Evolutionary Psychology, Clinical Psychology, and Wisdom

A Realistic and Ambitious View of Human Potential

Grounding clinical conceptualizations in evolutionary constructs does not mean resignation to ‘primitive’ functioning. Rather, we embrace an ambitious model of human potential, noting that evolutionary principles have also enabled wisdom and the flourishing life that results from wisdom. Yes, humans clearly have mechanisms that predispose us to feel fear, anxiety, and anger. But humans also have mechanisms that predispose us to empathy, compassion, gratitude, humility, mindfulness, and emotional intelligence. The mechanisms that dominate depend on our psychological ambition and which mechanisms get more practice.

Genetic Determinism vs. Predisposition: No phenotype is determined

As discussed in other articles on this Substack, evolution through natural selection gave rise to adaptive phenotypic features such as arms, legs, eyes, and teeth. By enabling grabbing, running, seeing predators, and chewing food, these features provided adaptive advantage, increased reproductive fitness, spread through the population over several generations, and became universal. So now nearly all mammals, including humans, have arms, legs, eyes, and teeth, and the dedicated brain modules that control those features. These features reliably develop across highly varied environments. Infants born in New York and Australia, in warm and cool climates, in salubrious and scarce conditions, in dense and sparse areas, will all have arms, legs, eyes, and teeth.

A common misunderstanding is the distinction between genetic predispositions and genetic determinism. When people hear the word ‘genetic,’ they often immediately assume that it means we are stuck with certain traits. But traits are consequences of the interaction between genetic predispositions and the environments around them, not from genetic information alone. Humans have genetic predispositions for arms and legs, anger and fear, alcoholism and anxiety. The genotype interacts with the environment to produce the outcome—phenotype—that we see. Having a genotype for legs does not guarantee the phenotype of having legs. If the environment changes enough, it can interact with even strong genetic predispositions to produce an alternate, extreme phenotype. A soldier stepping on a landmine comes back from war without legs, for example.

Cultivating Wisdom

This raises the possibility that extraordinary environments might lead to extreme outcomes in positive directions as well. High frequency practice of meditation, empathy, and gratitude may lead to extraordinary phenotypes, such as wisdom and a minimum of anxiety, anger, or conflict. After all, we don’t just have genetic predispositions for fear, anxiety, and anger. We also have genetic predispositions for skills such as mindfulness, empathy, compassion, gratitude, and wisdom. Whatever gets practiced is more easily and frequently activated in the future. 

We can acknowledge that fear and its associated anxiety both have adaptive functions and strong genetic predispositions. Yet, like legs, if the environment (including one’s development of wisdom and skills) changes enough, fear and anxiety can still be significantly reduced. Such conceptualization, we argue, can contribute to both normalizing fear and anxiety reactions for clients and therapists alike, as well as informing the conditions that are likely to contribute to those outcomes. Importantly, it can also normalize the potential for advanced skills related to wisdom and the substantial reduction of fear and anxiety that accompanies wisdom. 

Moving Forward

A common misunderstanding of evolutionary psychology is the assumption that frequent fear, anxiety, and anger are inevitable. Many traditional models of clinical psychology posit the same thing, and assume the narrow goal of psychotherapy to be the reduction of the frequency, intensity, and duration of anxiety and anger from high to moderate, wherein those emotions no longer seriously interfere with work or relationships. Neither are very ambitious. Professional and romantic relationships with extraordinarily high levels of empathy, emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and humility are a Grand Canyon away from those that are not. Calling both ends of the spectrum “relationships” is like calling both a skateboard and a jet plane “transportation.” Technically, it’s true. In practice, there are vast differences.

My next article will discuss in some detail the definitions and skills associated with wisdom, methods for developing them, developmental stages associated with those skills, and the extraordinary life of wellness that is possible when genetic predispositions for wisdom are actualized with practice. We hope this series of articles can be one more tool that can help folks in their journey to transform their well-being and relationships from skateboards to jet planes.