Listener questions:
1. How does evolutionary psychology explain a person who is an “enabler”? What am I getting out of it, why am I doing it and why do I feel so responsible for his happiness – to the extent that it harms us both?
2. Dr. Lisle talks often about the ‘cost/benefit analysis’ of human behavior. Is this a defined algorithm (i.e., are the factors & coeffcients/weighting factors) & what are these factors/coefficients? Do these factors/coefficients change over time & under different conditions?
3. So… I recently read an article published in JAMA Psychiatry (april 2016), named “Patterns of Nonrandom Mating Within and Across 11 Major Psychiatric Disorders”
It basically points out that people with a given disorder has a very higher chance of mating with someone with THAT particular disorder than other people do, as well as a higher chance of mating with someone with any other disorder rather than mating with healthy people. Also, each disorder has its own preferences.
What do you think is happening? Are people with mental illness for some reason biased to choosing mates with mental illness? If so, why?
4. I’m almost at the end of a three year accredited psychology degree in Australia. My question is, why is there a complete absence of evolutionary psychology in the curriculum here?
5. I’m intelligent and have a lot of intellectual and life ambitions, but I’m also somewhat lazy and not particularly “gritty.” I have a history that goes back to childhood of starting big and ambitious life projects and then abandoning them the instant things get a bit tough. I’d love to hear some advice grounded in evolutionary psychology on how I should be going about to tackle this