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According to some evolutionary theorists human prosocial dispositions emerged in a context of inter-group competition and violence that made our psychology parochially prosocial, ie. cooperative towards in-groups and competitive towards strangers. This evolutionary hypothesis is sometimes employed in bioethical debates to argue that human nature and contemporary environments, and especially large-scale societies, are mismatched. In this article we caution against the use of mismatch theories in moral philosophy in general and discuss empirical evidence that puts into question mismatch theories based on parochial prosociality. Evolutionary mismatch theories play at best a rhetorical role in these moral debates and may misrepresent the status of relevant evolutionary research. We finally recommend that moral philosophers interested in the evolutionary literature also engage with dispositions such as xenophilia and social tolerance to counterbalance the focus on psychological mismatches adopted so far.

BACKGROUND According to the hypothesis of Gluckman and Hanson, mismatch between the developmental and postdevelopmental environments may lead to detrimental health impacts such as obesity. While several animal studies support the mismatch theory, there is a scarcity of evidence from human-based studies. OBJECTIVES Our study aims to examine whether a mismatch between the developmental and young-adult environments affect obesity in young adults of the Jerusalem Perinatal Family Follow-Up Study. METHODS Data from The Jerusalem Perinatal Family Follow-Up Study birth cohort was used to characterize early and late environments using offspring and parental sociodemographic and lifestyle information at birth, age 32 (n = 1140) and 42 (n = 404). Scores characterizing the early and late environments were constructed using factor analysis. To assess associations of mismatch with obesity, regression models were fitted using the first factor of each environment and adiposity measures at age 32 and 42. RESULTS Having a stable non-beneficial environment at birth and young-adulthood was most strongly associated with increased adiposity, while a stable beneficial environment was most favorable. The transition from a beneficial environment at birth to a less beneficial environment at young-adulthood was associated with higher obesity measures, including higher BMI (β = 0.979; 95% CI: 0.029, 1.929), waist circumference (β = 2.729; 95% CI: 0.317, 5.140) and waist-hip ratio (β = 0.017; 95% CI: 0.004, 0.029) compared with those experiencing a beneficial environment at both time points. Transition from a less beneficial environment at birth to a beneficial environment at adulthood was also associated with higher obesity measurements (BMI -β = 1.116; 95% CI: 0.085, 2.148; waist circumference -β = 2.736; 95% CI: 0.215, 5.256). CONCLUSIONS This study provides some support for the mismatch hypothesis. While there is indication that an accumulation of the effects of the non-beneficial environment has the strongest detrimental impact on obesity outcomes, our results also indicate that a mismatch between the developmental and later environments may result in maladaptation of the individual leading to obesity.

Purpose of Review For the most part of human existence, individuals have been living a rural lifestyle in a rural setting. However, such sleep-conducive conditions have largely been transformed dramatically by urbanization within a relatively short span of time in recent history, and the resulting evolved mechanisms-environment mismatch is theorized to bring about an increased risk for insomnia symptoms. This brief review of the recent literature is designed to evaluate the veracity of this proposition. Recent Findings The majority of recent findings have suggested that most proposed evolutionarily mismatched urban factors are indeed related to the presence of insomnia symptoms. However, there is a general paucity of longitudinal evidence (and for some other factors, a lack of enough evidence of any kind). Summary Although there is a preponderance of recent findings indicating a link between evolutionarily mismatched urban phenomena and insomnia symptoms, more longitudinal data are needed before any causative conclusion can be drawn.

International audience; The prevalence of osteoarthritis (OA) is rising for reasons that are not fully understood. In this Opinion article, we review the possibility that OA is an evolutionary mismatch disease, which is a disease more common today than in the past because genes inherited from previous generations are inadequately or imperfectly adapted to modern environmental conditions. We focus on four major environmental factors in OA pathogenesis that have become ubiquitous within the past half-century: obesity, metabolic syndrome, dietary changes and physical inactivity. Because a cure for OA does not yet exist, prevention strategies that target these modifiable environmental factors are needed to curb further increases in OA prevalence.

