Evolved Impulses
Evolved impulses are innate human tendencies or drives that brought a fitness advantage and so were genetically preserved across human evolution through natural selection. They are phylogenetically conserved — fixed in form — even though their expression is entirely shaped by an individual's Information Environment (see Contextualisation).
The impulses named in the papers
Paper One lists the previously highly adaptive, now self-defeating impulses behind overshoot behaviour as: seeking pleasure and avoiding pain; acquiring, amassing and defending resources from competitors; displaying dominance, status or sex appeal through size, beauty, physicality, aggression and/or ornamentation; and procrastinating rather than acting when action has no immediate survival benefit (innate temporal, social and spatial Discounting).
Worked examples (Paper Two, Table 3)
| Contextualised behaviour | Contextualised need | Evolved impulses |
|---|---|---|
| Purchasing and driving a new car | Personal transportation; affirmation of status | Status signalling; resource acquisition; belonging; pleasure seeking |
| Installing cameras, building a fence | Personal and family/in-group security | Territory defence; threat awareness; resource defence; out-group wariness |
| Eating candy, drinking soft drinks | Satisfying a "sweet tooth"; blood-sugar maintenance | Craving sweets (energy homeostasis); pleasure seeking; preference for calorie-dense food; effort minimisation |
| Sitting by and operating a heater | Thermoregulation | Attraction to "campfire"; comfort-seeking; discomfort avoidance |
| Founding and acquiring businesses | Material security; self-expression; increased social status | Resource acquisition and accumulation; status signalling; dominance signalling; pleasure seeking |