Evolution of Creating Difficulties for Others
Paper Presented at the Conference of the Northeastern Evolutionary Psychology Society. Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; June 2-5, 2016
5 Pages Posted: 11 Jun 2016
Date Written: June 9, 2016
Abstract
Evolutionary roots of different types of human activities in creating difficulties and problems for others are discussed. A hypothesis concerning the following evolutionary stages of creating destructive, constructive and diagnosing difficulties is presented: (1) inhibition (can be executed by cell colonies); (2) trial attacks and aggressive exploratory of fish, insects, etc.; armed reconnaissance in human military activities; (3) creating constructive difficulties (in predators’ teaching their youngsters, human teaching math, etc.); (4) creating diagnosing difficulties as helping behavior (stress tests in medical diagnosis, educational and psychological tests, etc.); (5) creating meta-difficulties (difficulties for creating difficulties) like designing instructional problems to teach others to create destructive, constructive and diagnosing difficulties. A developmental trend of creating difficulties to increase their unpredictability is discussed.
Keywords: evolutionary psychology, creating difficulties, complicology
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