In evolutionary medicine, researchers characterize some outcomes as evolutionary mismatch. Mismatch problems arise as the result of organisms living in environments to which they are poorly adapted, typically as the result of some rapid environmental change. Depression, anxiety, obesity, myopia, insomnia, breast cancer, dental problems, and numerous other negative health outcomes have all been characterized as mismatch problems. The exact nature of evolutionary mismatch itself is unclear, however. This leads to a lack of clarity about the sorts of problems that evolutionary mismatch can actually explain. Resolving this challenge is important not only for the evolutionary health literature, but also because the notion of evolutionary mismatch involves central concepts in evolutionary biology: fitness, evolution in changing environments, and so forth. In this paper, I examine two characterizations of mismatch currently in the literature. I propose that we conceptualize mismatch as a relation between an optimal environment and an actual environment. Given an organism and its particular physiology, the optimal environment is the environment in which the organism’s fitness is maximized: in other words, the optimal environment is that in which the organism’s fitness is as high as it can possibly be. The actual environment is the environment in which the organism actually finds itself. To the extent that there is a discordance between the organism’s actual and optimal environments, there is an evolutionary mismatch. In the paper, I show that this account of mismatch gives us the right result when other accounts fail, and provides useful targets for investigation.

This paper proposes a unifying evolutionary framework for understanding the genesis of a wide range of psychological disorders. Psychological disorders as a whole appear to develop at significant frequencies only under conditions of “evolutionary mismatch,” where people or animals live in environments, such as modern cities or industrialized cultures in general, that they are not evolutionarily or biologically adapted for. Evolutionarily mismatched environments appear to often cause disruptions in drive states that have evolved to maintain homeostasis. Based on several lines of evidence, I will suggest that painful, distressing emotional states can provide unconscious biochemical rewards in the brain and, under mismatched environmental conditions, can become reinforced, creating unconscious, compulsive “emotional addictions.” This core phenomenon may be the main driving force for the great majority of psychological disorders. The maladaptive drive or force that emotional addictions appear to generate, referred to here as the “non-homeostatic drive” or “addictive drive,” is suggested to dysfunctionally, unnecessarily, and repeatedly throw people out of homeostasis, creating systemic imbalances that can result in a variety of psychological dysfunctions.

We describe two types of experimental evolution studies of “mismatch” that are relevant to economics. “Evolutionary mismatch” is the concept that an organism can be importantly “out of sync” with its environment. In such cases, an organism may choose an option that is inferior to a feasible alternative. Mainstream and behavioral economics do not address the notion of evolutionary mismatch. We argue for an empirical program on mismatch utilizing the methodology of experimental evolution.

Evolutionary biology and economics are both rich in theory and steeped in data, but they also share challenges including the fact that the systems they seek to understand are, in certain respects, unique and not easily manipulated. Nonetheless, both fields have seen growing efforts to provide experimental approaches to address specific issues. Here, we review some results from a 30-year experiment in which 12 populations of bacteria have been evolving for over 60,000 generations to characterize: (i) the time scale of adaptation to new conditions, (ii) the repeatability of evolutionary changes, and (iii) the benefits and costs of specialization. In each case, we speculate on potential connections and implications of these findings for the field of economics. Moreover, both the bacteria in this experiment and people in modern societies live in novel environments, which leads to an evolutionary mismatch between their genes and environments. Regardless of the value of our speculations, we hope this paper stimulates further interest in pursuing experiments in fields that are often viewed as observational and not amenable to experimentation.

Standard economic theory does not consider the deep evolutionary history of humans. As such, economics ignores the notion that human nature can be ‘out of sync’ with certain aspects of modern life. In contrast, the theory of ‘evolutionary mismatch’ argues that novel products and situations might present particular difficulties. The assumptions of economics are discussed and examined from an evolutionary perspective including both equilibrium and mismatch. The conclusion is that economics would be changed by evolutionary thinking in general, and evolutionary mismatch in particular.

