Are Immaturity Levels Rising?

Discovery Channel - Immaturity Levels Rising:

"The theory’s creator is Bruce Charlton, a professor in the School of Biology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He also serves as the editor-in-chief of Medical Hypotheses, which will feature a paper outlining his theory in an upcoming issue."

Several things in this article made me suspicious. First, Professor Charlton is billed as, "leading expert on evolutionary psychiatry", a field which, in my opinion, has yet to earn much credibility.

Second, he seems to have presented his case to the media before proper peer review (Grad Student: "Professor, I've proven that perpetual motion is viable!" Prof: "Great, I'll call my agent!"). This is a classic warning sign of bad science.

Third, he seems to be Editor-in-Chief of his own oddly-named scientific journal, "Medical Hypotheses," in which his article will be published. Conflict of interest, anyone?

None of these things disprove the Professor's hypothesis, but they sure make ya' wonder. Now, on to the Professor's hypothesis.

No research methodology is described in the article. It quotes Professor Charlton describing the purported phenomenon:

A “child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviors and knowledge” is probably adaptive to the increased instability of the modern world, Charlton believes. Formal education now extends well past physical maturity, leaving students with minds that are, he said, “unfinished.”

“The psychological neoteny effect of formal education is an accidental by-product — the main role of education is to increase general, abstract intelligence and prepare for economic activity,” he explained.

“But formal education requires a child-like stance of receptivity to new learning, and cognitive flexibility."

"When formal education continues into the early twenties," he continued, "it probably, to an extent, counteracts the attainment of psychological maturity, which would otherwise occur at about this age.”

Charlton pointed out that past cultures often marked the advent of adulthood with initiation ceremonies.

While the human mind responds to new information over the course of any individual’s lifetime, Charlton argues that past physical environments were more stable and allowed for a state of psychological maturity. In hunter-gatherer societies, that maturity was probably achieved during a person’s late teens or early twenties, he said.

“By contrast, many modern adults fail to attain this maturity, and such failure is common and indeed characteristic of highly educated and, on the whole, effective and socially valuable people," he said.

"People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence in the sense of being unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact.”

It makes one wonder how he determined his baseline: Do today's institutions appear less stable to individuals, or is this just a prejudicial view through rose-tinted glasses at 'the good old days'? To me, it sounds like a stodgy stick-in-the-mud griping about 'kids these days', as this type of person has done since the dawn of human society. Who defined his characteristics 'maturity', and are they really opposed to characteristics of 'wisdom'? Are they failures or just a set of behavioral characteristics that this guy doesn't like?

His argument seems to be that an open mind (something that is prevalent in childhood, but recedes as we age), which is beneficial to absorbing education, is being retained longer because of our new need for continuaing education, so that we can deal with a rapidly changing environment. But isn't that image of a stable life largely a fiction? It was true for segments of society for particular periods, but has the perceived stability of peoples lives really decreased on the whole? I would assume the opposite if I had to guess. How would you measure this? Do we have surveys from the past? Or is the Professor just pulling that impression of attiudes past from his butt?

Here's a little of that prejudice shining through:

"The faults of youth are retained along with the virtues, he believes. These include short attention span, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness."

Also, does he think that this is an evolutionary response to a changing environment? Consider the very short time frame here, and the lack of a mechanism for evolutionary pressure. Now it could be that a Professor billed as a 'leading evolutionary psychologist' would be pounding a hypothesis that had nothing to do with evolutionary psychology, but how likely is that? Here it comes:

"Charlton added that since modern cultures now favor cognitive flexibility, “immature” people tend to thrive and succeed, and have set the tone not only for contemporary life, but also for the future, when it is possible our genes may even change as a result of the psychological shift."

I'm no evolutionary psychologist myself, but does thriving and success in society in this way translate to more offspring and a statistical shift in the gene pool? Again, you might be led to believe the opposite is true, where success in modern society leads to fewer offspring and a decrease in frequency in the gene pool of those genes.

An then the article delivers the death blow: It compares his hypothesis to one of David Brooks, the fatuous New York Times columnist, a man capable of foisting the most vacuous and fact-free opinions about society on the public. If Brooks is your role model for Scientific Method, you're in trouble.

A little google action revealed a couple of interesting things. First an article by Professor Charlton in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice titled, "Restoring the balance: evidence-based medicine put in its place." Ouch, not a very promising title (I didn't feel like paying $40 for a month's access to one article). Exactly on who's territory is 'Evidence-based medicine' supposed to be encroaching, anyway? Second, this, from the Aims and Goals statement of the good Professor's journal, Medical Hypothesis, which says all that needs to be said:

Medical Hypotheses takes a deliberately different approach to peer review. Most contemporary practice tends to discriminate against radical ideas that conflict with current theory and practice. Medical Hypotheses will publish radical ideas, so long as they are coherent and clearly expressed. Furthermore, traditional peer review can oblige authors to distort their true views to satisfy referees, and so diminish authorial responsibility and accountability. In Medical Hypotheses, the authors' responsibility for the integrity, precision and accuracy of their work is paramount. The editor sees his role as a 'chooser', not a 'changer': choosing to publish what are judged to be the best papers from those submitted.

Papers in Medical Hypotheses take a standard scientific form in terms of style, structure and referencing. The journal therefore constitutes a bridge between cutting-edge theory and the mainstream of medical and scientific communication, which ideas must eventually enter if they are to be critiqued and tested against observations.

I suspect that the actual study will be disappointingly, but unsurprisingly, weak on facts and methodology, but strong on assumtion and opinion. I will attempt to follow up and will hopefully be proved wrong.