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In our theoretical and conceptual model, we argue that the evolutionary theory of costly signaling is key to the theoretical basis of interest and motivation tests and therefore the reliable basis for mapping predictability of human behavior. Therefore the evolutionary theory can provide us with a theoretical basis for motivation and interest test.

 

Evolutionary psychology is based on Charles Darwin’s legacy that the human brain and body have evolved by adaptive processes and by genetic drift. Evolutionary psychology holds that the human brain has many specialized mechanisms that evolved to solve the adaptive problems of our Pleistocene ancestors. Although much effort and time have been invested and sometimes even reputations were at stake, it was not until the recent rediscovery of in the 1970’s of Darwin’s views on natural and sexual selection to explain human behavior from an evolutionary perspective. Based on these findings we argue that a vision of the intricate workings of the human brain yielded a working hypothesis for predicting human behaviour in modern society.

 

We support the evolutionary approach to human behaviour that behaviours of people today are present because in the evolutionary history of human species these behaviours were helpful and necessary for survival and reproduction. Therefore the evolutionary approach to explaining personality is to identify a common behaviour pattern and analyse how that pattern could have been adaptive (beneficial to survival and reproduction) during the development of the human species (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990).

 

If we accept that our individual behaviour is partly genetically defined, then it is natural to extend these ideas to social areas. As the cell evolves in order to adapt to and control its world (evolutionary biology), and the mind does the same at a higher level (evolutionary psychology), so we can assume that society does so too (evolutionary sociology). Evolutionary sociology is the name given originally by Alexandra Maryanski (1992/ 2008) to encompass two kinds of evolutionary perspectives in the field of sociology: the application of such Darwinian approaches as sociobiology and evolutionary psychology to understand the biological foundations of human society, and the description and explanation of long-term social evolution. The first sociologists to take up the evolutionary challenge after Edward O. Wilson’s introduction of sociobiology (1975) were Pierre van den Berghe (1975) and Joseph Lopreato (1984), who concentrated on the role of biological predispositions interacting with social constraints. Both scholars situated these predispositions within the principle of inclusive fitness maximization, or the notion that much behavior can be understood as an organism's attempt to maximize its reproductive success.

 

 

Millions of years shaped our behavior in the process of interacting with our natural and social environment, honing our ability to adapt to changing circumstances. We argue that he ability to understand and predict the behavior of others and being predictable, evolved over millions of years by natural and sexual selection and has become an innate human ability. Hence we searched for consistency in the predictability of human behavior and for scientific explanations of those patterns. Evolutionary psychology and sociology studies show that the basic emotions for survival and reproduction are the true foundation of our behaviour whilst reason only plays a minor part in our decisions and motivation. These findings deny the widely held belief in unique individual behaviour and support the arguments of our theory that predicting individual human behaviour is possible.

 

The evolutionary Social Contract Theory (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992) outlined five possible cognitive capacities for forming social contracts and avoid the ever-present danger of cheating by friends and possible allies (Buss, 2004, p. 261). We agree with Cosmides & Tooby (1992) stating that the following unconscious abilities have become extremely important for humans during the early Holocene period: (1) The ability to recognise many different individual humans; (2) The ability to remember some aspects of the histories of interactions with different individuals; (3) The ability to communicate one’s values to others; (4) The ability to model the value of others and; (5) The ability to represent cost and benefits, independent of the particular items exchanged (Buss, 2004, p. 261-262). Supporting our argument is the current evidence that the detection cheaters and altruists points to the existence of distinct adaptations that facilitate the evolution of cooperation (Brown & Moore, 2000).

 

‘Esse est percipi’(To be is to be perceived), as the 18^th century Bishop Berkeley once stated about ideas,  is key to sexual selection. As extremely social primates humans continuously interact with their environment. Humans act in an intense social environment where social interaction is the paramount evolved psychological mechanism. Prediction of behaviour was fundamental to survival and procreation over millions of years and for that reason must have been hardwired in the brain. Consequently, predicting behaviour has become an innate mechanism in all individuals. Support for this view is the Theory of Mind Module (ToM) and the discovery of mirror neurons.

 

Many of the most important adaptive problems that humans faced over the past several millions of years are inherently social in nature. The Theory of Mind (ToM) theory is of great social significance within the concept of understanding and predicting behaviour of oneself

 

and others. ToM is a self-awareness and consciousness module that is a crucial adaptation in humans as part of a ‘social’ module.

 

“Each person can look in his own mind, observe and analyze his own past and present mental states, and on that basis make inspired guesses about the minds of others” (Humphrey, 1987). ToM, as much as many more processing systems of the brain, evolved as a survival mechanism. For millions of years humans have been able to evaluate and predict the behaviour of other individuals.

 

Predicting the behaviour of others is the innate ability to predict change. Following Baron-Cohen (2007: 499), change may be ‘agentive’ in nature or ‘non-agentive’. ‘Agentive’ is perceived in others by an individual to be self-generated or self-propelled (no apparent external cause) and the brain interprets this as agentive; another individual is acting as an

 

individual with a goal. Humans have a high ability to ‘empathise’, understanding the detection of goal oriented behaviour of other humans. Baron-Cohen defines empathy as “the drive to identify emotions and thoughts in others and to respond to these appropriately (2002). It provides a way of making sense of the behaviour of others and a natural way of responding to others.

 

Human behaviour is complex with a maximum variance, but the empathising system (ToM) has provided humans with inherited hardware, a toolbox for interpreting the complex social world without having to learn everything from scratch. Empathising and the neural circuitry have been extensively investigated (Baron-Cohen et al.,1999, Frith & Frith, 1999; Happé et al. 1996) and key areas include the amygdale, the orbito- and medial frontal cortex, and the superior temporal sulcus.

