Product Review: Evolutionary Psychology and the Shaping of the Novel Primal

Abstract

Stripped of everything, how would you behave in paradise? Would you put all self-interest aside to help form a moral, caring and supportive society? Would you be prepared to share food and space—even a lover—in order to reduce conflict and promote harmony? And even if you would, how would you then cope with others in your group who wouldn't? Those who are perhaps more jealous, spiteful, possessive or aggressive than yourself? These are the dilemmas that confront a group of university students and staff in my novel, Primal. Taken on a field course to a remote and uninhabited Pacific island paradise by their Professor, Raúl Lopez-Turner, the students at first see the trip as just a fun way to earn marks towards their degrees. But then things start to go wrong and eventually they find themselves stripped of everything: privacy, clothes, medication, shelter, tools, all hope of rescue, and most of all law and accountability—everything. Almost overnight they find themselves as naked and dependent on their instincts for personal survival as the members of the feral society of chimpanzees that are living alongside them. So how would these people respond; can we in any way predict, perhaps looking for guidance from evolutionary psychology? Or do we just allow our imagination free rein? Although a smattering of reviewers and readers agree that the novel makes them think deeply about human nature, an equal if not larger number have considered any insight to be not only chilling and unpleasant, but better left unsaid. How many in our discipline have had this reaction to their research, no matter how convincing the results. Evidently there are aspects to being human that many would prefer not to confront, even if it is based on science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)