On this episode, we’re joined by Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry author and Arizona State University’s Center for Evolution Medicine founding director Randolph Nesse. What possible purpose could seemingly self-destructive tendencies like anxiety, depression, and anger serve from an evolutionary standpoint? In fact, some of these biological strategies seem downright counterintuitive to the survival of our species. In a sense, this is true - but “better” doesn’t necessarily translate into easier, more comfortable, or happier for the brains that pilot the bodies being streamlined to pass along their genes to future generations with maximum efficiency. One might suppose that the role natural selection plays in human evolution would be to make life better for us than it was for our forebears.
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