David Geary control-related human behavior framework

EXCERPT: "I am not arguing that people always have a conscious and explicit goal to

control other individuals and resources in their environment; often they do

not. What I am proposing is that selection pressures (e.g., social competition)

will operate such that behavioral biases will evolve that focus on securing

social and ecological resources, and that these biases covaried with survival or

reproductive outcomes during the species' evolutionary history. The biases

result from the activity of an array of brain, cognitive, and affective mecha-

nisms that process the corresponding information patterns (e.g., movement

patterns of prey species) and guide behavioral activities toward these features

of the social and ecological world. In other words, one way of organizing

brain, cognitive, affective, and behavioral systems under a single principle is to

cast them as reflecting a fundamental motivation to control within-species and

between-species (e.g., prey capture, or predator avoidance) behavioral dynam-

ics and to gain control of resources that have tended to covary with evolution-

ary outcomes. With respect to humans, the Darwin and Wallace (1858, p. 54)

conceptualization of natural selection as a “struggle for existence” becomes

additionally a struggle with other human beings for control of the resources

that support life and allow one to reproduce. " www.missouri.edu/~psycorie/FolkKnowledgePDF.pdf (2005?)

Done