Being Bad at Relationships Is Good for Survival

• According to researchers, evolution has naturally split humans into two distinct groups, those emotionally secure, and those emotionally insecure, and recent studies have shown why.
• An experiment was set up to simulate different groups of people in a building which had just begun to catch on fire, and groups containing more insecure people consistently reacted more quickly than those who did not.
• The scientists concluded that although an emotionally secure person will do better in relationships, which is a natural evolutionary advantage, their self-created sense of security causes them to react more slowly to immediate dangers.
• Conversely, more insecure people, will be much more aware, and not lulled into the sometimes false sense of security that strong group connections can provide

Reflection:
I found this article to be so interesting because it really demonstrates how two different adaptations can both be beneficial at the same time. Either be better at finding a mate and thus be able to reproduce more, or be more aloof but better at surviving, and thus being able to reproduce more. Typically, any example of natural selection I would have thought of would contain only one favored trait, but never would I have imagined that two practically opposite traits could both coexist and help survival. This is very much similar to the video we watched in class about the peacocks. Even though the bright feathers of a peacock slowed it down, hindered its flying ability, and made it stand out to prey, females would only choose mates who had these brilliant feathers. Just as interesting is the fact that such contradictory adaptions could even arise; after all, it would be much more beneficial for there to be one definitively better trait. Such a peculiar quirk in our evolutionary path has truly produced a double-edged evolutionary sword.

Source:
Minkel, JR. "Being Bad at Relationships Is Good for Survival | LiveScience." LiveScience | Science, Technology, Health & Environmental News. 15 May 2010. Web. 19 May 2010. .