Changing People: A Psychological Impossibility - Part 3
In every vertebrate from fish to giraffe, a single nerve follows an extraordinary path. The recurrent laryngeal nerve, which controls the voice box, travels from the brain down the neck, loops under the aorta near the heart, and returns up the neck to reach its destination just centimetres from where it began. In a giraffe, this nerve takes a five-metre detour to connect two points fifteen centimetres apart.
This anatomical absurdity exists because evolution cannot redesign from scratch. It can only modify existing structures, building upon what worked for previous generations regardless of inefficiency. The recurrent laryngeal nerve made perfect sense in our fish ancestors, where the heart and gills were positioned differently. As vertebrates evolved longer necks and different body plans, the nerve retained its ancient pathway, growing longer and more circuitous with each evolutionary step.
This principle—that evolution modifies rather than redesigns—may explain why humans display patterns of behaviour that appear maladaptive, self-destructive, or resistant to beneficial change. Our psychological responses developed over millions of years of evolutionary pressure, shaped by survival challenges vastly different from those we face today. Like the laryngeal nerve's wasteful journey, our resistance to change may be an ancient survival mechanism operating in a modern context for which it was never designed.
Consider Maria, a brilliant academic whose perfectionist tendencies create chronic stress and prevent her from completing her doctoral thesis. Her supervisor observes that Maria's standards are impossibly high, that her fear of criticism paralyses her productivity, and that her anxiety serves no useful purpose in the safe environment of university research. The supervisor's assessment appears logically sound—Maria's patterns seem obviously counterproductive.
Yet from an evolutionary perspective, Maria's hypervigilance to potential criticism may reflect ancient threat-detection systems that kept her ancestors alive. In small tribal groups where social rejection meant death, the ability to detect and avoid disapproval was essential for survival. A nervous system that errs on the side of caution—assuming threat where none exists—would be strongly favoured by natural selection over one that fails to detect genuine danger.
Maria's perfectionism, viewed through this lens, represents not pathology but the modern expression of ancient survival programming. Her psychological system operates as though academic criticism carries the same life-or-death consequences as tribal rejection once did. The fact that this response now creates suffering rather than safety does not make it irrational—it makes it an evolutionary anachronism, like the giraffe's nerve, that may require different approaches than traditional interventions assume.
Research in evolutionary psychology demonstrates that human beings, like most animals, display neophobia—an innate wariness of novel situations, foods, people, and experiences (Rozin & Vollmecke, 1986). This bias toward the familiar appears across cultures and emerges early in development, suggesting deep evolutionary roots.
From a survival standpoint, neophobia makes perfect sense. Unknown foods might be poisonous. Unfamiliar territories might contain predators. Novel social situations could expose individuals to exploitation or violence. For most of human evolutionary history, survival depended on the wisdom of generations—tried and tested patterns of behaviour that had proven safe and effective.
Kahneman and Tversky's extensive research on cognitive biases, later expanded by Kahneman et al. (1991), reveals that humans display systematic preferences for familiar options over unfamiliar alternatives, even when the unfamiliar options offer superior rewards. The status quo bias (Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988), endowment effect, and loss aversion all reflect the same underlying principle: change is dangerous until proven otherwise.
Consider David, a middle-aged man whose marriage has become emotionally distant and unfulfilling. Friends and family can see that David would benefit from couples therapy, individual counselling, or potentially separation. David himself acknowledges these problems intellectually but finds himself unable to take action. His wife suggests therapy repeatedly; David agrees in principle but never follows through.
Professional observers might interpret David's inaction as denial, avoidance, or lack of motivation. Evolutionary psychology suggests a different interpretation: David's resistance represents an ancient survival strategy. Marriage, however unsatisfying, provides known quantities—financial security, social status, predictable routines, shared responsibilities. Change, even potentially beneficial change, introduces unknown variables that trigger deep-seated threat-detection systems.
David's psychological system calculates: "This situation is unsatisfying but survivable. Change might improve things, but it might also lead to financial ruin, social isolation, or emotional devastation. Better to accept known dissatisfaction than risk unknown catastrophe." This calculation occurs below conscious awareness, generating emotional resistance that overrides intellectual understanding.
Human beings evolved in small groups where survival depended on maintaining social bonds and avoiding rejection. Archaeological evidence suggests that for most of human history, individuals who were expelled from their groups faced almost certain death. This created intense selection pressure for psychological mechanisms that prioritise group cohesion over individual preferences.
The ancient practice of scapegoating reveals how deeply this fear of expulsion runs in human psychology. In biblical times, communities would symbolically transfer their collective sins and problems onto a goat, which was then driven into the wilderness to die—the literal "escape goat" or scapegoat.
This ritual served a crucial social function: it allowed the community to maintain cohesion by expelling the "problem" rather than addressing internal conflicts that might fracture group bonds. The goat's certain death in the desert—from thirst, hunger, or predation—made the stakes of social rejection brutally clear.
