhD studies supported that, then the evolutionary question would be: what is the adaptive value of toning down positive affect and reward sensitivity, reducing explorative behaviour and confidence, suppressing aggression and becoming behaviourally wary and inhibited? Are there particular contexts where this pattern of responding is likely? And looking at other associated experiences: what is the adaptive value of seeing oneself as inferior or disconnected from others? Asking these questions doesnât mean we are arguing that psychiatric syndromes or psychiatric labels are adaptive. EFA does not ask what the adaptive function of âdepressionâ is because thatâs a complex, variant and heterogeneous syndrome. Rather it considers the potential adaptive value of subcomponents, in what contexts might they be adaptive and in what contexts may they become maladaptive to turn down spirit of behaviour and positive reward sensitivity. Before thinking of depression as a pathology we need to think about how some of its elements represent defensive strategies subject to genetic, epigenetic and contextual variation. Such mental states, with these subcomponents, should be noted in other species, and the contexts in which they are generated should have some degree of cross species consistency. That then is the background for the research to be discussed.
EFA candidates for depression
There have been many candidates suggested as the core candidates for evolved mechanisms underpinning depression (reviewed elsewhere Gilbert, 1992, 2006, 2007, 2013). One of the earliest ideas was that the depressed-like states are ways of conserving resources in poor payoff environments; that is when invigorated efforts are likely to fail then itâs better to reduce activity. One hunkers down and waits for better times. Nesse (2000) offered an updated model of this approach. Linked, but also different, were studies looking at what happens to animals who are confronted by stresses they could not control. This evolved into the learned helplessness model of depression suggesting when stress first occurs there is an invigorated effort to try to escape or control it. If, and when, those efforts and struggles fail, and the animal learns that nothing they do will work, explorative and effortful behaviour is switched off, they close down outputs and become withdrawn, passive and inhibited (Peterson, Maier, & Seligman, 1993; Seligman, 1975). These are not consciously chosen strategies but ways in which the physiological system reacts to that kind of stress. Debate arose as to whether this was a learnt phenomenon, or a biological phenomenon related to (for example) monoamine depletion associated with fear, stress and other factors (Weiss, Demetrikopoulos, McCurdy, West, & Bonsall, 2000). Indeed, much earlier, Hans Selye (1936) had proposed a model for stress called General Adaptation Syndrome. Here, the first response is recognition of the threat that alarms and activates the sympathetic stress flight and fight system. If this continues the body tries to resist by parasympathetic regulation and bringing the state back into balance but w...