Seeing one’s laptop to be missing, hearing silence and smelling fresh air; these are all examples of perceptual experiences of absences. In this paper I discuss an example of absence perception in the tactual sense modality, that of tactually perceiving a tooth to be absent in one’s mouth, following its extraction. Various features of the example challenge two recently-developed theories of absence perception: Farennikova’s memory-perception mismatch theory and Martin and Dockic’s meta-cognitive theory. I speculate that the mechanism underlying the experience is a body schema that has failed to update itself.

Quality of Life (QoL) is a multi-dimensional concept that includes: a) the long-term sustainability of the earth; b) good health, education, welfare; and c) the psychological state of wellbeing. This article, which introduces a special issue on QoL from an evolutionary perspective, shows how modern evolutionary science provides a “toolkit” for studying all aspects of QoL.

Three leading theories of racial achievement gaps in education include cultural capital match/mismatch, oppositional culture, and teacher bias. Cultural capital match/mismatch theory suggests that students and teachers do not share the same understanding of the standards, norms, and expectations required for achievement. Oppositional culture theory suggests that students may resist the standards, norms, and expectations of achievement, and teacher bias theory suggests that teachers have standards, norms, and expectations that privilege some students, but not others. The unifying thread in all three of these theories is how teachers and students perceive and execute the standards, norms, and expectations of schooling. This study offers a unique way of operationalizing whether and how cultural capital, oppositional culture, and/or teacher bias occur in everyday classroom practice and behavior by examining racialized patterns of student–teacher effort assessment match/mismatch. Using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study (Base Year 2002), I find no evidence for oppositional culture; net of other background characteristics, black students are less, and Hispanic students are no more likely than white students to agree with their teachers that they have low effort. Black and Hispanic students are more likely than white students to believe they are working hard when their teacher disagrees, but, consistent with cultural capital theory, socioeconomic background and academic skills account for all of their effort misalignment. Lastly, white and Asian students seem to benefit from positive teacher bias; net of background and skill, black and Hispanic students are less likely than white and Asian students to receive positive teacher effort assessment when they admit to not working hard.

Blanchard et al. (2009) demonstrated that hebephilia is a genuine sexual preference, but then proposed, without argument or evidence, that it should be designated as a mental disorder in the DSM-5. A series of Letters-to-the-Editor criticized this proposal as a non sequitur. Blanchard (2009), in rebuttal, reaffirmed his position, but without adequately addressing some central criticisms. In this article, we examine hebephilia-as-disorder in full detail. Unlike Blanchard et al., we discuss definitions of mental disorder, examine extensive evidence from a broad range of sources, and consider alternative (i.e., non-pathological) explanations for hebephilia. We employed Wakefield's (1992b) harmful dysfunction approach to disorder, which holds that a condition only counts as a disorder when it is a failure of a naturally selected mechanism to function as designed, which is harmful to the individual in the current environment. We also considered a harmful-for-others approach to disorder (Brülde, 2007). Examination of historical, cross-cultural, sociological, cross-species, non-clinical empirical, and evolutionary evidence and perspectives indicated that hebephilic interest is an evolved capacity and hebephilic preference an expectable distributional variant, both of which were adaptively neutral or functional, not dysfunctional, in earlier human environments. Hebephilia's conflict with modern society makes it an evolutionary mismatch, not a genuine disorder. Though it should not be classified as a disorder, it could be entered in the DSM's V-code [corrected] section, used for non-disordered conditions that create significant problems in present-day society.

This paper presents the author's integrated approach to custom device mismatch simulations, and is intended for both the design and the modeling communities. It provides the means for the generation of Monte Carlo mismatch models, when foundry libraries are insufficient. This is done by presenting an overview of matching for practically every device of interest in analog design and a strategy for fitting measured data to custom models. Mismatch modeling subcircuits are presented for an array of different simulating environments and bias conditions. Results from silicon are used to back and build confidence on the approach. Furthermore the solution to many CAD or simulator shortcomings is introduced and a number of useful scripts (performing all the necessary netlist/library modifications) is presented.