Description
Book Synopsis''Gaining control'' tells the story of how human behavioral capacities evolved from those of other animal species. Exploring what is known about the psychological capacities of other groups of animals, the authors reconstruct a fascinating history of our own mental evolution. In the book, the authors see mental evolution as a series of steps in which new mechanisms for controlling behavior develop in different species - starting with early representatives of this kingdom, and leading to a species - us - that can engage in a large number of different types of behavioral control. Key to their argument is the idea that each of these steps -- from reflexes to instincts, drives, emotions, and cognitive planning - can be seen as a novel type of psychological adaptation in which information is ''inherited'' by an animal from its own behavior through new forms of learning - a form of major evolutionary transition. Thus the mechanisms that result from these steps in increasingly complex behavio
Trade ReviewOne of the interesting aspects of this book is the way in which the authors define emotions not by the feelings that accompany them but by their behavioural purposes * Dr Robert Hill, The Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy *
Table of ContentsSECTION ONE: THE BASIC ARGUMENT; SECTION TWO: AN EVOLUTIONARY NARRATIVE; SECTION THREE: PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES; SECTION FOUR: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