 

Although other primates, especially the great apes, and cetaceans have found to possess the ability to empathise, human empathy is high relative to other animals. Goal detection (or intentionality detection, ID) is a fundamental aspect of how the human brain interprets and predicts the behaviour of others (Baron-Cohen et al. , 1994; Heider & Simmel, 1994; Perrett et al., 1985).

 

Human beings have an innate drive to send messages about their main motivation telling other primates what to expect. We argue that analyzing non verbal communication is a reliable method for detecting unconscious motivation to be able to predict human behavior,

 

 

that can be explained through the evolutionary principle of costly signaling of fitness indicators.

 

For the purpose of our thesis we will discuss what we regard as motivation, costly signaling and fitness indicators as follows.

 

Motivation, considered to be the activation of determined behavior, is one of the oldest topics in psychology. Early traditional theories as formulated by Aristotle, Plato and Descartes led to the conviction that reason is what humans separate from other animals and that humans are characterized by the ability to override their basic motivations. The traditional psychological definition of drive or motivation is best described by American psychologists John Dollard and Neal E. Miller (1950), who distinguish two kinds of drives. Primary drives include those for food, water, physical comfort, avoidance of pain and sexual gratification. We summarize these drives as the fear, food and sex or in other words the

 

need for security, resources and mates. According to Dollard and Miller, secondary drives include the desire for prestige, money, the ambition to become an artist or scholar, and particular fears and guilt.

 

Current research addresses motivation through the study of goals and strategies, but only since very recent by an increasing number of psychologists and sociologists an evolutionary approach is adopted (Niebauer, ?). With respect to our theoretical and conceptual model, up to a point we follow Larry C. Bernard (Bernard, Mills, Swanson, and Walsh, 2006) in his evolutionary theory of motivation wherein motivation is defined as purposeful behaviour that is ultimately directed toward the fundamental goal of inclusive fitness. Here motivation refers to the ultimate (the why) that causes organisms to initiate and persist in certain behaviours as opposed to others.

 

Human motives have developed to support different pressures from different environments and different social systems through adaptations or exaptations that increased inclusive fitness in our Pleistocene ancestors. Motivation behaviours coevolved with the increasing complexity of modern society (Donald, 1970 Bernard et al., 2006) proposed an evolutionary – and therefore adaptational - basis for human motivation. Evidence of selection pressures in human evolution for motivational and emotional behaviour are numerous in neuropsychological processes; these processes reside in adaptive mental mechanisms that have arisen to guide human behaviour toward the goal of sexual selection.

 

We do not, however, follow the modern evolutionary theory considering inclusive fitness as synonymous with the term evolution by natural selection. As argued we support the costly signaling theory of advertising costly fitness indicators specifically to attract mates in the process of sexual selection. Investing in these attributes may not always be in favour of survival as Darwin already stated.

 

Bernard further suggests that motives “are hypothesized to guide behaviours and interests within one of the five social domains related to ever larger systems.” The domains Bernard refers to are: (a) the self-protection domain of the single system: (b) the mating domain of the dyadic system: (c) the relationship maintenance and parental care domain of the small,

kin system: (d) the coalition domain of the large non-kin system: and (e) the ‘memetic’ domain of the large, symbolic cultural systems.

 

From an evolutionary perspective, we elaborate on Bernard and argue that the categorization of motivational traits should focus on how sexual selection evolved our main drives as an extremely social being from living in small egalitarian communities to major hierarchical societies. Therefore we define inclusive fitness as part of social behaviour in favour of sexual selection and distinguish five domains of social interaction important to maximize reproductive success: Bonding, Adapting, Sharing, Identifying and Competing (BASIC). Human behaviour within each of these domains changed during evolution as humans developed from empathic hunter-gatherers, through coalition and family minded farmers to hierarchical urban administrators, in a process of selection and adaptation. The evolution of human social interaction is the basis of our social behavior but still ignored in organizational psychology.

 

The last 11,000 years of human society have witnessed a dramatic change rivalling that of social insect societies (Richerson & Boyd, 1998). Our modern society houses people that until some 10,000 years ago - an eye blink over evolutionary time – roamed the pastoral landscape in small, tightly interwoven, egalitarian kinship groups (Klein, 1989). Modern society has seriously changed the prevailing lifestyle of our ancestors that preceded the Holocene epoch. Humans have constructed extremely complex societies by some mechanisms different from any other known highly social species (Richerson & Boyd, 1998). Materialism, division of labour, bureaucracy and urbanization forced a restructured interaction within human society. Groups changed from simple, small scale, egalitarian and flexible to large and complex. We became a species with a modern skull that is housed a Pleistocene mind (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992).

 

Although estimates vary, group size of our ancestors in the Pleistocene probably averaged between 50 and 200 (Caporael & Baron: chapter 12). Chagnon (1983) maintains that, judging from the prevalence of tribal warfare, these groups were likely to be in conflict with neighbouring groups, at least some of the time. Hrdy (2009:19), however, claims a far more likely scenario arguing that nearby members of their own species would have been more valuable as potential sharing partners. If conflict seemed imminent, it would have been more practical to move away as well as less risky than fighting. It was only in the last 10,000 years that warfare became an integrated part of human lives to protect families, livestock, material goods and land. Within these larger groups, smaller coalitions invariably form, and these smaller coalitions often compete with each other for access to reproductively relevant resources. Thus, it is reasonable to suggest that humans have evolved specific psychological mechanisms to deal with the unique problems posed by the formation and consolidation of coalitions, groups of people who cooperate with each other, but sometimes compete – especially males - with rival coalitions of co-operators (Alexander, 1979, 1987; Tooby & Cosmides, 1988).

