Darwin's influence on Psychology, in 5 points

Some people insist that psychology and philosophy are practically the same. That both work mainly with ideas, and that they serve to know how to develop their own perspective from which to live life.

But this is false: psychology is not based on ideas, but on matter; not in how we should behave, but in how we actually behave, and how we could behave if certain objective conditions were met. In other words, psychology has always been a science closely related to biology. After all, behavior does not exist if there is no body that performs actions.

Considering the above, it is not strange the fact that Charles Darwin had and still has a great influence on psychology. After all, biology is based on a mixture between genetics and the developments that have started from the theory of evolution proposed by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Next we will see some of the aspects in which this researcher influences the development of behavioral science.

• Related article: "The theory of biological evolution"

What is Darwin's theory of evolution?

Everything that is done in biology today is based on the idea that Charles Darwin was fundamentally correct when he explained the mechanism by which the different forms of lifetime. Any other proposal that claims to be a unifying theory of biology as modern synthesis is now (mixture of the theory of evolution and genetics) must provide a huge amount of evidence, and that is not something that seems to happen early.

Before continuing, it is important to know the main basic ideas about what Darwin proposed about biology. According to the biologist Ernst Mayr, the ideas by which Darwin explained the appearance of species are the following:

1. Evolution

The different lineages of living things show how through the generations there are constant changes in the traits of individuals and in their way of organizing or inhabiting ecosystems.

2. Common ancestor

Although all "family lines" tend to change over time, they all have common ancestry. For example, humans and chimpanzees come from lineages that could not be differentiated millions of years ago.

3. Gradualism

According to Darwin, the changes that occurred through the generations appeared very slowly and gradually, so that it is not possible to identify a specific moment in which there is a turning point in the process of developing a certain feature. Nowadays, however, it is known that the appearance of traits does not always have to be in this way.

4. Speciation

Others can come from one species, so that different evolutionary branches appear from one that gives rise to them.

5. Natural selection

The changes that appear in the lineages of life forms are driven by natural selection, a process by which some traits are more likely to be passed on to future generations, depending on the conditions of the environment to which it has to be adapted.

The importance of genetics

It is clear that Darwin left many questions unanswered, among other things because in the middle of the 19th century limitations in researching such complex topics were an obstacle important. One of these questions was, for example: how do the traits appear that will later or will not be disseminated through the population depending on whether they offer advantages of adaptation to the environment? Genetics studies promoted by Gregor Mendel entered these types of questions. At the base of the construction of living beings there is a genotype, made up of genes, which will delineate what the approximate design of each living being will be like.

The Effects of Darwin's Influence on Psychology

From what we have seen so far, it is already possible to intuit that Darwin's ideas have implications for psychology. Indeed, the fact that behind each living being there is a history of interactions between some traits and the environment in which they appear, makes the style of behavior, which also it can be understood as a trait even though it is not exactly something physical but psychological, can be analyzed in another way.

In this sense, several of the topics dealt with from psychology that come into contact with Darwin's ideas are the following.

1. Concern about differences between the sexes

In Western societies, even before Darwin wrote about evolution, the differences that exist between men and women were something that was normally understood. interpreted from an essentialist perspective: masculinity is expressed through men, and femininity does so through women, because “it cannot be from another mode".

However, Darwin clearly shows that essentialism is totally useless when it comes to understanding these differences between men and women. His ideas gave way to a new perspective: both sexes are different because in each of them the ways of having offspring (and, as a result, making others inherit our traits and genes) are different. The fundamental thing in this case is that, as a general rule, females must pay a higher reproductive cost than males for having offspring, since they are the ones who gestate.

But... what about psychological traits? Do the psychological differences that exist between men and women also respond to the consequences of biological evolution, or are there other alternative explanations? Currently this is an area of ​​research in which there is a lot of activity and that usually generates a lot of interest. It is no wonder: accepting one answer or another can lead to very different public policies.

2. The myth of the mind that understands everything

There was a time when rationality was thought to be the essence of human mental activity. With effort, patience and the development of the right tools, we could perfectly understand practically everything that surrounds us, thanks to the use of reason.

The contributions to science made by Charles Darwin, however, put these ideas in check: if everything that we are exists simply because it helped our ancestors survive, why would it be any different with the ability to think rationally?

Thus, the reason is not there because it is predestined to end ignorance, but because allows us to know the world well enough to stay alive and hopefully reproduce. The tree of life does not have a place at its highest point that should be occupied by the most reasonable species, we are one more branch.

3. The key is to adapt

The concept of adaptation is fundamental in psychology. In fact, in the clinical setting it is often said that one of the main criteria for determining whether something is a mental disorder or it is not looking at whether the behaviors manifested are adaptive or not They are. That is, if in the context in which the person lives, that pattern of behavior generates discomfort.

As to express behaviors it is necessary to have someone who performs actions and a medium in which these actions are received, the key to understanding the behavior is in look at the relationship between these two components, and not just the individual.

In the same way that Darwin pointed out that there are no good or bad traits per se, since one can be useful in one environment and harmful in another, something similar can occur with behaviors: a predilection for repetitive tasks can cause problems in a job facing the public, but not in another oriented towards building.

4. Intelligence breaks paradigms

Another of the influences on psychology that Darwin's work has had has to do with highlight the unique character of that set of mental abilities we call intelligence. This naturalist showed that while in the animal world there are many species capable of behaving in amazing ways to survive, in Most of the cases, these actions are the result of evolution, and have been inherited from one generation to another without there being any learning from each other. half. For example, ants can coordinate in incredible ways to reach a goal, but this happens because they are "programmed" to do so.

On the other hand, there are a number of animal species that are not subject to so many biological constraints when it comes to behaving, and we are one of them. Intelligence is a process of selecting the correct answers within the framework of a process of selecting the correct traits. Genes get us on rails in some things (for example, most people experience sexual urges), but beyond that we have relative freedom to do what we we want. This, however, does not go against the theory of evolution: being smart is useful in certain contexts, and in our case has allowed a relatively puny hominid species to spread across the planet. It is a characteristic that allows us not to have to specialize in a single environment assuming the risk of extinction if that environment disappears or changes too much.

5. Being happy is not the same as persisting

Finally, another of the aspects in which Darwin has influenced psychology is that he helps us to give relative importance to being successful from an evolutionary point of view. Being part of a species that has many offspring capable of surviving to adulthood does not mean success, it is simply the consequence of a natural process in which whatever we do we do not have the last word and in which, furthermore, our happiness is not important. After all, there are many individuals of the same species, ethnic group or family means that for some reason the sons and daughters are being able to leave offspring, perhaps in abundance. What sacrifices have you made to get to that point? There is the important thing.