How The Mind Works

The previous chapters showed how the human mind can come from natural selection and simple building blocks. From there, Pinker argued that many of our complex behaviors can be linked to how the mind was optimized for our hunter-gatherer ancestors. In all discussion, the behavior’s value to survival (i.e., genes being passed down through generations) was a major focus. In the last chapter, Pinker discussed human products and behaviors that don’t appear to have any value for survival. He mentions art, music, and philosophy as products of the human mind that appear to only be pleasurable or to be by-products of the mind’s evolution. Why they are pleasurable is not always clear. With art, there is some evidence that we enjoy clearly defined lines, shapes that have meaning in the outside world (like animals and other people), and colors that are vibrant. We are often annoyed at a TV screen with the picture out of focus or when we must squint at something seen through fog. These preferences align with preferences we would have to be able to distinguish shapes easily (defined lines), detect things that matter like predators or food (shapes with meaning), and notice interesting stimuli (vibrant colors). These preferences were selected because they kept us safe and fed, and while we know the picture won’t protect or feed us, we’re still attuned to things that make us feel at ease or happy.

Music is more complicated as it is unclear why we prefer certain sounds. Music has a clear structure of pitches (the frequency of vibration of the sound), and different cultures have different pitch inventories that are more commonly used. These pitches can be combined in many ways to create melodies, and notes can be added to evoke emotions. Transitioning between stable and unstable intervals can convey joy and sorrow, for instance. Music commonly makes people feel a specific way, and people tend to feel similarly hearing the same piece regardless of their own background, implying something universal in the way we experience music.

There are six aspects to music that could be related to the evolution of the human mind and what it is likely to attend to and enjoy. The first is language from the lyrics. Just as people are puzzled by the pitch or prosody of spoken language not matching the content of what is said, music that doesn’t align with the way the lyrics are sung makes it undesirable or confusing. The second aspect of music is the sound landscape. Similar to visual input, the ear must also organize the large amount of sound vibrations that come its way. They are not organized when they arrive, and the brain is attuned to animal sounds or known environmental sounds (such as a car). Similar to geometric doodles in that we like the exaggerated organization of the shapes and colors that make them easy to identify, preferred melodies are like exaggerated sounds from our environment. They are easy to organize and identify. Stable notes, such as the reference note C, are easy to identify and match to related notes, but unstable notes are more difficult to identify, hence our preference for stable notes and the use of unstable notes to create emotional undertones.

A third aspect of music is similar to emotional calls. Many species, notably birds and primates, use specific notes or harmonies to convey needs or emotions. Whining, crying, growling, and laughing are all examples of sounds we understand from very early and are similar across cultures and even some species. Music is often described using these emotional call words and often mirrors them to evoke similar emotions. The fourth and fifth aspects of music are habitat selection and motor control. Each habitat has its own sounds, some of which indicate all is well and some of which indicate potential changes that require action. Thunder always creates a desire to look outside, see how close the storm is, and think through if you are where you need to be or have what you need to handle a storm. Songs will use sounds similar to habitat sounds, but the real place we see these sounds put to use is movies, where the soundtrack is always carefully designed to evoke specific emotions, and sounds important to typical human habitats play a large role.

Music also has a rhythm that mirrors common motor movements we make. Repeated actions are often best when performed at a specific rhythm, and we get a boost of good feeling when we can create that rhythm and hold it. Even manual labor, such as digging a hole, feels better when we achieve a rhythm with each stroke of the shovel. Music uses similar rhythms to evoke a similar feeling. The sixth aspect of music is the “gestalt.” There is something else that makes music more than the sum of its parts.

Movies and TV shows are often fictional accounts of things we experience in real life. They are sometimes exaggerated or based on an unusual or unlikely premise, but they play on our emotions and experiences in relatable ways. People lose themselves in movies and TV shows so much that they write angry letters or send gifts to characters. It can be fun to immerse ourselves in a story with different, but similar, troubles to our own. Most movies and TV shows also have a certain amount of triumph as people overcome negative events. It is nice to think about overcoming our own struggles as well, and movies and TV shows let us do that. Handling strong negative emotions in controlled pieces could be useful for handling sad things in our own lives. Our lives inform movies and TV shows, and we learn things from watching characters in movies and TV shows.

Humor is an integral part of human life, and we find it in other species as well. Humor often involves taking a respected or high-level individual down a bit in stature. Physical and situational misfortune are always funnier when they happen to bosses, generals, or kings, especially if those individuals claim to hold superior physical or moral abilities. Humor is also often a group phenomenon. People laugh most when with other people, and humor works best if everyone collectively thinks something is funny. Making fun of authority comes with some risk, but the risk is lessened if everyone is laughing. Humor can also serve a more important purpose in conveying that something is not serious to avoid injuries. Many species play fight to learn real fighting skills, and laughter serves as a way to convey that an attack, while somewhat realistic, is all for fun and learning. Humor, therefore, is a way to convey both collective aggression and mock aggression.