What Color is a Banana? The Savanna Principle

Read this fascinating piece in Psychology Today which I find relevant to discussions touching on human nature and Natural Rights:

"One of the fundamental assumptions of evolutionary psychology is that there is nothing special about the human brain. It is an evolved organ, just like the hand or the pancreas or any other part of the human body.

Just like all the other parts of the human body, the brain – and all the evolved psychological mechanisms in it – are designed for and adapted to the conditions of the ancestral environment in which they evolved, not necessarily to the current environment. This principle holds for both psychological adaptations, like evolved psychological mechanisms, and physical adaptations, like the eye, the vision, and the color recognition system.

What color is a banana? A banana is yellow in the sunlight and in the moonlight. It is yellow on a sunny day, on a cloudy day, on a rainy day. It is yellow at dawn and at dusk. The color of the banana appears constant to the human eye under all these conditions, despite the fact that the actual wavelengths of the light reflected by the surface of the banana under these varied conditions are different. Objectively, they are not the same color all the time. However, the human eye and color recognition system can compensate for these varied conditions because they all occurred during the course of the evolution of the human vision system, and can perceive the objectively varied colors as constantly yellow.

So a banana looks yellow under all conditions, except in a parking lot at night. Under the sodium vapor lights commonly used to illuminate parking lots, a banana does not appear natural yellow. This is because the sodium vapor lights did not exist in the ancestral environment, during the course of the evolution of the human vision system, and the visual cortex is therefore incapable of compensating for them.

Fans of the 1989 James Cameron movie The Abyss may recall a scene toward the end of the movie, where it is impossible for a diver to distinguish colors under artificial lighting in the otherwise total darkness of the deep oceanic basin. Regular viewers of the TV program Forensic Files and other real-life crime shows may further recall that eyewitnesses often misidentify the colors of cars on freeways, leading the police either to rule in or rule out potential suspects incorrectly. Highways and freeways are often lit with sodium vapor lights and other evolutionarily novel sources of illumination.

The same principle that holds for physical adaptations like the color recognition system also holds for psychological adaptations. Pioneers of evolutionary psychology all recognized that the psychological adaptations are designed for and adapted to the conditions of the ancestral environment, not necessarily to the conditions of the current environment. I call these observations the Savanna Principle: The human brain has difficulty comprehending and dealing with entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment. Other evolutionary psychologists call the same observation the evolutionary legacy hypothesis or the mismatch hypothesis.

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One example of the Savanna Principle in action is the fact that individuals who watch certain types of TV shows are more satisfied with their friendships, just as they are if they had more friends or socialized with them more frequently. It makes perfect sense that people who have more friends and socialize with them more frequently are more satisfied with their friendships than those who don’t have as many friends or socialize with them as frequently. And they are. What’s interesting is that the same thing happens if they watch more TV. From the perspective of the Savanna Principle, this is probably because realistic images of other humans, such as television, movies, videos, DVDs, and photographs, did not exist in the ancestral environment, where all realistic images of other humans were other humans. As a result, the Savanna Principle suggests that the human brain may have implicit difficulty distinguishing their “TV friends” – the characters they repeatedly see on TV shows – and their real friends.

Another example, discussed extensively in a previous post, is the fact that, when experimental psychologists deliberately create a situation where people earn money when they are ostracized and lose money when they are included, people still feel happy when they are included (and lose money) and hurt when they are excluded (and make money). While this makes no sense from a purely economic perspective, it is perfectly consistent with the Savanna Principle. Throughout the course of human evolution, exclusion from a group was always costly and inclusion was always beneficial. These two factors always covaried throughout evolutionary history, because there were no evil experimental psychologists in the ancestral environment to manipulate them independently. There were no such things as beneficial exclusion or costly inclusion, and the human brain cannot therefore comprehend them. It implicitly assumes that all inclusion is beneficial and all exclusion is costly.

So it appears that the human brain indeed has difficulty comprehending and dealing with entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment, as the Savanna Principle suggests. If you look around, you will realize that virtually nothing in your current environment existed in the ancestral environment. In fact, I believe there are only four entities in our current environment that existed in the ancestral environment: men, women, boys, and girls. If you are outside, you may be tempted to include such natural features as trees, mountains, and rivers, but unless you are on the African savanna, they are not the same trees, mountains, and rivers that existed in the ancestral environment. There are more situations and relationships in your current environment that still existed in the ancestral environment, such as friendships, alliances, and pair-bonding (“marriage&rdquo😉. But many of these situations and relationships today involve evolutionarily novel components (Facebook, written contracts enforceable by government, marriage certificates).

