Communication and Evolution

The Basic Principles of Evolution

Organisms evolve in response to environmental influences that threaten their likelihood of survival and reproduction. Organisms whose characteristics are best suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce. Natural selection refers to the principle that organisms that are better adapted to their environment tend [Page 164]to live longer and produce more offspring. These offspring inherit similar characteristics to their parents, and since those characteristics were adaptive for their parents, the offspring are also better suited to survive and reproduce in their environment. Thus, favorable traits become more common within a species over successive generations as those organisms with the traits continue to survive and reproduce more successfully than those organisms without the traits.

Although the theory of evolution has been primarily used to explain the characteristics of nonhuman organisms, relatively recent attention has been directed toward evolutionary explanations of human behavior and communication. This area of study has most predominantly occurred in the area of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology recognizes that, just as nonhuman animal behavior is the product of evolution, so too is human behavior.

To best understand human communication from an evolutionary psychological perspective, one must first consider the environment in which ancestral humans were subject to evolution. The environment of evolutionary adaptiveness, the time in which most adaptations are supposed to have taken place, is thought to have occurred during the Pleistocene period. Human existence was characterized by congregation into small social groups of hunter-gatherers. During this time, humans faced a number of communication-related problems that were subject to evolutionary pressure, such as mate selection and retention, cooperation, out-group competition, and family cohesion. Many communication behaviors that improved the success of humans then are still apparent today.

Examples of Evolutionary Explanations of Communication

Certain communication tendencies that are observable among modern humans can be explained via evolutionary theory. Consider the following nonexhaustive examples.

...