Human Environmental Control
Humans uniquely reshape their surroundings through learning and invention, creating tools, buildings, and systems that buffer individuals and communities from heat, cold, distance, and danger.
Evolutionary Mismatch Definition
Humans and other animals carry inherited traits and behaviors shaped by ancestral conditions, including appetites, threat responses, social instincts, and physiological structures tuned to earlier environments.
Input-Mechanism-Output Mismatch Model
Humans rely on evolved mechanisms that convert environmental inputs into behaviors, such as taste, reward, and attention systems shaped to solve survival and foraging problems.
Modern Health Mismatches
Modern humans live with bodies shaped by outdoor foraging, seasonal scarcity, and rough diets, yet daily routines now emphasize indoor life, soft foods, and sanitized environments.
Anxiety and Threat Calibration
Humans carry evolved threat-detection systems that once kept small groups alert to predators, rival groups, and immediate physical dangers.
Evolved Preferences Exploited by Markets
Consumers and companies interact in marketplaces where businesses design environments that trigger ancient preferences for safety, nature, novelty, and social connection.
Spatial Mismatch and Migration
People with different ancestral adaptations, including skin pigmentation and immune histories, face new environments when populations migrate, mix, or colonize distant regions.
Limits and Mitigation of Mismatch Claims
Scientists and everyday people use evolutionary narratives to explain behavior, but they must separate plausible mechanisms from speculation and cultural stories.