CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS 3
variations in human behavior, but to explore cultural variation in light of its underlying common structure
(Tooby & Cosmides, 1992).
Several claims and concepts underlying an evolutionary approach to human behavior are worth
noting, as they are essential to our proposed model. First, psychological mechanisms do not operate at
the level of conscious awareness. Neuroscientists have come to the conclusion that the brain is a
complex, multifaceted, information-processing device, which does almost all of its work covertly –
outside conscious awareness (Damasio, 1999; Gazzaniga, 1998; LeDoux, 1996). The mind reacts to
sensory cues, processes information, and renders judgments without an individual’s moment-to-moment
understanding of the sensory input involved or the logic underlying the decisions rendered (Damasio,
1999; Gazzaniga, 1998).
To evolutionary psychologists, this view of the mind makes perfect sense. Evolution works at the
level of the gene (inclusive fitness), not at the species or individual level (Hamilton, 1964). As such,
genes have been recording complex solutions to multifaceted and intricate problems for billions of years
and they have been doing this without any understanding of the trials or tribulations encountered nor do
they have any comprehension of the solutions found. Furthermore, the bodies that genes use to carry out
their work lack an awareness of this process as well, the recent exception being human understanding of
inclusive fitness (Alexander, 1987). This collective, novel insight into the process of genetic problem
solving, however, does not imply that individuals concurrently grasp the moment-by-moment
psychological processes, designed in the past, that now regulate their thoughts, actions, and beliefs. In
fact, the neurological evidence strongly suggests the opposite (Gazzangia, 1998). Or too, as noted by
Alexander (1987), awareness of the logic used to regulate life is not necessary for the regulation of life.
Likewise, Tooby and Cosmides (1992) have argued that many of the solutions to problems that
people typically encounter are beyond the ability of any individual to deduce or learn because the
solutions “depend on statistical relationships that are unobservable” to the those involved (p. 111).
Natural selection, however, has worked out such complex problems through the process of trail and error
and the solutions have been recorded in our genes in the form of domain-specific psychological
adaptations (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). For example, it would be quite remarkable if people walked
around consciously attending to facial symmetry, deduced that symmetry is an indicator of genetic fitness,
reasoned that life is the product of genes stumbling upon responses that are beneficial to their survival,
thereby realizing the importance of placing more weight on the desire of mating with individuals denoting
genetic fitness (symmetry), ultimately concluding that it would be wise, on average, all else being equal,
to correlate judgments of attraction with facial symmetry. Now imagine trying to consciously consider
several factors that influence judgments of attraction and give these factors the appropriate weight in light
of different situational contexts, which we apparently do (e.g., Penton-Voak, Perrett, Castles, Kobayashi,
Convention