For this reason, in our study we recognize three major phases in the evolution of social interaction that shaped our basic motivation and still form the basis for our social behavior today. Our conceptual model therefore includes the evolution of human beings as an ultra-social animal and distinguishes three main propensities (bandwidths) of social groups and their specific social behavior caused by environmental factors. The three different behavioural propensities of these groups are fundamentally: C) empathic drive, B) coalition drive and A) hierarchical drive, whereby C-Group is psychologically most identical to the Late Pleistocene period, the B-Group to the farming period at the beginning of the Holocene and the A-Group most identical to the urbanization period.

 

We argue that the changing lifestyle from hunting-gathering to urban living, forced increasing pressure on people to perform socially and functionally different. As the developing society increasingly demanded different functions followed by a modified human input in the social interactions, we follow Baron-Cohen’s (2004, 2007) arguments in his systemization in a general population. Structured non-agentive change as explained by Baron-Cohen (2004, 2007) supports our theory of the three different behavioural propensities. Baron-Cohen’s hyper systemising theory posits that humans may show one of three degrees of systemising. We use his evidence in support of our model.

 

 

 

Originally our ancestral nomadic group, these are creative matrilineal groups of egalitarian foragers, hunters-gatherers and ‘allo-parents’ without any personal possessions. Members of this group are prone to companionship, creativity and improvisation. Therefore their main social drive was empathy, to share another’s feelings (feeling into). 

 

Humans at Baron-Cohen’s Level 1 show little or no interest or drive to systemise and consequently are comfortable with change, like our emphatically driven groups. This group consists largely of creative, empathic, nonconformist people, predominantly females or males with slight female tendencies.

 

These originally Agrarian societies learned to live in larger groups with an intense male-female engagement with an allocation of tasks, specialization and access to resources. Interaction is based on co-operation, sharing knowledge and focus on family and friends. Therefore their main social drive was coalition, to join forces for a common cause.

 

According to Baron-Cohen, most people at Level 2/3 have some interest in systems and there are sex differences observable in the level of interest whereby females have the systemising system (SM) turned up to level 2 and more males to level 3. An SM level at 2 might show some typical female interests such as emotions (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2003) and those with an SM at Level 3 show more typical male interest such as mechanics (Baron-Cohen, 2003). At this level, like in our coalition drive groups, the necessity of – and search for – coalitions with kinship, friends and family require a more systemised look at relationships whereby status seeking is aided by the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis.

 

Due to division of labour, bureaucracy, standing armies and living within a dense population crammed in cities, these members of the first urban societies had to familiarize themselves with hierarchical structures, including strict rules and regulations. Interaction in these urban communities became highly hierarchically driven.

 

The more extreme systemising Level 4 of Baron-Cohen, like our hierarchical driven group, indicates a higher than average level of systemisation whereby Baron-Cohen has found some evidence that above average systemisers have more autistic traits. From this evidence follows that the functioning of mathematicians, CEO’s, lawyers, engineers and accountants match with our theory.

 

We argue that these three main social drives determine persistent behaviour that is ultimately directed toward the ultimate goal of inclusive fitness and therefore are the basis of conspicuous social signaling. Human beings advertise with their so-called fitness indicators

 

their strongest social drive and communicate their modus operandi in interaction with other human beings within their group.

As humans act in an intense social environment where social interaction is an important evolved psychological mechanism, individuals must have behaved in a predictable manner. Prediction of behaviour was paramount for survival and procreation over millions of years and for that reason must be hardwired in the brains. Research has indeed shown ample evidence for our brain being hardwired for understanding and predicting behaviour of others. The innate features entail the above mentioned Theory of Mind (ToM) (Premack & Woodruff, 1978), altruism and the mirror neurons system (MNS) by Rizzolatti et al. for action, emotion, pain and touch whereby empathy is supported by MNS.

 

The ability to predict the behaviour of others must have, according to Hrdy (2009: 38-41) preceded the evolution of language as a highly useful adaptive mechanism. Systemising allows the brain to predict events and patterns and identify laws driving the system. For millions of years humans, as extremely social primates, have been able to recognize motivation and evaluate and predict the behaviour of other individuals, by non-verbal language only. Recent studies showed that language may date back some 50.000 years, probably due to a mutation in the FOXP2 gene. Therefore we argue that the key to predicting human behaviour is non-verbal language and communication.

 

Non-verbal communication is crucial in the process of sexual selection. So far, much of evolutionary psychology has focused on sex differences in courtship behavior and mate choice, but, the sexual selection theory is equally applicable to conspicuous, costly, ornamental traits in humans that are displayed by both sexes when they are reproductively mature (Miller, 2009).

