The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics: How Conservatism and Liberalism Evolved Within Humans by Anonymous Conservative

Author:Anonymous Conservative [Conservative, Anonymous]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
ISBN: 9780982947937
Amazon: 0982947933
Publisher: Federalist Publications
Published: 2014-07-16T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Social Science, Rearing, and r/K Psychologies

One interesting observation about r/K strategies is that many organisms appear to be able to partially mold their psychological reproductive strategy during childhood. During early developmental periods, such organisms perform subconscious assessments of their childhood environment. These assessments produce reflexive changes in their biochemistry, which then produce changes in their neurological development. These changes then more permanently alter their psychology (and their reproductive strategy) as adults.

Put simply, such organisms are subconsciously extrapolating out the likely resource availability and environmental harshness they will encounter as adults, and adopting the best reproductive strategy possible to confront their specific environment. On maturation, they will then exhibit a customized version of their innate r or K-selected psychology, as a result of these early environmental assessments.1

Thus in many organisms, the adoption of an r or K psychology is not wholly a product of genetic selection, nor is the psychological trait itself solely imbued in the sequence of the genome. Rather, over time, the genome has developed the ability to modulate the expression of the strategy individuals are genetically imbued with, should an early assessment of the environment indicate that such a change in tack would be advantageous.

This would mean that such an individual may be genetically programmed with genes prone to produce an r or K-selected psychology, however their early rearing experiences can override their genes to some degree, producing biochemical cues which will lead them to modify the developmental path that their genetic predispositions would place them upon.

Of course, as the environment selected for the exhibition of a specific reproductive strategy, one would inevitably see a rise in genetic predispositions towards that reproductive strategy designed to confront the environment they are faced with. Regardless, evidence does indicate that environmental cues presented in childhood do affect the degree to which one exhibits an r or K-type strategy at adulthood.

It is noteworthy that the primary cues which trigger this r/K divergence of psychology in mammals are believed to be presented to the individual within the rearing environment. In rodents, the nature of maternal care is a specific motive force producing the divergence of relative r/K psychologies in offspring.2 In these models, maternal care is presumed to be determined by the environment the mother is confronted with. A mother constantly stressed by fierce predation, will experience increased stress, and thereby offer a lower standard of care to her offspring, and they will then tend to develop more r-selected reproductive strategies, within the bounds of genetic predispositions. If a mother provides strong and consistent maternal nurturing (higher investment parenting), the same genetic lines of rodents will trend towards more K-selected psychological tendencies.

Evidence generally indicates that the divergence towards an r-type strategy in rats is due to a stress mediated, epigenetic effect,3 designed to produce a longer lasting, stress-mediated epigenetic modulation of the expression of genes in the individual. In other words, exposed to a stressful early life period, portions of the individual's DNA will experience temporary modifications, which will not alter the code of the DNA (ie.

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