The transcendent experience, often described as an ego-dissolving encounter with something greater than one's self, is cross-cultural and pan-historical. I present a model describing the evolution and function of various evolved modes of transcendence, such as group-directed transcendence, theory of mind (ToM)-evoking transcendence, aesthetic transcendence, and epistemic transcendence. I then discuss the vulnerability of these modes of transcendence to costly exploitation by selfish individuals who activate the transcendent state in others for their own reproductive benefit. In the ensuing section, I discuss the relationship between transcendence and human development across the lifespan, and conclude with some thoughts on the epistemic and ethical utility of transcendence.
Men have been sexually selected (both via malemale competition and female choice) to compete with other men for survival and reproduction. Evidence in humans suggests that men are especially competitive with other men over resources and, if successful, are valued as attractive mating prospects by women. We predicted that experimentally manipulating competitive outcomes would differentially affect men's sexual interest, with a victory resulting in men expressing greater interest in mating opportunities and a loss resulting in decreased interest in mating opportunities. One hundred thirteen men were asked to participate in a speed-based competition. Participants were randomly assigned to experience a win, a loss, or no competitive feedback (control condition). Participants' sexual interest was gauged by their responses to photographs of women of differing attractiveness, wherein they were asked to rate their sexual interest in the photographed women and to give attributions of sexual interest to the same women. Results showed that single (unmated) men exhibited the predicted effects of competition on sexual interest. Specifically, whereas both single men and mated men were more sexually interested in high-attractiveness women than in low-attractiveness women, only single men exhibited a higher sexual interest after a win, followed by the control and losing conditions, respectively.
The evolution and development of adaptations result from the gradual selection and inheritance of traits and behaviors that better enable organisms to acquire and maintain resources needed for survival and reproduction. We argue that instances of individual, regional, and global violence are rooted in our adaptations to seek, acquire, maintain, and utilize limited resources, regardless of whether such adaptations are currently successful at doing so. However, violence is not the only strategy employed by organisms to acquire resources; cooperation, reciprocity, and social bonding are behaviors that may likewise prove useful in this endeavor. We speculate about how individual adaptations and their by-products may interact with the adaptations of other individuals and with societal and cultural phenomena, both violently and nonviolently. Finally, we discuss how individual decisions can affect higher level regional and global violence. Individual decisions carry moral weight for the individual in question and for society as a whole. We hope to convince readers that their personal decisions and behaviors have far-reaching consequences on the well-being of others and that an evolutionary consciousness may help us to understand the effects of our personal choices on the existence of individual-and group-level violence.
Coevolutionary arms races between males and females have equipped both sexes with mutually manipulative and defensive adaptations. These adaptations function to benefit individual reproductive interests at the cost of the reproductive interests of oppositesex mates, and arise from evolutionary dynamics such as parental investment (unequal reproductive costs between the sexes) and sexual selection (unequal access to opposite-sex mates). Individuals use these adaptations to hijack others' reproductive systems, psychological states, and behaviors-essentially using other individuals as extended phenotypes of themselves. Such extended phenotypic manipulation of sexual rivals and opposite-sex mates is enacted by humans with the aid of hormones, pheromones, neurotransmitters, emotions, language, mind-altering substances, social institutions, technologies, and ideologies. Furthermore, sexual conflict may be experienced at an individual level when maternal genes and paternal genes are in conflict within an organism. Sexual conflict may be physically and emotionally destructive, but may also be exciting and constructive for relationships. By extending the biological concept of sexual conflict into social and cultural domains, scholars may successfully bridge many of the interdisciplinary gaps that separate the sciences from the humanities.
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