Evolutionary neurobiology and art

In his important book on evolutionary theory, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennett warns that Darwin's idea seeps through every area of human discourse like a "universal acid" (Dennett, 1995). Art and the aesthetic response cannot escape its influence. So my approach in this chapter is essentially naturalistic. Friedrich Nietzsche writes of observing the human comedy from afar, "like a cold angel...without anger, but without warmth" (Nietzsche, 1872, p. 164). Whether Nietzsche, of all people, could have done this is a matter of debate. But we know what he means. It describes a stance outside the human world as if looking down on human folly from Mount Olympus. From this stance, humans, their art and neurology are all part of the natural world, all part of the evolutionary process, the struggle for existence. The anthropologist David Dutton, in his contribution to the Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, says that all humans have an aesthetic sense (Dutton, 2001). It is a human universal. Biologists argue that such universals have an evolutionary basis. Furthermore, many have argued that not only humans but also animals, at least the higher mammals and birds, have an appreciation of the beautiful and the ugly (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1988).11Charles Darwin indeed writes "Birds appear to be the most aesthetic of all animals, excepting, of course, man, and they have nearly the same sense of the beautiful that we have" (1871, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, London: John Murray, vol.2, xiii, 39). This again suggests that aesthetics has an evolutionary origin. In parenthesis here, I should perhaps say that I am well aware of the criticism leveled at evolutionary psychology. I am well aware that it has been attacked as just so many "just-so" stories. This is neither the time nor the place to mount a defense but simply just to say that I believe that a defense is eminently feasible. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Developmental stability and leadership effectiveness

Developmental stability is the degree to which we can withstand environmental or genetic stressors during development. Fluctuating asymmetry (FA), concerns the extent to which the right and left side of the body is asymmetrical and is one way to measure developmental stability. Two studies were carried out that examined both the predictive value of leader FA with leadership behaviors and its role in facilitating group performance. The first study examined the hypothesis that a leader's FA is correlated with scores on the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). The results revealed individuals with a more asymmetrical morphology scored higher on the transformational, but not transactional, dimensions of leadership behavior. A second study examined the hypothesis that asymmetrical morphology and leadership effectiveness would share a positive relationship. In this study participants who led a business game exercise, revealed a positive relationship between FA and self-reported well-being and task satisfaction. Importantly, there was also a positive correlation between the leader's FA score and group performance. The role that developmental stability may play in leadership effectiveness is discussed in the wider context of evolutionary psychology.

Interviewing strategies in the face of beauty:a psychophysiological investigation into the job negotiation process

After the application form is submitted, the interview is the most important method of human resource allocation. Previous research has shown that the attractiveness of interviewees can significantly bias interview outcome. We have previously shown that female interviewers give attractive male interviewees higher status job packages compared their average looking counterparts. However, it is not known whether male interviewers exhibit such biases. In the present study, participants were asked to take part in a mock job negotiation scenario where they had to allocate either a high- or low-status job package to attractive or average looking ``interviewees.'' Before each decision was made, the participant's anticipatory electrodermal response (EDR) was recorded. The results supported our previous finding in that female participants allocated a greater number of high-status job packages to attractive men. Additionally, male participants uniformly allocated a greater number of low-status job packages to both attractive men and attractive women. Overall, the average looking interviewees incurred a penalty and received a significantly greater number of low-status job packages. In general, the EDR profile for both male and female participants was significantly greater when allocating the low-status packages to the average looking interviewees. However, the male anticipatory EDR profile showed the greatest change when allocating attractive women with low-status job packages. We discuss these findings in terms of the potential biases that may occur at the job interview and place them within an evolutionary psychology framework.

Selection & development of short-term project team members:developmental stability as an indicator of interpersonal skills

Short-term project teams do not have the advantage of prior performance or long-term membership to facilitate development of effective team performance. Research suggests interpersonal skills are crucial to success but this is under researched longitudinally. Evolutionary psychology can provide a lens to explain how people develop differing levels of interpersonal skills via the relationship between fluctuating asymmetry and pro-social behaviours. This research aims to investigate the relationship between fluctuating asymmetry and interpersonal skills, the impact of training and to further the evolutionary psychology field by embedding research in a real-world context as opposed to solely in laboratory or student settings.