Alpha God by Hector A. Garcia

Author:Hector A. Garcia
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633880214
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2015-02-17T05:00:00+00:00

THE PECKING ORDER

Research in evolutionary psychopathology suggests that depression may be an adaptation. As one point of evidence, scholars in this field cite epidemiology; worldwide depression is an unusually prevalent psychiatric illness. In America, it is the most common psychiatric condition, with a lifetime prevalence of nearly 17 percent—meaning that about one out of every five Americans will suffer from a major depressive episode at least once in their lifetime.2 We know that depression has a strong genetic component,3 but this rate of prevalence is far greater than we would expect by chance mutation. Psychiatrist and medical anthropologist Daniel Wilson puts it this way, “Simply stated, genes common enough to have evolved by means of natural selection can have done so only by advantages conferred to lineages which have carried such genes even if such genes now express a level of phenotypic disease.”4

If it seems paradoxical to describe a recognized psychiatric disorder as adaptive, remember that nature “cares” little for how unpleasant a subjective experience may be so long as it promotes survival. The key to understanding how depression can provide a survival advantage lies in understanding the relevance to rank status. Evolutionary scientists have found that depression among social animals is linked to their respective positions in the pecking order. The term pecking order was first introduced in 1935 by a Norwegian zoologist, Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe, who used the term to describe how chickens maintain rank by the strategic use of aggression—that is, through pecking one another. He observed how a drop in rank among chickens was often followed by an apparent depressive condition:

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