Furthermore, educating the public about mental disorders will improve the conceptualization of researchers, as they come from the ranks of the general public, leading eventually to a more coherent behavioral science paradigm. But together with other researchers of my generation, exposure to interdisciplinary reading on humna behavior led me to reconceptualize the biological basis of mental disorders, with the help of an evolutionary perspective. The millions of years of mammalian and hominid evolution have created an extremely robust physiology and information processing system. This system is buffered against failure. An evolutionary perspective can also aid in understanding psychopathologies.
Genetic diversity is omnipresent.
Behaviors that psychologists classify as maladative, such as antisocial personality disorder, may be extreme forms of behaviors that evolved under adaptive pressures. Obsessive-compulsive disorder may be an extreme form of our species' sensitivity to social criticism, rules and rituals. Evolution shaped us to take advantage of environmental contingencies, so childhood is the time when biological predisposition can be accentuated or minimized. Appreciating human resilience and the true causes of its the limitations, and spreading this knowledge to all people, should be a key priority for the Institute. One method of educating the public could be to encourage television and movie producers to hire psychologists as consultants, to reduce the entertainment industry's recycling of out-dated ideas about mental disorders.