Importantly, the community genuinely believed this would fix their problems. The ritual wasn't performed with malicious intent but with sincere hope that removing the source of contamination would restore harmony and safety. Similarly, families who identify one member as "the problem" - "Well, it's him, isn't it?" - often truly believe that if this person would just change, family life would improve.
Professionals can inadvertently become part of this dynamic, focusing interventions on the "identified patient" while the family system remains unchanged. The professional joins the tribe in believing that fixing the individual will solve the collective problem, missing the systemic functions that the "problematic" behaviour serves.
Modern workplace "scapegoating," family dynamics where one member becomes the "identified patient," and therapeutic resistance to change that might threaten social connections all echo this ancient pattern. The psychological system calculates: better to maintain dysfunctional but familiar group membership than risk becoming the one cast into the wilderness.
This explains why clients often resist changes that would improve their individual wellbeing but potentially distance them from their social group—their survival systems are responding to threats that were once literally life-or-death.
Baumeister and Leary's (1995) extensive research on the need to belong demonstrates that social rejection activates the same neurological pain centres as physical injury. Brain imaging studies by Eisenberger et al. (2003) show that the phrase "no one chose you" produces measurable brain responses identical to those generated by physical trauma. This suggests that social rejection represents a genuine threat to survival at the level of basic neurological programming.
Consider Kelly Jokden from Parts 1 and 2, whose ability to game the system masks deeper resistance patterns. Kelly's rejection of professional recommendations may reflect more than simple reactance to external control. The suggested changes—consistent bedtime routines, structured meal times, organised morning schedules—represent middle-class parenting norms that differ significantly from the patterns common in Kelly's social network.
Adopting these changes might improve her children's outcomes by professional standards, but could also distance Kelly from her peer group, family of origin, and community connections. Her psychological system may be calculating that the risk of social isolation outweighs the potential benefits of changed parenting practices. From an evolutionary standpoint, maintaining tribal belonging often took precedence over individual optimisation. This may explain why Kelly can perform compliance perfectly in meetings—she's learned to appear conformist while preserving her actual patterns and social connections.
This dynamic appears across cultures and contexts. Research on health behaviour change shows that individuals are most likely to maintain new patterns when their social networks support those changes. Conversely, attempts at individual change that conflict with group norms face predictable resistance, not from lack of motivation but from ancient programming that prioritises group membership over personal improvement.
Evolution operates under constant energy constraints, but these constraints extend beyond individual organisms to encompass entire communities and species. Behaviours that waste energy are eliminated by natural selection unless they provide corresponding survival advantages - not just to individuals, but to the genetic lineages and communities that ensure species continuation.
While some consider evolution relevant only up to the point of procreation between two individuals, DNA appears to factor in much broader social arrangements necessary for species survival. The extended period of human childhood dependency requires not just parents but grandparents, aunts, uncles, and community members for successful child-rearing. This may explain why some individuals are naturally inclined toward roles like teaching, social work, community leadership, and caregiving - their genetic programming serves species survival through supporting other people's offspring and vulnerable community members.
The human brain consumes approximately 20% of the body's energy despite representing only 2% of body weight (Baumeister et al., 1998). This creates intense pressure for cognitive efficiency, both at individual and community levels. Research in cognitive psychology by Gigerenzer and Todd (1999) reveals that humans rely heavily on mental shortcuts, automatic responses, and habitual patterns that minimise cognitive effort whilst maximising group coordination and child protection outcomes.
Evolutionary biologists remain divided on whether genetic programming for altruistic behaviour toward non-relatives represents group selection or can be explained through individual-level mechanisms. Proponents like E.O. Wilson argue that communities with dedicated "helpers" had survival advantages, creating selection pressure for helping behaviours even when they don't maximise individual reproductive success.
Critics like Richard Dawkins counter that apparent altruism toward strangers can be explained through reputation building, reciprocal altruism, or misfiring of kin selection mechanisms originally designed to help relatives. From this view, social workers and teachers aren't fulfilling group-selection programming but rather individual strategies for gaining social status, mating opportunities, or community resources.
However, the lived experience of helping professionals - deep satisfaction despite modest rewards and high stress - suggests some form of evolutionary programming may be involved, whether through group selection, individual selection for reputation benefits, or complex interactions between both mechanisms.
This scientific uncertainty doesn't diminish the relevance for professional practice: regardless of the evolutionary mechanism, many individuals seem biologically motivated to help others succeed, making their frustration with client resistance understandable from multiple evolutionary perspectives.
From this perspective, resistance to change may represent cognitive resource management at both individual and community levels. Existing patterns, however unsatisfying, require minimal conscious attention once established while preserving energy for essential survival tasks and community maintenance. Change demands sustained cognitive effort that might compromise an individual's ability to address other life demands or contribute to community wellbeing.
