CAS CONNECT 2022

18 CONNECT 2022 T hroughout human history, social interaction has made the world go around, whether it was for advancement through invention or tragedy through war. The current global landscape is more interconnected but also more divided than ever. A team of Oklahoma State University researchers is using evolutionary psychological science to look to the past for answers that could help us understand each other today. The Oklahoma Center for Evolutionary ANalysis (OCEAN) is one of the top institutions in the world in this rapidly growing area. It is the brainchild of Dr. Jennifer Byrd-Craven, an OSU psychology professor, who founded the center in 2019 with Dr. Jaimie Arona Krems, an assistant psychology professor. Since then, OCEAN has attracted faculty and graduate students from near and far, each with a distinct specialty at the intersection of psychology and evolutionary theory. Byrd-Craven’s research deals with stress- response systems and relationships, particularly in women. “Some have suggested having friendships is the next best thing for your health besides quitting smoking,” Byrd-Craven said. “That might be particularly true for women.” For men, having a romantic partner is often a key buffer from psychosocial stress, but for women, friends often fill this role. Byrd-Craven is at the cutting-edge of exploring the psychobiological pathways that lead from friendship to health. “We don’t yet know, for example, in what way friendships might be biologically beneficial — and in what ways might they actually be costly,” she said. “Our research helps us understand the beneficial aspects of friendship, which can translate into added years of life and better offspring health.” Satisfying long-term romantic relationships are central to psychological and physical well- being. OCEANmember Dr. Juliana French, an assistant psychology professor, hopes to glean insights from neurobiology and evolutionary social science to better understand how people form and maintain satisfying long-term relationships such as marriage. “My goal is to advance theory and knowledge about relationships, and also to help people practically understand why maintaining satisfying relationships can be so difficult, especially in our modern world,” French said. “Howwe approach our relationships might have been shaped over the history of our species, but the world looks very different today from our ancestral past. Understanding howmodern aspects of our society might alter our evolved relationship psychology is really important.” As one example, French’s neuroendocrine work has demonstrated ways that women’s use of hormonal birth control can influence relationship functioning, from their sexual satisfaction to their partners’ jealousy behaviors. Dr. Daniel Sznycer, an assistant psychology professor and OCEANmember, studies how the mind generates values and emotions. “When we hear the word ‘values’ we often think about big-sounding abstractions: ethical values and political values, for example,” he said. “But our brains appear to attach value to pretty much everything: water, oranges, brown recluse spiders, smartphones, friends and so on. When we value, our brains implicitly estimate the degree to which things, actions, ideas, events or organisms are good — or bad — for us valuers.” Sznycer thinks there are deep historical regularities in how the mind values things. In recent research, he found that people with no training in law intuitively evaluate criminal offenses such as robbery, battery and homicide in ways that echo the legal thinking of both contemporary U.S. lawmakers and ancient Mesopotamian and Chinese lawmakers. “In OCEAN, we integrate approaches from the humanities and the natural and social sciences to get a fuller picture of human nature,” Sznycer said. Krems’ work in social psychology leverages evolutionary approaches to uncover how our social minds can help us reap the benefits — and avoid the costs — of living in large, interconnected groups. For example, her work on stereotyping and stigma casts these phenomena not only as products of our social brains, but also as hurdles that our psychologies can help us navigate and overcome. STORY JORDAN BISHOP | PHOTO GARY LAWSON CAS RESEARCH Broadening Our View OSU has world-leading center for the study of human nature