Ape Out of Water

A core concept in the discipline of positive evolutionary psychology pertains to evolutionary mismatch. Evolutionary mismatch exists when the current environment of an organism is somehow inconsistent with the ancestral conditions that existed during the evolutionary history of that organism. Modern human environments differ dramatically from the conditions that surrounded our nomadic ancestors, who spent thousands of generations in the African savanna in small social groups. This chapter describes the issue of evolutionary mismatch in detail and then provides several examples of mismatch that adversely affect life for so many of us on a daily basis. Such issues include mismatches regarding diet, exercise, and the nature of our modern social worlds.