Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life

June 27, 2011
Classical Freudian psychology was often mocked for claiming that everything we do is a result of our sexual drives, but evolutionary psychologist and Arizona State professor Kenrick says that his field now believes that isn't far from the truth. Evolutionary psychologists look at how we make decisions based on how they help us survive and pass along our genes, and Kendrick looks at various areas of life in this light. For instance, Kenrick reports on studies showing that reproductive strategies lead people to analyze expressions of anger differently in men and women. Studies also show that not all prejudice has the same motivation: people fear different groups, such as blacks or homosexuals, for different reasons. According to Kenrick, creative acts can also promote reproduction by attracting a mate or conferring status. The author compares the human brain to a coloring book rather than the traditional blank slate to express the interplay of innate qualities and the environment. As with a coloring book, the outlines are with us from birth, but environment influences what colors we choose to complete the images. This briskly written and often witty book will challenge readers on many levels and is sure to provoke debate, if not controversy.

March 1, 2011

An evolutionary psychologist with a flair for expressing his ideas in down-to-earth language seeks to integrate evolutionary psychology and cognitive science to explain what makes human beings tick.

Kenrick (Psychology/Arizona State Univ.) asserts that taking an evolutionary perspective clarifies human behavior and has major implications for disciplines such as law, political science, business, education and medicine. His opening chapters focus on research conducted by him and his colleagues on simple, selfish biases to answer questions about sex, aggression and prejudice. He proposes that each person has an assortment of subselves for dealing with different situations--e.g., coping with danger, finding romance, gaining status--and that these subselves are awakened at different stages of life and have a powerful effect on mental processes. What may stir the most controversy is Kenrick's reconstruction of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. Kenrick's revision replaces self-actualization, which Maslow put at the top of his pyramid, with mate acquisition, mate retention and parenting, and he overlaps the goals to indicate that while higher ones develop later, they do not replace lower ones. The author then examines how higher aspirations of Maslow's self-actualization need, such as creativity, spirituality and religion, are connected to the same evolutionary mechanisms as sex and aggression. Finally, he looks at how the insights of dynamical-systems theory combine with those of evolutionary psychology to produce a better understanding of patterns of social life and of how our human nature is linked to such large-scale phenomena as culture, religion and economics.

Kenrick's gift for speaking directly to the reader and making the abstract concrete through humor and homely examples make this an accessible and engaging exploration of how human behavior is connected to the behavior of our primitive ancestors.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 1, 2011
First, a little background. Evolutionary psychology theorizes that many human psychological traits are evolved through natural and sexual selection. Cognitive science is the study of the way humans (and computers) process information such as language, emotion, and sensory input. In this thought-provoking book, Kenrick, a psychology professor, suggests that we can arrive at a better, more realistic picture of the human mind if we combine these two disciplines, using each to complement the other. He touches on a number of psychological issues, such as the way our perception of beauty is relative (depending on the situation and context) and how our innate biases (regarding age, gender, race, etc.) affect the way we relate to the world and how we became the way we are. The book requires a certain level of knowledge on the part of the readerits not a beginners guide to your mindbut Kenricks ideas are undeniably provocative. Not, perhaps, for the casual reader, but it should score big with those familiar with the subject.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)