It’s just how we evolved.
So often these days we hear our behavior patterns explained based on how our brains needed to function in the harsh environment of the savannah where humans first evolved. I’m usually skeptical of these arguments, especially when they touch on gender and sexuality. It’s too easy to excuse sexism with facile ideas that men evolved to be hunters and the urge for sexual domination is part of our genes.
In contrast, Jim Hopper (Department of Psychology, Harvard Medical School) uses evolutionary and neurological insights about the brain to help us better understand survivors of sexual assault. Police, judges, and juries often question survivors’ testimony because they have fragmentary and inconsistent memories, or because they appeared to give in to the perpetrator. Survivors often blame themselves for the same reasons. Hopper shows that the human brain’s automatic response to a threat is almost always to freeze, resulting in largly passive survival strategies like numb obedience, dissociation, and mobility. The brain’s fear response also inhibits the thinking processes that would create the kind of clear, sequential, detailed memories that our legal system values. Hopper points out that many of the shifts in thinking that make a story seem weak are actually strong signs that a person experienced a trauma and not consensual sex.
In his talk this Wednesday, which is part of MIT’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Dr. Hopper asks us to understand the brains of trauma survivors so that we can empower them and help them regain their sense of connection. Maybe together we can evolve a greater sense of compassion.
