Evolutionary Psychology and Rationality
Kevin MacDonald
Department of Psychology
This paper discusses recent research on relationships between evolutionarily older sub-cortical mechanisms and more recently evolved cortical control mechanisms. There are a variety of contrasts between these types of systems, including implicit versus explicit processing, parallel versus sequential processing, fast versus slow processing, contextualized versus de-contextualized processing, and rational versus irrational processing. Research on inhibitory control of heuristic processing as an aspect of general intelligence will be briefly discussed, but special focus will be given to the personality system of conscientiousness as enabling conscious, inhibitory control of evolved subcortical mechanisms. Aggression, delay of gratification, fear, and ethnocentrism will be discussed from this perspective. Finally, the adaptiveness of conscious control mechanisms is discussed via consideration of the history of ideology and social controls in the regulation of sexual behavior in creating and maintaining monogamy in Western European history.