Sublime

Natural selection has made us a cultural species by altering our development in ways that (1) slowed the growth of our bodies through a shortened infancy and extended childhood but added a growth spurt in adolescence, and (2) altered neurological development in complex ways that make our brain advanced at birth yet both highly expandable and enduri

Why do we have this weird mental architecture? As hominid brains tripled in size over the last 5 million years, developing language and a vastly improved ability to reason, why did we evolve an inner lawyer, rather than an inner judge or scientist? Wouldn’t it have been most adaptive for our ancestors to figure out the truth, the real truth about w

living in a group is solved by having a large enough brain to manage the stresses involved.

Of the many emerging descriptions of our social brain, for me the simplest and most elegant is the highly regarded Social Baseline Theory of Lane Beckes and James A. Coan, two researchers at the University of Virginia.

In species in which males stick by their mates or protect their own offspring, it’s because male brains were slightly modified to be more responsive to oxytocin.

everyone, women included, harbors the same basic instincts. People form social alignments with one another whenever such arrangements benefit or enhance each person’s chances of survival and replication. Our attraction circuits are in fact genetic “judges” of the S-and-R value of others.

more dyadic relationships

hide. Here’s a handy umbrella of categories, courtesy of evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller: physical attributes, including health, fertility, and beauty; personality traits, such as conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to novelty; and cognitive ones, namely general intelligence.