Some people insist on believing that psychology and philosophy are practically the same thing. That both work primarily with ideas, and that they serve to know how to develop one’s own perspective from which to live life.

But this is false: psychology is not based on ideas, but on matter; not on how we should behave, but on how we really behave, and how we might behave if certain objective conditions were present. In other words, psychology has always been a science closely related to biology. In the end, behavior does not exist if there is no body that performs actions.

Considering the above, it is not strange that Charles Darwin has had and still has a great influence on psychology . In the end, biology is based on a mixture between genetics and the developments that have taken as their starting point the theory of evolution proposed by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. In the following we will see some of the aspects in which this researcher influences the development of the science of behavior.

What is Darwin’s theory of evolution?

Everything that is done in biology today is based on the idea that Charles Darwin was fundamentally right when he explained the mechanism by which different forms of life appear. Any other proposal that claims to be a unifying theory of biology as it now is modern synthesis (a mixture of the theory of evolution and genetics) must provide a tremendous amount of evidence, and that is not something that looks like it will happen anytime soon.

Before continuing, it is important to know the main basic ideas about what Darwin proposed about biology . According to biologist Ernst Mayr, the ideas through which Darwin explained the appearance of species are the following:

1. Evolution

The different lineages of living beings show how through generations there are constant changes in the features of individuals and in their way of organizing themselves or inhabiting the ecosystems.

2. Common ancestor

Although all “family lines” tend to change over time, they all have common ancestors. For example, humans and chimpanzees come from lineages that could not be differentiated millions of years ago .

3. Gradualism

According to Darwin, the changes that took place over the generations appeared very slowly and gradually, so that it is not possible to identify a specific moment when a turning point occurs in the process of developing a certain trait. Today, however, it is known that the appearance of traits does not always have to occur in this way.

4. Speciation

Other species can emerge from a species , so that different evolutionary branches appear from one that gives rise to them.

5. Natural selection

The changes that appear in the lineages of life forms are driven by natural selection, a process by which some traits are more likely to be transmitted to future generations , depending on the conditions of the environment to which they have to adapt.

The importance of genetics

It is clear that Darwin left many questions unanswered, not least because in the 19th century limitations on research into such complex subjects were a major obstacle.
One of these questions was, for example: how do traits appear that will or will not be disseminated through the population depending on whether they offer advantages in adapting to the environment? This type of question was addressed by the genetic studies promoted by Gregor Mendel. At the base of the construction of living beings there is a genotype , made up of genes, which will outline the approximate design of each living being.

The effects of Darwin’s influence on Psychology

From what we have seen so far, it is already possible to intuit that Darwin’s ideas have implications for psychology. Indeed, the fact that behind every living being there is a history of interactions between some traits and the environment in which they appear, makes that the style of behavior, which also can be understood as a trait even though it is not exactly something physical but psychological , can be analyzed in another way.

In this sense, several of the topics dealt with from psychology that come into contact with Darwin’s ideas are the following.

1. Concern about gender differences

In Western societies, even before Darwin wrote about evolution, the differences between men and women were usually interpreted from an essentialist perspective: masculinity is expressed through men, and femininity through women, because “it cannot be otherwise”.

However, Darwin clearly shows that essentialism is totally useless when it comes to understanding these differences between men and women . His ideas gave way to a new perspective: both sexes are different because in each of them the ways of having offspring (and, consequently, of making others inherit our traits and our genes) are different. The key point here is that, as a general rule, females must pay a higher reproductive cost than males for having offspring, since they are the ones who carry out the gestation.

But… what about psychological traits? Do the psychological differences between men and women also respond to the consequences of biological evolution, or are there other alternative explanations? This is currently a very active area of research, which often generates a lot of interest. It is not for less: to accept an answer or another one can give exit to very different public policies.

2. The Myth of the All-embracing Mind

There was a time when it was thought that rationality was the essence of human mental activity. With effort, patience and the development of the right tools, we could perfectly understand practically everything around us, thanks to the use of reason .

Charles Darwin’s contributions to science, however, challenged these ideas: if everything we are exists simply because it helped our ancestors survive, why should it be any different with the ability to think rationally?

Thus, the reason is not there because it is predestined to end ignorance, but because it allows us to know the world well enough to stay alive and, hopefully, to reproduce. The tree of life does not have at its highest point a place that should be occupied by the most reasonable species; we are just another branch.

3. The key is to adapt

The concept of adaptation is fundamental in psychology. In fact, in the clinical setting it is often said that one of the main criteria for determining whether something is a mental disorder or not is whether the behaviors manifested are adaptive or not. That is to say, if in the context in which the person lives, that pattern of behavior generates discomfort.

As expressing behaviour requires someone to perform actions and a medium in which these actions are received, the key to understanding behaviour is to look at the relationship between these two components, and not just at the individual .

In the same way that Darwin pointed out that there are no good or bad traits per se, since one can be useful in one environment and harmful in another, something similar can happen with behaviour: a predilection for repetitive tasks can cause problems in a work that is aimed at the public, but not in another oriented towards construction.

4. Intelligence breaks paradigms

Another influence on psychology that Darwin’s work has had has to do with highlighting the uniqueness of that set of mental abilities that we call intelligence . This naturalist showed that although in the animal world there are many species capable of behaving in amazing ways to survive, in most cases these actions are a fruit of evolution, and have been inherited from one generation to another without any learning involved. For instance, ants can coordinate themselves in amazing ways to reach a goal, but this happens because they are “programmed” to do so.

On the other hand, there are a number of animal species that are not subject to so many biological constraints on their behaviour, and we are one of them. Intelligence is a process of selecting the right answers within a process of selecting the right traits. Genes take us over the edge in some things (for example, most people experience sexual urges), but beyond that we have a relative freedom to do what we want. This does not, however, run counter to the theory of evolution: being intelligent is useful in certain contexts, and in our case it has allowed a relatively puny species of hominid to spread around the planet. It is a characteristic which allows us to avoid having to specialize in a single environment by assuming the risk of becoming extinct if that environment disappears or changes too much.

5. Being happy is not the same as persisting

Finally, another of the aspects in which Darwin has influenced psychology is that it helps us to give relative importance to the fact of being successful from the evolutionary point of view. Being part of a species that has many offspring capable of surviving into adulthood does not mean success, it is simply the consequence of a natural process in which whatever we do, we do not have the last word and in which, moreover, our happiness is not important. In the end, the fact that there are many individuals of the same species, ethnicity or family means that for some reason the sons and daughters are being able to leave offspring , perhaps in abundance. Why have we sacrificed so much in order to reach this point? That’s what’s important.