 

Miller (2003) argues “Most evolutionary thinking about human mental evolution has emphasized the ‘economic production’ payoffs for creative intelligence: our ancestors could invent better tools, which allowed more effective hunting, gathering, and defense against predators and rival groups, thereby improving survival prospects. … However, in recent years, an increasing number of evolutionary thinkers have begun emphasizing sexual reproduction rather than economic production as the driving force behind the evolution of animal and human behavior…. Darwin argued that sexual selection (for reproduction) is distinct from natural selection (for survival), and that traits inexplicable in terms of 'survival value' can often be explained as ornaments for attracting sexual partners. “

 

With his theory about sexual selection, Charles Darwin presented the key to this part of our conceptual model with a letter (1860) to his colleague biologist Asa Gray lamenting: ''The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!''"the struggle between the individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the other sex”. Darwin was right, of course. And although humanity had to wait another hundred years for a sound theory, Darwin had keenly observed that certain evolutionary traits can be explained by intra- and extra-sexual competition. Why, Darwin pondered, has the male peacock such an enormous and colourful tail? The ornament was a terrific handicap for the animal in case he had to flee for a predator. However, since peacocks survived, the tail must have some significant benefits in evolution. Finally Darwin concluded the tail to be important in

 

The concept of advertising certain traits as in the process of sexual selection was questioned and often ignored but still escaped scholars for another age, until the Israeli biologist Amotz Zahavi in 1975 posited his handicap principle for intra- and inter-sexual communication. He and his wife came to this conclusion after examining a vast number of different birds for several years. Zahavi suggested that only high-quality animals within a species could afford to waste a lot of time, resources and energy on displaying costly signals. Zahavi named these signals ‘handicaps’. His reasoning was that, for instance, a sickly, parasite ridden lark would not be able to sing for hours to back up his claims of extreme biological fitness to attract mates or defend his territory. In other words: its singing (the fact that he could afford singing for hours) would be the ultimate proof of his fitness.

 

Within a species, scholars argue, each signaler makes a (subconscious) ‘strategic choice’ of how large of a handicap to produce, taking into account both the cost of doing so, and the benefit that will come from the response of the signal receiver. This choice is not a conscious decision or calculation on the part of the signaler; it is a decision rule that is encoded by genes. If, however, an individual is handicapped for instance by parasites, sickness and asymmetry or has otherwise been impaired, it may not be able to display his or her handicap. Thus, relative to weak individuals, strong individuals can assume greater handicaps at lower costs, and so they will choose to produce larger ornaments. As a result, handicap size serves as a reliable signal of strength and the more costly a signal, the easier it is to interpret. Thus the receivers' preference for large handicaps is justified. 

 

Zahavi’s theory remained controversial until around 1990 when various evolutionary scientists picked up his theory which then expanded into the costly signaling theory, describing the processof signaling fitness by so-called fitness indicators.

 

A fitness indicator is described as a biological trait that evolved specifically to advertise and guarantee an animal’s capability to reproduce successfully. For human beings and other extremely social animals the capability is related to his behaviour and position within the group. In the original explanation of Zahavi fitness indicators communicate the physical fitness of the individual sender, like health, youth and power, but sexual choice and courtship are psychological activities where specific psychological fitness, mental traits, are of utmost importance. The human mind is extremely socially oriented, and it seems likely that it evolved through some sort of social selection, of which sexual selection is the most direct form (Miller 2000).

Human brains make particularly good fitness indicators because their growth depends on about half the genes in the genome, thereby summarizing a huge amount of information about mutation load (Miller, 2000; Miller & Todd, 1998; Madden, 2001).  From the costly signaling perspective brains are also good indicators of nutritional state and general health, because they have such high energetic costs, constituting only 2% of body weight, but consuming over 25% of adult metabolic energy (60% in infancy). The more important brains became during primate evolution, the more incentive mate choice would have had to focus on specific indicators of brain quality (i.e. mental fitness as distinct from physical fitness).

 

According to Miller Darwin’s view of the human mind (the ability for intelligence, music, and morality ) as a set of courtship adaptations can be extended and refined in the light of modern sexual selection theory, evolutionary psychology, and evolutionary anthropology. Miller (2000) states that many of our most distinctive mental traits evolved through mutual mate choice as fitness indicators, to advertise intelligence, creativity, moral character, and heritable fitness.

 

To traditional evolutionary psychologists, human abilities like music, humor, kindness and creativity do not look like adaptations because they look too variable, too heritable, too wasteful and not very modular. But we agree with Miller (2009) who argues that these are precisely the features we should expect of fitness indicators. Miller links the costly signaling of these sexually selected mental traits to conspicuous consumption, a theory formulated by the Victorian economist and socialist Thorstein Veblen early in the 20^th century.  In his book ‘The Theory of the Leisure Class’ (1899) Veblen introduces conspicuous consumption to

 

describe the lavish spending on goods and services by the nouveau riche, mainly for the purpose of displaying income, status and wealth. Rich people show off their pecuniary prominence by buying costly, precisely formed luxuries that their poorer rivals cannot afford or imitate. 

 

Miller states that the costly signaling theory applies equally to nature and culture. We support his view that our wealth-displays and status-displays serve much the same mate-attracting and mate-retaining functions as the fitness-displays of other species. 

Nature produces peacock tails and other costly, high-maintenance, hard-to-fake fitness indicators. But human culture produces luxury goods like the Hummer H1, a Porsche or a Aston Martin which is also costly and high-maintenance, that should be interpreted as fitness indicators.

 

Finally Miller links luxury goods as fitness indicators with six dimensions of human behavior and mental traits as identified by (traditional) psychology and literally put into words by amongst others Cattell and Allport, now known as the Big Five or Central Six traits.

 

We do follow Miller when he argues that both our mental traits and luxury goods are fitness indicators. We do not follow Miller when he links these mental traits as fitness indicators with the Five-Factor Model (Big Five) or Central Six though to explain why we buy and advertise these goods.

