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The Evolution of Suicide PDF

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Evolutionary Psychology Series Editors: Todd K. Shackelford · Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford C. A. Soper The Evolution of Suicide Evolutionary Psychology Series Editors Todd K. Shackelford Rochester, MI, USA Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford Rochester, MI, USA More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10583 C. A. Soper The Evolution of Suicide C. A. Soper Private Practice Lisbon, Portugal ISSN 2197-9898 ISSN 2197-9901 (electronic) Evolutionary Psychology ISBN 978-3-319-77299-8 ISBN 978-3-319-77300-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77300-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935263 © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To Hattie, Mo, and Fred. Acknowledgements This book is based on a PhD thesis that was submitted in August 2017 to the University of Gloucestershire, England, following research undertaken there from 2014 to 2017. I would like to record my gratitude to the PhD supervisory team, Emily Ryall, Jane Monckton-Smith, and Richard Evans; to Adam Hart, Malcolm MacLean, Dave Webster, and to all at the University of Gloucestershire who enabled this project to reach fruition. I am grateful for the support of friends and family, particularly to Sally Birch and David Nicholds, who laboured through earlier drafts and offered critiques; and to Mark Rousell, who originally pointed me towards evolutionary psychology. vii Glossary of Abbreviations and Neologisms CMDs Common mental disorders (Goldberg & Goodyer, 2005) EP Evolutionary psychology (Buss, 2005) fender Front-line, active, anti-suicide, evolved psychological mechanism ID Intellectual disability (Lunsky, Raina, & Burge, 2012) keeper Last-line, reactive, anti-suicide, evolved psychological mechanism SSSD Self-serving self-deception (Paulhus & Buckels, 2012) ix Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1 Definition of Suicide: Deliberate, Intentional Self-killing . . . . . . . . 2 1.2 Suicide as an Evolutionary Puzzle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2.1 Variability, Heritability, and Differential Fitness Effect of Suicide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.2.2 Universality of Suicide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1.2.3 Suicide as a Species-Specific Human Behaviour . . . . . . . . . 8 1.3 The Fitness Costs of Death and Suicide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1.3.1 The Fitness Cost of Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1.3.2 The Fitness Cost of Suicide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 1.3.3 The Fitness Cost of Suicide as a Basis for a Bargaining Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 1.4 Epidemiology and Theory of Suicide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 1.4.1 Correlates and Unpredictability of Suicide . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 1.4.2 Recent Developments in Suicide Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 1.5 Aims of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 1.6 The Use of Intuitive Argument and Other Methodological Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 1.6.1 Interdisciplinary Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 1.6.2 Evolutionary Biology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 1.6.3 Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 1.6.4 Evolutionary Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 1.7 S ummary and Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 2 R eviewing the Options: Noise, Adaptation, and By-Product . . . . . . . 43 2.1 Suicide as a Result of Genetic Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 2.2 Suicide as an Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 2.2.1 Reproductive Potential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 2.2.2 Altruism: Relieving Kin of the Burden of One’s Existence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 xi xii Contents 2.3 Suicide as a Maladaptive By-Product . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 3 Suicide as a By-Product of “Pain and Brain”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 3.1 P ain: A Biological Motive for Escape Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 3.1.1 Pain as Suicide Risk Factor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 3.1.2 Evolutionary Adaptiveness of Pain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 3.1.3 Suicide as a By-Product of Pain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 3.1.4 Inadequacy of Pain Alone as a Condition of Suicide . . . . . . 79 3.2 Brain: Human Cognition Provides the Means to Escape by Self-Killing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 3.2.1 Epidemiology of Child Suicide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 3.2.2 Factors Hypothesised to Protect Children from Suicide . . . 81 3.2.3 Understanding Death, Personal Mortality, and the Concept of Self-Killing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 3.2.4 Organising Suicide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 3.2.5 The Cognitive Floor for Suicide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 3.2.6 Evolutionary Adaptiveness of Suicidogenic Cognition . . . . 91 3.3 A Theoretical Missing Link: Evolved Defences Against Suicide . . 95 3.3.1 Universality of the “Pain and Brain” Co-authors of Suicide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 3.3.2 Analogies with Other Costly By-Products of Human Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 3.3.3 Speculations about Timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 3.4 C onclusion: In Search of Evolved Defences Against Suicide . . . . . 103 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 4 “ Keepers”: Last-Line, Anti-suicide Defences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 4.1 A daptive Defences Versus the “Survival Instinct” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 4.1.1 Keepers: An Evolved Last Line of Anti-suicide Defences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 4.1.2 The Design of Keepers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 4.2 S uccess Criteria and Manifestations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 4.2.1 Low but Above-Zero Rate of Suicides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 4.2.2 Residual Suicides Would Be Hard to Predict . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 4.2.3 Keepers Would Associate with Suicidal Thoughts, Rather than Suicidal Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 4.2.4 Potentially Drastic, but Generally Recoverable, Non-lethal Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 4.3 Inputs: “Pain and Brain” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 4.3.1 The Emotional Experience of Pain as the Triggering Input Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 4.3.2 Brain Maturity as a Developmental Condition . . . . . . . . . . 133 4.4 Design Features of Keeper Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 4.4.1 “Pain and Brain” Model of Suicide Implies Multiple Mechanisms by Which Keepers May Forestall Suicide . . . 135 4.4.2 Keeper Responses Will Be Strongly Involuntary and Subject to “Instinct Blindness” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Contents xiii 4.4.3 Keepers Would Be Functionally Interchangeable: They May Operate Concurrently or Sequentially . . . . . . . . 136 4.4.4 Protracted Anxiousness as a Common Feature . . . . . . . . . . 137 4.4.5 Keepers May Make the Individual Appear to Behave Irrationally. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 4.5 Specific Types of Keeper Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 4.5.1 Pain-Type Keepers: Making Suicide Unnecessary . . . . . . . 139 4.5.2 Brain-Type Keepers: Making Suicide Difficult to Plan and/or Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 4.5.3 Different Blends of Keepers May Instantiate to Reflect the Needs of Individual Differences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 4.6 Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 5 C ommon Mental Disorders (CMDs) as Keepers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 5.1 P ain Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 5.2 Brain Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 5.3 Deactivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 5.4 Specific Types of Keeper Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 5.4.1 Pain-Type Keepers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 5.4.2 Potential Multiple Functionalities of Delusions . . . . . . . . . 163 5.4.3 Brain-Type Keepers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 5.5 General Characteristics of Keeper Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 5.6 Trade-Off Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 5.7 Manifestations of Successful Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 5.8 Species-Specific and Species-Universal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 5.9 Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 6 “Pain-Type Fenders”: Frontline Anti-suicide Mechanisms . . . . . . . . 195 6.1 General Anticipated Features of Pain-Type Fenders . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 6.1.1 System Inputs and Developmental Onsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 6.1.2 Obligate, Instinctual Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 6.1.3 Deactivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 6.2 Regulating the Experiencing of Painful Events by Self- Serving Self- Deception (SSSD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 6.2.1 The Previewing and Editing of Bad News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 6.2.2 Psychodynamic Defences and Self-Serving Self- Deception (SSSD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 6.2.3 The Evolution of SSSD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 6.3 The Delusional Basis of Subjective Well-Being (SWB) . . . . . . . . . 207 6.3.1 Fenders and the Evolution of Systematic Irrationality . . . . 208 6.3.2 Fender Defences and the Fitness Value of Organised Misbelief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 6.4 Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

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