How Evolution Can Help Us Understand Child Development and Behaviour Annie Swanepoel, Daniela F
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BJPsych Advances (2016), vol. 22, 36–43 doi: 10.1192/apt.bp.114.014043 ARTICLE How evolution can help us understand child development and behaviour Annie Swanepoel, Daniela F. Sieff, Graham Music, John Launer, Michael Reiss & Bernadette Wren Annie Swanepoel is a consultant us how, in response to environmental influences, SUMMARY child and adolescent psychiatrist genes are switched on or off. It is also showing in the Hertfordshire Partnership The traditional disease model, still dominant in us that these effects can be transmitted down University Foundation Trust. She psychiatry, is less than ideal for making sense of is interested in the integration of generations. Yet surprisingly few people have psychological issues such as the effects of early body and mind, nature and nurture, childhood experiences on development. We argue asked wider questions such as ‘Why does psychoneuroimmunology, as well as this sensitivity exist?’ and ‘Why does this evolutionary psychology. Daniela F. that a model based on evolutionary thinking can Sieff has a doctorate in biological deepen understanding and aid clinical practice sensitivity sometimes lead to apparently negative anthropology. She is interested by showing how behaviours, bodily responses developmental patterns?’. However, these in the ways that interdisciplinary and psychological beliefs tend to develop for questions can be fruitfully addressed if we turn to perspectives can foster the ‘adaptive’ reasons, even when these ways of being understanding of emotional trauma. an evolutionary perspective. Graham Music is a consultant might on first appearance seem pathological. Such Organisms that are better fitted to their child and adolescent psychotherapist understanding has implications for treatment. It environment (which means better adapted to their at the Tavistock Clinic and an adult also challenges the genetic determinist model, environment) have a greater chance of surviving psychotherapist in private practice. by showing that developmental pathways have and producing offspring. There is substantial He supervises and teaches on many evolved to be responsive to the physical and social courses, and is interested in the environment in which the individual matures. evidence that environmental sensitivity in infants interface between developmental Thought can now be given to how biological or and children helps them to develop in the ways science and clinical work. John that will be most adaptive, given the circumstances Launer is an associate dean at psychological treatments – and changing a child’s Health Education England and an environment – can foster well-being. Evolutionary into which they have been born. In this article, we honorary lifetime consultant at the thinking has major implications for how we think explore these dynamics. In particular, we focus Tavistock Clinic. He is a doctor, about psychopathology and for targeting the on how the physical and social environment of family psychotherapist and writer. optimum sites, levels and timings for interventions. His principal interests include parents affects their parenting styles, and how an clinical supervision for the health LEARNING OBJECTIVES infant’s environment (which consists mainly of professions, narrative medicine and the parent) affects development and attachment • Understand the value of applying the principles of evolutionary psychology. Michael patterns. We also outline the evolutionary logic Reiss is Professor of Science evolutionary theory to human behaviour underlying these dynamics, arguing that although Education at the University College • Understand the evolutionary basis of attachment London Institute of Education and theory, and how this can help to make sense it is ideal to be loved by one’s immediate family a Fellow of the Academy of Social of different responses to danger, reproductive and reared in circumstances where there are no Sciences. A priest in the Church material shortages, evolution does not prepare of England and the former director strategies and internal models of the world of education at the Royal Society, • Use evolutionary theory to understand the us only for the optimum. We suggest that an he has written extensively about adaptive nature of certain apparently abnormal evolutionary understanding might be helpful in curricula, pedagogy and assessment forms of behaviour observed in clinical practice understanding the occurrence of psychopathology, in science education, sex education and might also help us to discriminate between and bioethics. Bernadette Wren is DECLARATION OF INTEREST head of psychology at The Tavistock adaptive responses and pathology in psychiatry The authors are members of the evo-psychotherapy and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. more generally. She is the associate director at the study group at the Tavistock Clinic Trust’s Gender Identity Development Service and an honorary senior Why we need an evolutionary research associate at University understanding of human behaviour College London. In recent years the ‘nature v. nurture’ debate has Correspondence Dr Graham been laid to rest. We now know that genes and Ever since Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Music, Child and Family Department, environment are inextricably linked. We are Wallace independently came up with the theory Tavistock and Portman NHS beginning to discover how that linking occurs of natural selection, evolutionary ideas have Foundation Trust, 120 Belsize Lane, London NW3 5BA, UK. Email: through the growing discipline of epigenetics generated controversy, whether as a challenge [email protected] (Provencal 2015). Epigenetic research is showing to religious beliefs, through their dubious use 36 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 25 Sep 2021 at 16:16:46, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use. Evolution and child development in social Darwinist ideas, or as a result of environment will activate different pathways and their misuse in eugenics. In addition, the more states. Although the pathways activated in hostile reductionist sociobiological accounts of the 1970s environments are typically regarded by psychiatry (Wilson 1978), which gave scant attention to the as pathological, and although they do indeed role of early experiences, did little to enhance the have profoundly negative effects on longerterm credibility of evolutionary thought and gave rise to physical and psychological health (Weder 2014), heated argument about the relative importance of when looked at through an evolutionary lens we nature v. nurture (Sahlins 1977). In recent years, can begin to understand why these pathways exist however, there has been increasing agreement and how they can be adaptive. about the extent to which much of human Nesse (2012), one of the leading psychiatrists behaviour is the result of natural selection, and to incorporate evolutionary thinking into clinical we now have explorations of the importance of practice, states: ‘Psychiatry has emulated the rest evolution in areas such as psychotherapy (McGuire of medicine by seeking causes and categories in 2006), emotional disorders (Nesse 2009) and biological mechanisms, but because it lacks the human sexuality (Launer 2014). Box 1 lists the kind of functional framework that physiology principles that need to underlie any evolutionary often provides for the rest of medicine, there is understanding of human behaviour. a temptation to conceptualize disorders in an It is now clear that humans are particularly essentialist way that oversimplifies reality’. He good at adapting to different environments. We concludes that ‘mental disorders will be fully survive in a wide range of physical environments, understood only when we can, as in the rest of from the Arctic to rainforest to the Sahara. We can medicine, understand pathology in terms of also survive in a wide range of emotional environ normal functions as well as normal mechanisms’. ments, from loving to neglectful to violent ones. In We aim to illustrate this principle using adapting to specific environments, be they physical attachment theory. or emotional, certain characteristics and genetic potentials will be activated through epigenetic Attachment theory mechanisms, whereas others will be suppressed. Attachment theory was formulated by the child From birth onwards, indeed even prenatally psychiatrist John Bowlby (1969). At its core was (Music 2013; Glover 2015), humans are continually the observation that infants are born with a need to reading signals about their emotional environment, form a strong bond to their main caregiver (usually and their bodies and minds are then adapting to the mother). If they are to become psychologically it. Living in a nurturing environment will activate healthy, their caregiver has to respond to this need particular genetic pathways and psychological by providing dependable, sensitive and loving states, whereas living in a violent or unloving nurturance. Bowlby showed that when such care is available, children grow up to become what we regard as psychologically healthy. He called such BOX 1 How evolutionary principles apply to children ‘securely attached’. In contrast, Bowlby human behaviour felt that when such care is not available, children • Each human alive today is the result of a continuous, were being pushed towards psychopathology. He unbroken line of ancestors stretching back 3.5 billion called children who grew up without sensitive care years ‘insecurely attached’. • Genetic traits cannot survive across generations if the Bowlby was