The bargaining model of depression--论文代写范文精选

51Due论文代写网精选paper代写范文：“The bargaining model of depression” 压抑情绪往往伴随着适应环境的问题,抑郁症的特点是额外的症状，对几乎所有活动失去兴趣，交流没有明显的效用。这篇paper代写范文讲述了压抑的情绪影响。这些严重的频繁的症状明显导致悲伤和情绪低落。考虑到主要的原因，单相抑郁症对人是一个重大负面影响。人类是必须互相依赖的。在人类祖先环境中,经常需要他人的合作。

Abstract 
Minor depression—low mood often accompanied by a loss of motivation—is almost certainly an adaptation to circumstances that, in ancestral environments, imposed a fitness cost. It is, in other words, the psychic equivalent of physical pain. Major depression is characterized by additional symptoms—such as loss of interest in virtually all activities and suicidality—that have no obvious utility. The frequent association of these severe and disabling symptoms with apparently functional symptoms like sadness and low mood challenges a functional account of depression as a whole. Given that the principle cause of major unipolar depression is a significant negative life event, and that its characteristic symptom is a loss of interest in virtually all activities, it is possible that this syndrome functions somewhat like a labor strike. When powerful others are benefiting from an individual’s efforts, but the individual herself is not benefiting, she can, by reducing her productivity, put her value to them at risk in order to compel their consent and assistance in renegotiating the social contract so that it will yield net fitness benefits for her. In partial support of this hypothesis, depression is associated with the receipt of considerable social benefits despite the negative reaction it causes in others. 
Keywords: depression, bargaining, evolutionary psychology

The individual vs. society in the EEA 
To achieve fitness related goals, humans must rely upon one another to an exceptional degree. In ancestral human environments (the environment of evolutionary adaptedness—the EEA), an effective response to a social failure therefore often required the cooperation and consent of others. Unfortunately, inherent conflicts of interest or incomplete information regarding the relative costs and benefits of providing assistance meant that such cooperation and consent may not always have been forthcoming. Consequently, an effective strategy to compel assistance in the wake of social failures and losses would have provided substantial fitness benefits. In the first part of this article I will argue that there was a selection pressure for the evolution of a bargaining strategy in humans; in the second part, I will argue that clinical, unipolar depression—whose principle known cause is a major, negative life event, and whose characteristic symptom is a loss of interest in virtually all activities—is just such a bargaining strategy.

Viscous social markets and monopoly power 
When there are many resource providers (i.e., when there is a ‘market’ instead of a monopoly), there is less need to pay a cost to influence others whose actions (or inactions) are causing opportunity costs, because one can always obtain the necessary benefits from others. 1 That is, the costs of these benefits are determined by the supply and demand curves of standard economic theory (if there is a market on only one side, the single seller [monopoly] or single buyer [monopsony] sets the price unilaterally). In the EEA, however, it may frequently have been the case that there was little-to-no market at all; all parties often had effective monopolies on benefits that were crucial to other group members. 

Kin- and family-based social organization, high levels of biparental care, low population densities, ethnicity, and occasional inter-group aggression meant that switching social partners was difficult. For example, the energetic and other costs of raising human offspring were (and are) quite large relative to other primates. It would have been difficult for human mothers to raise offspring without help from the father and/or other family members, and, conversely, the fitness of the father, parents, and other family members depended critically on the mother successfully raising offspring. The father and/or family members could not easily abandon their relationship with the mother without suffering a significant fitness cost, nor could the mother abandon her relationship with the father and/or family members without also suffering a significant fitness cost (for further details, see Hagen 1999). Similarly, political alliances between families may have often depended on an arranged marriage between a man from one family and women from the other, as is commonly seen in contemporary hunter-gatherer groups (Rodseth et al. 1991, and references therein). If so, important political relationships between families often depended critically on a son or daughter; conversely, the son or daughter’s relationship with their family depended critically on their willingness to participate in the arranged marriage.

