The Well-Evolved Life: Well-Being, Evolution and Personhood: an Annotated Bibliography
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The well-evolved life: Well-being, evolution and personhood: An annotated bibliography Kevin Moore Lyn Minchington LEaP Research Paper No. 28 May 2013 The well-evolved Life: Well-being, evolution and personhood: An annotated bibliography Kevin Moore Lyn Minchington Land Environment and People Research Paper No. 28 May 2013 ISSN 2230-4207 (on-line) ISBN 978-0-86476-361-7 (on-line) Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand Acknowledgements Work for the production of this annotated bibliography was funded by the Lincoln University Research Fund, RM Code: 0980023455 (Start Date: 01/07/2012; End Date: 31/12/2013). ©LEaP, Lincoln University, New Zealand 2014 Contacts - email: [email protected] web: http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/leap This information may be copied or reproduced electronically and distributed to others without restriction, provided LEaP, Lincoln University is acknowledged as the source of information. Under no circumstances may a charge be made for this information without the express permission of LEaP, Lincoln University, New Zealand. Series URL: http:hdl.handle.net/10182/3410 i Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................. i Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ ii Methods ................................................................................................................................................. iv References .............................................................................................................................................. v Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................ 1 i Introduction Advances in most areas of specialization within the broad discipline of psychology occur incrementally – sometimes in larger increments, sometimes in smaller increments. One often-noted disadvantage of such specialized research progress is that connections between different areas can be overlooked or neglected. Three areas within psychology that have been making rapid theoretical and empirical progress over the past few decades have been: (i) understandings of well-being; (ii) evolutionary and related biological approaches to human psychology; and, (iii) theories of the development of personhood (or the ‘self’). There is reason to believe that these areas have strong conceptual inter-relationships. In psychology, work on well-being is usually cast at the individual level (e.g., through the notion of ‘subjective well- being’ (SWB) - Diener & Lucas, 1999). That casting implicates the indexing of well-being to a person or ‘self’ as subject or agent of well-being. Similarly, the evolutionary distinctiveness of many human psychological traits connects to the sociality of the species and, in particular, to how that sociality has influenced the evolution of personal consciousness and social individuation. Work on the evolution of emotions such as envy (Hill and Buss, 2006), jealousy (Buss et al. 1992) and shame (Glibert, 2003), for example, has highlighted the social and moral networks within which persons are located, perceived and held accountable as individual persons. Finally, analyses of well-being frequently make reference to some notion of human nature, most obviously in eudaimonic approaches that emphasise ‘nature fulfillment’ as central to the experience of well-being (e.g., see Haybron, 2008). While there is general acknowledgment that evolutionary processes are not specifically targeted at maximizing individual well-being, it is also true that there is enough congruence between evolutionary selective processes and the evolved physical and psychological ‘design’ of humans to suggest considerable overlap between adaptive function and organismic and psychological well-being. Simply, we tend to feel better at various levels when we operate in a manner suited to our evolved physical and psychological architecture. Given significant advances in all three of these areas it therefore makes sense to draw together threads from each in order to take stock of what is known about the convergence and interdependence of these streams of research activity. In practical terms, there has been considerable public interest in well-being research to the extent of increasing consideration of ways in which policy settings might incorporate human well-being (e.g., as policy goals and as measures of policy success). Grounding such policy and practice in relation to well-being within broader understandings of evolutionary influences and social and developmental processes involved in the generation of persons seems timely. Such grounding should also provide more fundamental understandings of well-being that indicate how different policy areas (e.g., social development, education, the economy, health, environmental management, etc.) potentially interact, reinforce, moderate or combine to produce well-being outcomes at the population level. The aim of this annotated bibliography is to provide a ‘first cut’ at characterising this multiple interface. It cannot hope to be comprehensive and apologies are made in advance to any authors of work that might be omitted from this collection. ii The Well-Evolved Life: Well-being, Evolution and Personhood In particular, the bibliography, with a few exceptions, is restricted to journal articles accessed via the targeted databases. The omission of many books and book chapters is a definite limitation of the bibliography. The assumption, however, was that most books in the area are based upon published articles. Also, in most cases, book or book chapter authors are themselves article authors. Should someone wish to pursue the work of particular authors featured in this bibliography they will be able to locate books, book chapters and other omitted reference material by those authors. The aim of this bibliography is to assist with rather than substitute for comprehensive literature searches. Many bibliographies are designed to provide useful source material for particular areas of research specialization or the development of particular theoretical frameworks (e.g., see Axelrod and D’Ambrosio’s (1994) “Annotated Bibliography on the Evolution of Cooperation” for an example of the latter). This bibliography differs from many others in that, as just noted, it seeks to target a set of interfaces between three distinct bodies of literature: Human well-being; Evolutionary (and related biological) perspectives on human behaviour; Personhood (including the ‘self’). Each of these bodies of literature is extensive in its own right. Importantly, this bibliography does not aim to include all the literature in each area. Instead, its focus is on the overlap between these areas. As will be explained in the ‘Methods’ section, this has involved a necessarily subjective, but principled, process of selection of those published works (captured in the search process) that provide clear insight into the connections between two or more of these areas of research. Within those bounds, the selection process has been deliberately ‘permissive’. While major, well- cited works are included so too are some quite focused and specific studies. The selection criterion in this respect is a work’s ‘fit’ with the purpose of the bibliography, rather than its renown. iii The Well-Evolved Life: Well-being, Evolution and Personhood Methods The initial stage of the project involved extensive database searches on the overlap between the areas of evolutionary psychology, personhood and well-being. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, the following databases were chosen as being appropriate to locate articles linking the three subject areas: Web of Science; Science Direct; Proquest-Social Science; Google Scholar; General One File; Web of Knowledge. In addition, the Evolution and Human Behavior journal website and General LIU Library searches were performed. Words were identified that would target the connections between evolutionary psychology, personhood and well-being. On that basis, literature searches were undertaken using combinations of the following keywords: evolutionary psychology; evolution*; behavio* ecology; personhood; self; selfhood; social construct*; well-being; human; happiness; flourish*; neurodevelopment; play. As the search progressed, keywords were added if they were being used in a way related to the focus of this study, or to follow themes that seemed to be particularly relevant and fruitful. For example, the keyword ‘play’ was added to follow a developmental theme that emphasised development of cognitive and social skills necessary for personhood and, potentially, well-being. Children have always engaged in play, play has evolved with the developing person, and play leads to well-being, joy and happiness. Citations were selected primarily from reviewing the abstracts, and the relevant citations were saved in an Endnote file (Version X4), with the PDF’s attached (if they were available to download). Extra citations were located and added from appropriate references cited in the located articles, and also by searching for key authors identified (e.g., Martin, J., for articles relating to selfhood/personhood; Grinde, B., for articles relating to evolutionary well-being; and, Pellegrini, A., for articles relating to play). In the development of any