Consider an anxious client whose perfectionist thinking patterns persist despite understanding their irrationality. Their cognitive system may have calculated that the energy required to restructure thinking processes outweighs the potential benefits. Current patterns, while distressing, operate automatically without requiring conscious attention. Change would demand sustained cognitive effort that might compromise their ability to address other life demands.
This calculation becomes more complex when we consider that anxiety and perfectionism, while uncomfortable, may serve protective functions. The client's vigilance to potential problems might prevent real difficulties that more relaxed individuals would overlook. Their high standards might produce superior work quality that enhances professional security. From an energy management perspective, maintaining these patterns may represent rational resource allocation rather than irrational resistance to improvement.
Modern trauma research reveals that adverse experiences produce lasting changes in brain structure and function. These changes often persist long after the original threat has passed, creating patterns that appear dysfunctional in current contexts. However, evolutionary psychology suggests that trauma responses may represent adaptive modifications to dangerous environments rather than pathological breakdowns of normal functioning.
Van der Kolk's (2014) extensive research on trauma demonstrates that individuals who have experienced threat develop heightened threat-detection systems, altered stress responses, and modified social behaviour patterns. These changes often interfere with relationships, emotional regulation, and daily functioning in safe environments. Yet the same modifications that create problems in safe contexts might provide survival advantages in genuinely dangerous situations.
Consider Blake Thomkden from Part 1, the 14-year-old who tortures animals and abuses his younger sister Evie. Blake has grown up witnessing Dean's narcissistic rages and Jade's dissociative withdrawals. He's developed hypervigilance to adult emotional states - he can read a room instantly, knowing when Dean is building toward violence by the way he holds his shoulders, when Jade is about to disconnect by the blankness entering her eyes. Blake learned to freeze when Dean focuses on him, to redirect attention toward Evie when he senses danger, to charm teachers and professionals with a "delightful" persona that bears no resemblance to his true self. These patterns that once protected him now manifest as animal cruelty and sibling abuse - the victim becoming perpetrator in the endless cycle.
Crucially, the triggers for these hypervigilant responses often operate below conscious awareness. A particular aftershave worn by the violent parent, the sound of heavy footsteps on stairs, a specific tone of voice, or even the smell of cooking food associated with tense family meals can instantly activate threat responses. The adult survivor may suddenly feel paralysed with fear in a supermarket checkout queue without consciously connecting their panic to the cashier's cologne that matches their father's aftershave from decades earlier.
This explains why an old song on the radio can flood someone with forgotten memories - not necessarily images or events, but feelings. The emotional memory system, located in the brain's limbic structures, processes and stores sensory information differently than conscious memory. A melody, scent, or sound can bypass rational thought entirely, triggering immediate emotional and physical responses that feel inexplicable to the conscious mind. Some songs inspire warm, happy feelings; others can create instant anxiety or sadness with no apparent logical connection.
The person experiencing this sensory trigger may not understand why they suddenly feel unsafe in what appears to be a perfectly normal situation. They simply know they feel in danger, their heart rate increases, and they need to escape - responses that made perfect evolutionary sense in the original threatening environment but now seem mysteriously inappropriate.
From a clinical perspective, these responses represent trauma symptoms requiring therapeutic intervention. From an evolutionary perspective, they represent adaptive modifications that enhanced survival in a dangerous environment. The child's nervous system correctly identified threat and modified its functioning to maximise safety. The fact that these modifications create difficulties in safer environments does not make them pathological—it makes them environmentally specific adaptations operating in the wrong context.
This reframing has profound implications for understanding responses to therapeutic change efforts. Attempts to modify trauma responses through cognitive or behavioural interventions may inadvertently trigger the very threat-detection systems they aim to address. The individual's psychological system may interpret therapeutic change attempts as evidence that current safety strategies are inadequate, leading to intensified rather than reduced defensive responses. This suggests that different approaches—perhaps those that work with rather than against these protective systems—might prove more effective.
Research across multiple disciplines reveals a curious pattern: many behaviours that create problems in modern contexts served important functions in ancestral environments. Depression may have evolved as an energy conservation strategy during periods of resource scarcity. Anxiety may have enhanced survival through increased vigilance to environmental threats. Even addiction patterns may reflect ancient reward systems designed to maximise caloric intake when food was scarce and unpredictable.
This creates what researchers term the "evolutionary mismatch" problem. Human beings possess psychological and physiological systems designed for environments that no longer exist. Like the recurrent laryngeal nerve, these systems continue operating according to ancient programming despite changed circumstances that render their responses inefficient or counterproductive.
Consider the epidemic of obesity in developed countries. From a clinical perspective, overeating represents irrational self-destructive behaviour that individuals should be able to control through education and willpower. From an evolutionary perspective, overeating represents the predictable result of ancient reward systems encountering modern food environments.
