The Seven Sins of Evolutionary Psychology - Konrad Lorenz Institute

An Evolutionary Perspective on Cognitive Orientationthird alternative consists in the emergence of ameaning that includes no components enabling, indicatingor compelling for action. Hence, the inputis dismissed as irrelevant. The fourth alternativearises when the input cannot be identified, for example,because too little information is available, or noresemblance could be established between it andpatterns of stimuli stored in memory. Hence, it istransferred to a higher level of elaboration.The second stage is initiated by feedback indicatingfailure of the conditioned or unconditioned responsesto cope with the situation, or by a meaningsignalling the need for molar action, or by an inputthat has failed to be sufficiently identified despite theorienting response. It is focused on the question“What does it mean in general and what does itmean to or for me?” An enriched process of meaninggeneration sets in, based on extended elaboration ofboth the interpersonally-shared and the personalkinds of meaning, in terms of meaning units in theform of beliefs. Beliefs are cognitive units (namely,they include a referent and a meaning value), expressedverbally or not, which express some messagepresented as true (acceptable, adequate, etc.) or not.The beliefs that emerge at this stage may refer to theindividual’s goals, norms, oneself, or others and reality.By examining the extent to which the person’sgoals, norms, beliefs about oneself and reality areinvolved, meaning generation leads eventually to aspecification whether action is required or not. Insofaras meaning elaboration indicates that the situationis relevant in regard to the person’s goals,norms, beliefs about self or general beliefs, the indicationis pro-action or at least, going on with theprocess of elaborating the input, even though thenature of the action or its direction remain unspecified.In this context, relevance of beliefs means thata goal arises which may seem to be attainable in thesituation, a norm belief is evoked which implies thenecessity of undertaking action, or a belief aboutoneself or a general belief arises which indicates possibledangers in the situation if no action is undertakenor if action is undertaken. Thus, the output ofthe second stage is indication for action, blocking ofaction, or no indication for action.If there is indication for action or at least no blockingof action, the third stage sets in. It is focused onthe question “What will I do?” The answer is soughtby means of beliefs characterized in terms of relevantcontents and a specific form. Relevance in contentsdenotes deep underlying meanings of the involvedinputs rather than the superficial obvious explicitmeanings. The deep meanings are characterizedBelief Subject RelationSelf I FactualNorms Non-I DesirableGoals I DesiredGeneral Non-I FactualFigure 1: Structure of the Four Types of Beliefs.first, by being of the personal–subjective type ratherthan the interpersonally-shared type and second, bybeing relatively remote though not dissociated fromthe surface meanings. For example, when the inputis ‘dieting’, the surface meaning is likely to be “eatingless”, and the deeper personal meanings, which donot necessarily refer specifically to eating, could be“renouncing pleasures”, or “accepting restrictionson one’s actions”. Meaning elaboration of the inputin successive steps leads to the emergence of differentdeeper meanings.As noted, the beliefs are characterized also interms of form. The beliefs that play a role in the thirdstage are formally of four types: (a) Beliefs about goals,which express actions or states desired or undesiredby the individual (e.g., “I want to be respected byothers”); (b) Beliefs about rules and norms, which expressethical, esthetic, social and other rules andstandards (e.g., “One should be assertive”); (c) Beliefsabout self, which express information about oneself,such as one’s habits, actions, feelings or abilities(e.g., “I rarely become excited”, “I was born in Israel”);and (d) General beliefs, which express informationconcerning others and the environment (e.g.,“The world is a highly dangerous place”). The fourtypes of beliefs may be characterized formally interms of the kind of subject and the kind of relationbetween the subject and predicate. Figure 1 presentsthe formal structure of the four types of beliefs.Accordingly, the cognitive elaborations in thethird stage refer to beliefs of four types that representdeep underlying meanings of the involved inputs.The meaning elaborations consist in matchings andinteractions between beliefs (‘belief clustering’),based on clarifying the orientativeness of the beliefs(i.e., the extent to which they support the indicatedcourse of action). If the majority of beliefs of a certaintype support the action, that belief type is consideredas positively oriented in regard to that action. Alternately,it may be negatively oriented or lack any orientativeness.If all four belief types support a certainaction, or at least three support it whereby the fourthEvolution and Cognition ❘ 85 ❘ 2001, Vol. 7, No. 1