The key word in the Savanna Principle – The human brain has difficulty comprehending and dealing with entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment – is difficulty, not impossibility. It is sometimes possible to overcome the limitations of the human brain consciously – it is possible for us to remember that the characters we see on TV are professional actors who are paid millions of dollars to play scripted roles – but it is often difficult. Even when we are aware of something at the conscious level, we still act as if we weren’t, as when we become more satisfied with our friendships when we watch more TV. The observation captured in the Savanna Principle has very powerful and profound implications for evolutionary psychology and how the human brain functions."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201002/the-savanna-principle

To our brains, we're still on the savanna which may be why our hierarchical systems cause such deep unhappiness and resistance (the Natural State was marked by equalitarian hyper-cooperation).

Thoughts?

How we perceive color is more a matter of biology and how objects reflect light rather than psychology. It's not like someone can be trained to see a banana as anything other than yellow.

I disagree that the human has trouble processing non-ancestral situations. My sons learned how to use mobile devices at very young ages. My oldest was a wiz at Subway Surfer at around 1.5 years. A first generation child of immigrants who ancestors came from more tribal environments can easily adapt to a modern-day city.

We can however be more conscious of how we digest media and train ourselves to be more critical. What makes people able or unable to deal with change or information they don't like may be more a matter or culture and personality.

@vivify said
How we perceive color is more a matter of biology and how objects reflect light rather than psychology. It's not like someone can be trained to see a banana as anything other than yellow.

I disagree that the human has trouble processing non-ancestral situations. My sons learned how to use mobile devices at very young ages. My oldest was a wiz at Subway Surfer at around ...[text shortened]... to deal with change or information they don't like may be more a matter or culture and personality.

@no1marauder said
Read this fascinating piece in Psychology Today which I find relevant to discussions touching on human nature and Natural Rights:

"One of the fundamental assumptions of evolutionary psychology is that there is nothing special about the human brain. It is an evolved organ, just like the hand or the pancreas or any other part of the human body.

Just like all the other ...[text shortened]... piness and resistance (the Natural State was marked by equalitarian hyper-cooperation).

Thoughts?

@averagejoe1 said
I pass. Whew.

@wajoma said
Born tabula rasa.

There are all kinds of little parlour tricks to play on the mind. I recall seeing one, there's some set up but basically a rubber hand is substituted for the persons real hand then the rubber hand is struck with a hammer the person flinches. Evolution right.

That you can take the inmenso leap from the colour of a banana to 51%** of the pop for ...[text shortened]... nciples by voting for the usual scum bag corrupt lying pollies, or they're ineligible in some cases.

Banana, yum can I eat one.

I think the theory that humans came from apes on the Savannah is bogus. Where are the apes in Orange County?

This also explains why bananas are thrown by racist fans in soccer matches in some parts of the world.

Colour is inherent to light (white light to be more precise, which is made of red, blue and green).
Under yellow street lights, for example, most colours are nothing but shades of grey (hence the drive towards white light in town lighting; more colour feels safer).

I find the article interesting, but it doesn’t make much sense. Turn the lights off at night, look at the banana. It isn’t yellow.

That the human brain hasn’t kept up with changes in our environment seems inherentlu true to me though.

@no1marauder said
Read this fascinating piece in Psychology Today which I find relevant to discussions touching on human nature and Natural Rights:

"One of the fundamental assumptions of evolutionary psychology is that there is nothing special about the human brain. It is an evolved organ, just like the hand or the pancreas or any other part of the human body.

Just like all the other ...[text shortened]... piness and resistance (the Natural State was marked by equalitarian hyper-cooperation).

Thoughts?

Savanna Principle" is a term coined by Satoshi Kanazawa in 2004 for the principle that human behavior remaining to some extent adapted to the ancestral environment of early Homo in the savanna may lead to problems in a modern (Industrial or post-Industrial) environment.

Many preachers of this principle usually use it as a premise to argue that humans should demolish the entire industrial society and return to be hunter-gatherers in the wild.

For example they say that working nowadays isn't motivated by our instincts, and it's in fact usually opposite to what our psychological instincts motivates us to do, which in turn leads us to depression; unlike hunting, which had been evolving in us as a trait for thousands of years.

It's indeed a strange belief, rooted perhaps in ideology.

@congruent said
Savanna Principle" is a term coined by Satoshi Kanazawa in 2004 for the principle that human behavior remaining to some extent adapted to the ancestral environment of early Homo in the savanna may lead to problems in a modern (Industrial or post-Industrial) environment.

Many preachers of this principle usually use it as a premise to argue that humans should demolish the ...[text shortened]... n us as a trait for thousands of years.

It's indeed a strange belief, rooted perhaps in ideology.

@no1marauder said
if our social structures more closely approximated those our brains evolved being used to, we'd see higher levels of satisfaction and less strife.

@vivify said
That's dangerously close to something a right-winger would say about feminism or immigration.