For most of human history, high-calorie foods were rare and unpredictable. Individuals who could consume and store maximum calories during periods of abundance would survive famines that killed those with more moderate consumption patterns. Natural selection strongly favoured psychological systems that drove individuals to overeat whenever possible.
Modern food environments present these ancient systems with unprecedented abundance of high-calorie options. The psychological drive to overconsume operates exactly as evolution designed it, producing results that seem irrational only from the perspective of modern nutritional knowledge. Resistance to dietary change may reflect the strength of evolutionary programming rather than individual weakness or lack of motivation.
This evolutionary perspective suggests that resistance to beneficial change may represent the operation of ancient survival systems rather than psychological pathology, lack of motivation, or conscious defiance. The same mechanisms that kept our ancestors alive in dangerous environments now create barriers to adaptation in safer modern contexts.
Like the giraffe's recurrent laryngeal nerve, human psychological patterns represent evolutionary modifications of existing systems rather than purposeful design for current circumstances. What professionals observe as "dysfunction" - Maria's perfectionism, David's relationship inertia, Kelly's household chaos - may reflect ancient solutions operating in modern contexts where they create problems rather than provide protection.
Recognition of these evolutionary roots does not excuse harmful behaviours or eliminate the need for positive change. Instead, it provides a framework for understanding why change is so difficult and why traditional approaches to modifying behaviour often encounter unexpected obstacles. If resistance represents the operation of survival systems, then working with these systems rather than attempting to override them through external pressure may offer more promising pathways to genuine adaptation.
The implications extend across multiple domains explored in this analysis:
Neophobia and status quo bias serve as first-line defenses against potentially dangerous changes, even when those changes might improve current circumstances. The psychological calculus favours known dissatisfaction over unknown risks.
Social and tribal bonds take evolutionary precedence over individual optimisation. Like the ancient scapegoat driven into the wilderness, individuals may unconsciously calculate that maintaining problematic group membership offers better survival odds than risking social rejection through personal change. Meanwhile, families and communities often genuinely believe that if the "problem person" would just change, harmony would be restored - a dynamic that professionals can inadvertently reinforce by focusing interventions on individual modification while systemic patterns remain unchanged.
Energy conservation operates at both individual and potentially community levels. Whether through individual-level selection or contested group selection mechanisms, humans appear programmed to preserve cognitive resources for essential survival tasks rather than expending them on change efforts that might compromise other vital functions.
Trauma responses represent sophisticated adaptations to genuinely dangerous environments, with sensory triggers that bypass conscious awareness entirely. These systems cannot be reasoned with because they operate below the level of rational thought, activating through unconscious sensory memories that once meant the difference between life and death.
The helper paradox - whether explained through group selection, individual reputation building, or kin selection mechanisms - creates particular poignancy for helping professionals whose evolutionary programming drives them to support others' wellbeing while encountering biological systems designed to resist external change efforts.
This raises fundamental questions about the nature of human adaptability and the conditions that allow genuine change to occur. If our psychological systems are biased toward maintaining existing patterns for survival reasons, how does beneficial change ever happen naturally? What circumstances allow individuals to override ancient programming and adapt to new environments? Under what conditions do survival systems permit the vulnerability that transformation requires?
The answers to these questions may require examining the rare instances where profound change occurs without triggering resistance mechanisms, understanding the environmental and social factors that support adaptation, and recognising the crucial difference between change imposed from outside and change that emerges organically from within existing biological systems.
Consider the families from Part 1 who did adapt successfully. The Hakdsons thrived not because Angie changed Martin, but because stable housing and depression treatment created conditions where Martin's existing paternal instincts could express themselves without the interference of housing crisis and untreated mental illness. The evolutionary drive to protect offspring was always there - it just needed environmental safety to manifest. The Copkdens recovered because Sophie's suicide attempt triggered Martin's protective responses, and their financial resources allowed them to create safety without threatening their social status or tribal belonging. Even small adaptations emerged in stuck families: Amit Pakden stepping up when his father was arrested represented dormant protective instincts activating when the usual family hierarchy was disrupted.
These successes suggest that adaptation occurs when environmental changes align with rather than oppose evolutionary programming. Martin didn't have to overcome his survival instincts - he could finally follow them. Martin and Sophie Copkden didn't need to learn new patterns - they could afford to implement what they already knew. These weren't changes forced against biological resistance but adaptations that emerged when obstacles to natural protective behaviours were removed.
Like the giraffe's nerve, human resistance to change may be an ancient solution to problems that no longer exist. Understanding this evolutionary inheritance provides a foundation for approaching human adaptation with greater wisdom, patience, and respect for the biological systems that have ensured our survival across millennia of evolutionary challenge.
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