 

We agree with Kline (2000), who concludes with Block, Eysenck, Boyle and McCrae that the Five-Factor Model is unsatisfactory. Apart from the correlations found between the different measures mentioned by Boyle (1995), Kline describes the argument raised by Eysenck concerning the provenance of the factors, none of which is related to a coherent theory of personality or to biological mechanism. We fully support Kline in his conclusions about lexical factors of the Five-Factor Model (2000: p. 257): “…. Personality questionnaire items are only statements about behavior not the behavior itself. …. They can only be semantic factors reflecting the meaning of the terms. …Thus that such lexical factors correlate with personality factors suggest that these are essentially lexical as well. Thus it is hardly mysterious or evidence of some wonderful validity as a measure of behavior that items such as ‘I am tidy’ tend to load on the same factor as the lexical term ‘tidy’. Questionnaire items are little more than explications of lexical terms. Thus their agreement means no more than that subjects have understood the items and the lexical terms and have conscientiously completed both questionnaires. Thus, in conclusion, the correlation between lexical and questionnaire factors are not powerful evidence for the big five structure of traits. If they

 

We argue that human beings in a social environment communicate with fitness indicators their social motivation. The evolution of our social motivation developed, as described, in three stages from a hunter gatherers environment through an agrarian environment to an urban environment. Therefore we link fitness to the best fitted in a empathic driven, coalition driven or hierarchical driven environment.

 

The perception of costly and conspicuous differs per stage. Whereas empathic driven (motivated) hunter gatherers invested most in signaling empathic traits, coalition driven (motivated) agrarians invested in coalition traits and hierarchical drive (motivated) urban people in hierarchical traits. Therefore for this thesis we distinguish three main bandwidths and argue that the term ´costly´ of the costly signaling theory is relative and should be considered within a context of the social evolution of human species.

 

Due to the current lack of a sound ultimate theory in traditional psychology, human motivation has been – and still is in many ways – understood in terms of proximate explanations. To overcome this handicap, many psychologists resort to factor analysis of human dynamics which is consequently considered to be the foundation for motivational and interest tests today. The major difficulty in this dynamic field, however, is that in traditional psychology there is almost no agreement as to what the main dynamic variables are i.e. the number and nature of human drives.

 

Empirical, proximate exploratory research does not reveal the underpinnings of fundamental emotions as well as evolutionary psychology that aims to answer the ultimate causes of behaviour. Although there are many different psychological views available on the nature of motivation from Freud and his many predecessors onwards, no straightforward approach to the psychometric study of motivation has been developed yet (Kline, 2002). For measuring motivation, Kline distinguishes three possible methods: (1) Factor analysis; (2) Criterion-keying and (3) Tests based on fundamental theory.

 

Kline concludes that, as there is apparently no consensus on one particular theory, the selection of variables to measure results with psychometric tests in a field without theoretical clarity should be made through factor analysis. The only factor analysis that has made a concerted attempt to define the factor analytic structure of drives is Raymond

Cattell’s test (1975/2008). The factor-analysis based Vocational Interest Measure (VIM, 2008) test by Sweney and Cattell, measures the same variables as the majority of non-factored empirical motivation and interest test and could therefore be taken as an example of the most used variables.

 

Cattell (1957/75)distinguishes the following two variables:

Ergs: considered to be basic drives - or the innate reactive tendency - the behaviour of which is directed towards and cease at a particular consummatory goal activity (Cattell, 1957). Reciting McDougall's theory of innate tendencies, Cattell wrote that "Most psychologists would at least agree with McDougall that the things we are defining have three aspects to them, namely; (a) a tendency spontaneously to attend to certain objects and situations as being far more important than others, e.g. for the young male a pretty girl is initially more interesting than a book on Latin grammar; (b) a characteristic emotion, which is quite specific to the drive and its action, e.g. fear, anger, sexual feeling, etc.; (c) an impulse to a course of action which has a particular goal at its end, e.g. pursuing a fleeing animal and eating it, picking up and hugging and protecting a small child crying in distress" (Lamb, 1999). Consequently, Cattell included drives that humans share with other mammals such as food-seeking, mating, parental pity and escape to security to be basic drives.

 

Sentiments: considered to be culturally moulded type of drives. They are dynamic structures, visible as common reaction patterns to persons, objects or social institutions upon which all persons seem to have some degree of endowment. Among the sentiments mentioned are career, self-sentiment, sports and games, home-parental and sweetheart-spouse.

 

For our thesis, addressed from an evolutionary perspective, we argue that the variables should be based on Sexual Selection as the strongest drive for all organisms in which Costly Signalling acts as unconscious means of communication.

 

In this we follow Kline in his assessment (2000) that, for measuring motivation, any test measuring motivation, if possible, should be based on a fundamental theory. So far, motivation studies do not include: (a) gender difference; (b) reward and punishment systems and; (c) emerged societal behaviour complexities. Consequently we developed the following variables for our theory:

 

Gender difference: For our theory we take into account the different behaviour of females and males. Within the realm of sexual selection males and females have different goals and strategies and therefore different main drives. Over the years a wealth of empirical research has demonstrated the different selection problems of mating and the evolutionary strategies pertaining to female and male challenges in intersexual and intra-sexual competition (i.e. Buss, 2004). These strategies still have a fundamental impact on male and female motivation and behaviour today and consequently play an important role in our theoretical approach.

 

Reward seeking and punishment avoidance systems: For our theory we make a distinction between these two significant variables, drives explaining why individuals pursue pleasure or aim to avoid pain. The drives are linked to the persistent inherited (social) survival and sexual reward and avoiding punishment systems that evolved over evolutionary time and are encouraged during the individual learning period from early childhood onwards.