Contract enforcement 
Partners can also maintain an effective monopoly on resources they provide when they can exclude competitors or when they can easily punish defection. Both were most likely important aspects of ancestral social environments. Punishment, in particular, is increasingly recognized as an important social strategy. A number of researchers have concluded for both theoretical and empirical reasons that, at least in their original formulations, kin selection (Hamilton, 1964) and reciprocal altruism (Trivers 1971) are insufficient to explain human sociality (e.g., Boyd & Richerson 1988, 1992; see also Hammerstein this volume and McElreath et al. this volume). 

These researchers propose that the ability to impose various costs on defectors beyond mere defection can ensure the evolution of cooperation under a wider and more plausible range of conditions including larger groups and limited numbers of interactions. By punishing instead of ostracizing, group members can also reap cooperative benefits from an individual whose potential contributions would otherwise be lost to the group. The ability to efficiently impose costs on defectors raises the specter that individuals who are not benefiting from a cooperative venture could nonetheless be forced to participate despite the fitness costs they might suffer by doing so. 2 In sum, the market for certain kinds of social partners in the EEA may have been anything but fluid. 3 Given this high degree of interdependence in foraging bands (see also Boehm 1996), individuals who were suffering losses (i.e., paying high opportunity costs) due to the current social arrangement could have bargained with other band members for more benefits by withholding the benefits they were providing to the band.

Severe opportunity costs 
In the EEA, individuals’ social strategies could have failed in a number of ways. Important social partners such as mates and allies could have died or severed relations, forcing one to abandon the current strategy; social strategies could have failed to realize fitness benefits, such as when efforts to increase or maintain social status failed, or when a cooperative mateship yielded a low viability infant; competitors could have blocked access to critical resources, including key social relationships; one could have been coerced by powerful others; one could have been betrayed by social partners; or one could simply have chosen the wrong strategy or executed it poorly. In many cases of social failure, individuals could have unilaterally pursued an alternative strategy, such as forming new friendships after the death of close friend. In many other cases, however—if evidence from contemporary small-scale societies is any guide— individuals required the consent and/or cooperation of group members to ameliorate the consequences of social failure. 

For example, if an individual were abandoned by their spouse, one strategy would have been to try and get the spouse to return. Physical threats might have worked, but they might also have been counterproductive (Figueredo et al. 2001). If the individual who experienced the loss could have convinced group members to spend political capital in securing the return of this partner or procuring another partner, chances of success would have been far greater. Unfortunately, there would often have been conflicts of interest between the individual and the group. Group members might not want to spend their political capital securing another mate for someone who had one, but lost her due to his abusive behavior, or because the group preferred using its capital to secure a mate for a higher status individual. 

In another example, arranged marriages are frequently made with little regard for the personal preferences of those to be married. Those betrothed to an undesirable mate often face formidable opposition from their families and other group members, however, if they resist the marriage (e.g., Shostak 1981). This opposition might be because there is a genuine conflict of interest between the parties, or because the family and group members simply have less reliable information about the relative quality of the mates (and so would not want to make costly changes for no real benefit). In general, given that even relatively high degrees of relatedness, although important, appears insufficient so sustain cooperation in foraging bands, given the high mutual interdependence of individuals in these bands, and given that small cooperative groups of foragers only had the time and resources to achieve limited goals, conflicts between individual members and the group were inevitable, especially when one member was suffering costs that the others weren’t. In such circumstances, individuals who were suffering severe costs needed a strategy to influence other group members to act in their interest when such actions could plausibly have alleviated these costs, yet there were inherent conflicts of interest, or a lack of reliable information about the extent of the costs suffered.(论文代写)

51Due网站原创范文除特殊说明外一切图文著作权归51Due所有；未经51Due官方授权谢绝任何用途转载或刊发于媒体。如发生侵犯著作权现象，51Due保留一切法律追诉权。(论文代写)
更多论文代写范文欢迎访问我们主页 www.51due.com 当然有论文代写需求可以和我们24小时在线客服 QQ:800020041 联系交流。-X(论文代写)