SerpApi.Org
It never stops, does it? The endless train chugs on, carriage by unwelcome carriage – work-bills-sleep, gym-plans-texts.
It’s not even that these things are bad, on their own. I love my friends! I feel great after a workout! And even though I’m not the best texter, I enjoy a great call... in theory.
But when those responsibilities bundle up, their relentlessness exhausts me. I feel overwhelmed, and then frustrated that I can’t even manage simple tasks. I hate the demands, then myself, then the pressure I self-impose; a text notification can ruin my evening when I know I don’t have it in me to reply.
If you’ve ever felt similarly (and I wouldn’t have said all that unless science told me you probably do), researchers might have worked out why.
A new paper, published in the journal Behavioural Sciences, calls this response to modern life an “evolutionary mismatch”.
Why is modern life so overwhelming?
In this research, Singaporean social scientists looked at a variety of previous studies exploring modern life and our responses to it.
This conceptual review suggested that stress, constant comparison – especially via social media – and loneliness place demands on our brains that we are not evolutionarily adapted to meet.
While humans spent much of our history in small, tight-knit groups, with familiar signals and dependable dangers, this study argues that increasing inequality and digital life can overwhelm our once-highly attuned responses.
Competition was central to the research, with the researchers suggesting our current lifestyles make us more susceptible to feeling judged or “behind”.
Study co-author, senior lecturer Dr Jose Yong, said: “Competition is not new, but modern life can make it feel constant.
“An evolutionary perspective may help explain why people respond so strongly to comparison and the fear of falling behind, even when those signals come from strangers or screens rather than a small social group.”
All this may add up to a comprehensive “evolutionary mismatch”.
This study was not conclusive, instead providing an apparently unifying evolutionary framework by which to view existing data.
But Dr Yong said the theory could mean that “we need to design interventions that work with rather than against our evolved human nature”.
If we can’t change our biology, how can we handle an “evolutionary mismatch”?
One option is to stop blaming yourself for broader problems.
Study author, environmental psychologist Sarah Chan, said: “Stress, loneliness and anxiety are often treated as personal or lifestyle problems.
“But they may also reflect a mismatch between the environments people live in and the conditions our minds and bodies evolved to navigate. That means we should think not only about individual resilience, but also about how cities and communities are designed.”
Nor did the research suggest that modern life is unfixable, or that returning to some imagined past is the answer here.
For instance, the study found that city design and community, not density, affect how crowded the people who live there feel.
Understanding exactly where those “mismatches” appear, they suggested, might help policymakers, researchers, and even designers work out how to keep us all in better sync with the world around us.