 

psychologists Vasudevi Reddy and others have shown, children less than a year old exhibit embarrassment and what looks very much like shame, as if they are actually aware of how they might have failed to meet the expectations of someone else. These infants are not just afraid of punishment (other animals-dogs for example-when caught doing something they were traines not to do can act “embarrassed”). Rather, at a much earlier age than previously realised or even considered possible, and long before they acquire language, human children appear to monitor what others think of them and care deeply what others feel and intend. By age four, around the time a child in a foraging society would be weaned, modern children begin to use their intersubjective gifts and growing language skills in quite sophisticated ways, not only to intuit what others want but also to intuit what they want to hear. Four-year olds are already able to use such knowledge to flatter others and to ingratiate themselves with the sort of people upon whom children’s survival once depended” (Hrdy, 2009, p. 283).

 

In human evolution, selection was for understanding one’s own behaviour better and that of others. The origin of human self-awareness reflects, according to Humphrey (1986) our ancestors need to understand, respond to and manipulate each other’s behaviour (Focquart & Platek, 2007, p. 457). Anticipating future events and ‘mind-time travel’ allows an individual to avoid unrewarding or dangerous situations. Brain systems involved in rewards and punishment are important because they are involved in emotion and motivation (Rolls 1999a) whereby emotions are (also) elicited by reward or punishment and classified in terms of the rewards and punishments being received, omitted, or terminated. A reward or punishment is something that humans strive (or crave) for or are avoided by making a goal-directed effort. Rewards and punishment can be defined as stimuli or events. Some stimuli are primary such as fear, hunger, and sex or disgust whereas others may become reinforcing by learning, through their association with primary stimuli, and become secondary stimuli.

 

As (part of) the reward and punishment system, certain learned life experiences may elicit or diminish a particular response urging an individual seeking or avoiding a specific experience. Recent publications (i.e. Rudebeck, Bannerman & Rushworth, 2008) have revealed an important role for the Ventromedial Frontal Cortex (VMFC) in this. It throws a light on how parts of the frontal lobe contribute to emotion, motivation and social behaviour and interacts with the amygdala and superior temporal sulcus.

 

Evolved bandwidths: From our research it becomes apparent that evolutionary drives in concert with social interaction developments that occurred over time during the Holocene period gave rise to three different evolved bandwidths in which three human drives are

emphasized. Hrdy (2007) refers to a basic tenet of evolutionary biology by David Lahti (2005) stating that “the removal of an agent of selection can sometimes bring about rapid evolutionary consequences”. Assuming this is the case in our evolved bandwidth theory, we have named these drives: (a) Empathic drive; (b) Coalition drive and (c) Hierarchy drive.

 

We suggest that these drives, that emphasise involved evolutionary evolved brain functions and chemicals, relate to both inherited and learned behaviour and are primarily socio-psychological in nature. While some of the typical characteristics have been retained, some drives are induced by social variance from the early Holocene onwards.

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Empathic Drive

Anthropological and archaeological findings show that food sharing, gift exchange, child caring, ‘storing social obligations’ (Hrdy, 2009) and looking for reciprocation were essential for survival and reproduction success in ancestral times. This type of social interaction implies extreme empathy traits that are emphasised in females and males with (slight) female propensities. Human empathy is tightly linked to human Theory of Mind (ToM) skills (Focquaert & Platek, 2007, p. 464). According to Michael Tomasello and his colleagues humans are, more so than any other animal, able to participate in collaborative activities with others with shared goals and intentions. Consequently we hypothesise that individuals driven by empathy, particularly women are emotionally and socially to be considered the closest to their ancestors from the late Pleistocene period.

 

 

 

We suggest that individuals from this group are driven by empathy and have a profile that is linked to the small, egalitarian nomadic hunter-gatherer groups of the Pleistocene. They retained the creative and collaborative traits from their ancestors needed to improvise while foraging and the empathetic ability necessary for living in close proximity with small, kin related groups. Consequently this group represents what we have labelled the ‘ancient’ or ‘ancestor’ individual as they resemble most our distant ancestors.

 

The empathic drive results in individuals that are inventive, innovative, nonconformist, aversive to dominance and creative, have a social disposition but tend to avoid large crowds and communities. They are averse from hierarchy and stratified societies and function best on an egalitarian level.

 

Coalition Drive

Group living is a critical part of human adaptation. Evolutionary psychology theory suggests that the human mind evolved many mechanisms to deal with the problems of group living

(Buss, 2004). Altruism and reciprocal altruism are only a few of the problems that humans faced during evolution. The evolutionary Social Contract Theory (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992) predicts that humans can benefit by engaging in cooperative exchange and form cooperative coalitions. This ability became extremely useful when humans increasingly had to turn to reciprocal altruistic behaviour from the time that pastoral, kinship based life in small community’s ended and sedentary living and population density increased. Obviously these abilities are not equally distributed amongst all humans or have not similarly been developed in all humans. As these abilities have a (certain) degree of heredity, especially when both parents possess these abilities, some humans have an enhanced command over this ability than others. Consequently, these people prefer to cooperate, like family life and live in large groups, are conscientious and attentive while males prefer male companionship whilst women prefer female companionship. They like kids and are not averse towards hierarchy.

 

Coalition driven female representatives have a profound preference to act within social groups and taking care of all kinds of responsibilities for either children or adult females and males.

 

Typical propensities of the coalition driven male is an intense family life, an ongoing search for collaborative opportunities and enjoying large groups of – predominantly male - friends and allies to engage in social and commercial activities.

 

Hierarchical Drive

We propose that individuals in this group are fundamentally motivated by relationships based on hierarchies. Their lives revolve around status and reputation.

