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Our Brains Are Stuck in the Stone Age

How ‘evolutionary mismatch’ affects our weight, behavior, and overall health

Ashley Abramson
Elemental
6 min readFeb 25, 2020

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Image: Jonathan Kitchen/Getty Images

NNext time you’re craving sugar and you reach for that candy bar thank your ancestors because their behaviors — like hoarding rare sugary foods like fruits during droughts or famines — are still wired in our brains. In the thousands of years since our world has changed (sugary food is abundantly available these days) but our brains remain the same.

This concept, called evolutionary mismatch, is one way for psychologists to study human behavior. “Our brains are wired for certain conditions, but our surroundings no longer match those conditions,” says Glenn Geher, professor of evolutionary psychology at the State University of New York, New Paltz. “In other words, we have stone-age brains in modern environments.”

While pursuing his PhD in social psychology, Geher realized how much evolution shows up in contemporary life. “A speaker presented in our class, and he was taking all these powerful evolutionary concepts and shedding light on issues of social psychology,” Geher says. “I really started seeing all human behavior from that point through the lens of evolutionary psychology.”

Geher now studies, teaches, and writes about evolutionary mismatch and its health implications.

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Elemental
Elemental

Published in Elemental

Elemental is a former publication from Medium for science-backed health and wellness coverage. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Ashley Abramson
Ashley Abramson

Written by Ashley Abramson

Writer-mom hybrid. Health & psychology stories in NYT, WaPo, Allure, Real Simple, & more.

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