The mismatch between modern business contexts and human nature

AN interesting phenomenon that pervades all areas of life may underlie many problems that we encounter in the modern world as humans and in organisations. In this article, I introduce the concept and illustrate how it works.

As my colleagues and I recently described in a paper published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, there is a pervasive phenomenon called evolutionary mismatch. The idea is that much of human psychology - our behaviours, thoughts, and feelings - reflects adaptations that have evolved in response to challenges to survival and reproduction recurrently encountered over the last two million years.

Behaviours, thoughts, and feelings (which are largely influenced by genes and thus, heritable) that led our ancestors to solve these challenges were passed down through thousands of generations. As such, human psychology consists of numerous mechanisms that take specific environmental inputs and process them into cognitive, affective, and behavioral outputs that enhance survival or reproduction prospects.