 

The drive of these individuals that are less empathetically inclined, evolved with the emergence of cities, city-states and urbanisation in general. They prefer a stratified, hierarchical society with clear-cut responsibilities and well defined tasks. They tend to be on their own and prefer a steady, uninterrupted life. Possibly males and females may show an extra testosterone component and resorting to aggression or dominance.

 

While females tend to ingratiate themselves to males, males either submit to dominance or may resort to violence in order to defend their reputation. Male characters are emotionally primarily motivated by hierarchical ‘follower-leader’ principles, meaning that they either assume leadership or show submissive behaviour when confronted by physically stronger males or with a higher status.

 

Conspicuous social signalling: Human beings communicated and sent their messages by non-verbal language only, probably for millions of years. Recent studies showed that language may not be much older than some 50.000 years, probably due to a mutation in the FOXP2 gene. Therefore none of the traditional methods is ideal for measuring, mapping and categorizing the predictability of human behavior in an unbiased or manipulated way by the respondent. Furthermore, the human sensory system has been primarily designed for visual detection. Spoken and written language is a rather recent acquired ability which makes language an inadequate method for questionnaires, tests and surveys.

 

Introducing the term ‘conspicuous social signalling’ we argue that human beings advertise their main drives (motivation) as a social being, communicating their preferred interacting with the group.

 

We discovered that as fitness indicators in the process of costly signalling clothes, accessories and other attributes can be analysed and translated as a sign system for our social mental traits and therefore a reliable indicator for our (unconscious) motivation or drives.

 

Besides our body language for thousands of years human beings have communicated with another in the language of clothes. They decorated their body, bought and created attributes as an extension of themselves. Today, long before they are near enough to talk to each other on the street, in a meeting, or at a party they communicate through what they

 

are wearing, their cars, interiors and even their pets. Scientists studying psychological and sociological aspects of clothing like Alison Lurie (1981) describe how are clothes, accessories, hair styles, make up and other body decoration communicate about or occupation, origin, personality, tastes and opinion. Lurie compares elements of our outfit with words and our complete outfit with sentences. Furthermore the language of clothes, like speech, includes modern and ancient words of native or foreign origin, dialect words, colloquialisms, slang and vulgarities.

Psychology and sociology has been trying to translate the language of clothes (including accessories and other attributes) to communicate power and status as well as attract the opposite sex by enhancing or concealing specific physical features. Art historian James Laver (1953) followed the theories of Veblen and Flugel (1950) and distinguished three layers of motives for why we wear clothes: the utility principle (warmth and protection), the hierarchical principle (to indicate one’s position in society) and the seduction principle (to attract the opposite sex).

Signalling only works within a species and in a social context where the receiver recognizes the indicators as fitness indicators. If not, the receiver will either not understand or dislike the indicators and the sender will not be successful.

From an evolutionary perspective we therefore argue that the primary goal of visual language of clothes and other attributes like accessories is part of the intra sexual competition of the process of sexual selection.

Females are primarily interested in female clothes and fashion and read the language of other females and likewise males are primarily interested in male clothes and attributes and read the language of other males. The willingness to spend time, money and effort on specific clothes is primarily driven by the competition with potential rivals. Therefore male and female use different fitness attributes in the process of costly signaling, like cars for men and handbags for women. Rules, regulations, trends and fashion in clothes and other attributes all contribute to this intra sexual competition.

Therefore the visual language for male and female in the process of costly signaling is different and determined by their drives or motivation both as an individual and a member of a group. As with speech, the meaning of clothes depends on circumstances. It is not ‘spoken’ in a vacuum, but a specific place and time. The visual language supports the competition within the in -group, but at the same time helps to keep out people from the

 

out-group. In language we distinguish between someone who speaks a sentence well and someone who speaks it badly or not at all. The same goes for the language of clothes (Lurie, 1981). To wear the costume considered ‘proper’ for a situation acts as a sign of involvement in it, and the person whose clothes do not conform to these standards is likely to be excluded from participation (Goffmann, 1959). Specific costly signals, conspicuous consumption, are directed toward one’s peers rather than toward the world in general. They are intended not to impress the multitude but to identify one as a member of some in-group. 

Again as with describing personality scientist, sociologists, psychologist and anthropologist, mainly focus on the what and elude on the why of specific dress behavior. As Davis (1992) describes it, as in the voiceless play the actual symbolic content that elicits such interpretation eludes us.

For this thesis we argue that every bandwidth has its own visual language to communicate and stress a specific ability in social interaction linked to either a hierarchical, coalition or empathic drive. The language principles coincide with the specific principles for social interaction.

Furthermore we argue that on an individual level avoiding pain (punishment avoidance) and seeking pleasure (reward seeking) also determines the visual language people prefer. The language of punishment avoiding individuals will be more controlled, concealing, austere and conventional, while the reward seeking individuals will be more passionate, explicit and trend sensitive. For reward seeking people changing style is a characteristic of conspicuous waste. They value novelty for its own sake, are early adopters and followers of fashion. The punishment avoiding people are just the opposite and prefer traditional products that have traditional features and design. They do not switch styles often and sometimes even wear the same kind of attributes for many year or even a lifetime.

