Contrast Effects in Social Evolution and Bauman's Liquid Modernity

• In Event: 467 - Section on Evolution, Biology and Society Paper Session. Sexualities and Other Evolutionary and Biological Themes in the Study of the Social World

Abstract

Our evolutionary heritage of contrast effects leaves us with internal reward release rules for positive emotions and physical pleasures that are very sensitive to social creations offering high contrast familiarity and serial novelty. Zygmunt Bauman's model of liquid modernity and its impact on more "solid" traditional and modern cultures is examined in terms of changes in the use of these reward rules as social structures offering serial novelty are substituted for structures rooted in more fixed contrasts. From the perspective of contrast effects, liquid modernity may have a much deeper and lasting appeal than Bauman wishes to be the case.

Author

• Michael Hammond, University of Toronto