Hierarchical driven groups focus on signaling power and status or the lack of it. They prefer more strict rules in their language of clothes than groups driven by coalition and empathy. They prefer established styles and outfits that are either standardized or prescribed by the current fashion. The extreme form of a conventional standardized dress is the costume totally determined by authorities, like the military, civil or religious uniform or the pin-striped suit. The uniform is the most obvious, explicitly consciously and deliberately symbolic of all clothes. It identifies its wearer as a member of some group and locates him or her

 

within a hierarchy. Just as the oldest languages are full of elaborate titles and forms of address, for thousands of years clothes have indicated ranks. Until about 1700, societies passed decrees known as sumptuary laws to prescribe or forbid the wearing of specific styles, clothes, fabrics, colours or attributes. Later, when class barriers weakened the evident cost of the clothes and accessories came to indicate the high rank: rich materials, superfluous trimmings and difficult-to-care for or to get styles and fabrics, described by Veblen as conspicuous consumption. As Miller (2009) describes high-maintenance pets and products as fitness indicators signaling costly punctuality and conscientiousness that is presumably difficult to copy and hard to afford.

Coalition driven groups focus on signaling sociability and friends-and family care. They advertise elements of a perfect husband or wife, a peoples manager and negotiator. Miller describes it as a display of high agreeableness signaling the potential as a long-term mate, thoughtful and gentle to children and animals, concern for the environment, social justice and family values. Within the realm of Veblen’s Conspicuous Consumption we like to describe this as Conspicuous Sociability. Expensive attributes are advertised not as luxuries or status symbols, but as ‘good and responsible investments’ giving a sense of long term security.

Emphatic driven groups focus on signaling creativity, individuality and the ability to understand other peoples beliefs and desires. Their focus is on advertising originality, personality and creation. We like to label it Conspicuous Creativity. They are closest to accepting, profiling and accentuating our basic drives and general and sexuality in particular. In this group there are no specific laws like in the hierarchical groups.

For our test we decided not measure the preference for certain fitness attributes but the dislike.

 

We argue that the dislike (disgust) factor for specific signals or fitness indicators is more important for both sender and receiver than like. Dislike is a much stronger emotion than like to help us avoid dangerous situation and confrontations. Therefore we argue that dislike for specific signals will help us to distinguish people from the out-group with main social drives that differ from ours and is part of the inclusive fitness.

 

 

 

Not to be recognized by people from the in-group could mean expulsion and ignored by possible ‘right’ mates. If signal receivers ignored these messages, they would be useless - and signalers would eventually evolve not to send them.

 

So far evolutionary biologists and psychologist describe costly signaling as advertising your best traits to attract mates, but we argue that human beings invest most in signals stressing the fact that they do not have the ‘opposite’ social motivation to avoid disgust.

 

We named this reversed approach the ‘White Queen Theory’ after the White Queen in Lewis Carroll’s book ‘Through the Looking Glass’, who, like everyone and everything else in her mirror-world was living backward.

 

We also argue that the dislike factor for specific signals or fitness indicators is more important for both sender and receiver than like. Dislike is a much stronger emotion than like to help us avoid dangerous situation and confrontations. Therefore we argue that dislike for specific signals will help us to distinguish people from the out-group with main social drives that differ from ours and is part of the inclusive fitness.

 

As individuals have fewer constraints to express their preference when reviewing attributes in terms of risk avoidance as expressed in disgust (Darwin, 1872) we propose to have respondents express their risk avoidance in choosing for particular attributes. As taking risks threatens the survival and reproductive success of an individual, evolution has led to risk avoidance behaviour of humans in ancestral times. We argue that disgust is behaviourally linked to risk avoidance and rejection behaviour. Disgust has become a basic emotion with distinct behavioural, cognitive and physiological dimensions (Levinson, 1992) that functions to prevent contamination and disease (Olatunji et al, 2007). The primary function of disgust is to protect the self from physical and psychological contamination (Woody, 2000) and appears to exist on a continuum in which individual differences may be observed (Haidt, McCauly & Rozin, 1994).

 

From an evolutionary perspective, humans evolved a risk avoidance that is expressed in disgust to protect us from ingesting toxins that could be potentially harmful to our survival and ultimately to our ability to pass on our genes. As Haidt proposes (2000), disgust may also be intimately involved in moral, intuitional decision making. As was shown in two studies (Ditto, Pizarro, Epstein, Jacobson, McDonald, 2006), modern society with its diverse proximity of objects of desire may lead individuals to be disproportionally influenced by the anticipated rewards and immediate gratification. Although humans live in a “constantly

 

changing world far removed from the Pleistocene” (Chiappe & McDonald, 2005), even in contemporary times, risk avoiding behaviour may have obvious reproductive advantages. Poethke & Liebig (2008) developed a risk-sensitive foraging model that demonstrates a reproductive skew may not only be a by-product of competitive hierarchies in groups but may also be a mechanism that strongly increases the expected reproductive success of individuals within cooperative breeding groups.

 

Haidt (2000) maintains that disgust, along with fear, is a primary means for socialization and can be characterised as a rejection. We agree with risk avoidance as hypothesised by Riadh & De Pauw (1998) in that the human neurobiological system has the function of generating risk scenarios without conscious intervention, “[...] saving the individual to experience physical and social dangers in vivo but instead produces the same learning response in total physical safety. Therefore, the ability of some organisms to learn to avoid common dangers without the need to experience them in real life would have conferred a clear advantage on the individuals who possessed this trait over those who did not.”

All social animals have the tendency to make sharp distinctions between in-group and out-group. In-group members are treated more benevolently, being credited with their successes and excused for their failures. Out-group members are treated less charitably, their successes attributed to luck, their misfortunes attributed to enduring personal failings. So pervasive are these negatively biased out-group attributions that Pettigrew (1979) dubbed this phenomenon the ultimate attribution error.