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Gratitude is to be grateful for the actions you or the people make. Sometimes you do the action and do not receive the same actions back.

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Adaptation is the Natural process in which a organism or parts of an organism is altered to better fit the surrounding environment.

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Gratitude is being grateful for something. It's eatheir something you do for yourself or for others.
While also being grateful for simple things in you life. Some examples are having food, a place to live, a phone, internet, clean water.

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The definition of motivation is the desire for someone to do something.

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What Is Gratitude?

Gratitude is one of many positive emotions. It's about focusing on what's good in our lives and being thankful for the things we have.

Gratitude is pausing to notice and appreciate the things that we often take for granted, like having a place to live, food, clean water, friends, family, even computer access. It's taking a moment to reflect on how fortunate we are when something good happens - whether it's a small thing or a big thing.

We can use lots of words to describe feelings of gratitude: We might say we feel thankful, lucky, fortunate, humbled, or blessed.

Why Gratitude Matters

Gratitude doesn't just feel good. Making a habit of gratitude can also be good for us. Like other positive emotions, feeling grateful on a regular basis can have a big effect on our lives. Brain research shows that positive emotions are good for our bodies, minds, and brains.

Positive emotions open us up to more possibilities. They boost our ability to learn and make good decisions.

Positive emotions balance out negative emotions. People who often feel grateful and appreciative are happier, less stressed, and less depressed. Gratitude is like a U-turn on complaining or thinking about what we don't have.

One positive emotion often leads to another. When we feel grateful, we might also feel happy, calm, joyful, or loving.

Gratitude can lead to positive actions. When we feel grateful for someone's kindness toward us, we may be more likely to do a kindness in return. Your gratitude also can have a positive effect on someone else's actions. Thanking people can make it more likely they'll do a kindness again.

Gratitude helps us build better relationships. When we feel and express heartfelt gratitude and appreciation to people in our lives, it creates loving bonds, builds trust, and helps you feel closer.

When we make it a habit to feel grateful, it makes us more aware of good things as they happen.

Build a Gratitude Habit

Sometimes, feelings of gratitude happen spontaneously. But we also can create feelings of gratitude by deliberately counting our blessings.

You can build a habit of counting blessings just by paying attention each day to things you're glad to have in your life. Slow down and notice what's around you. For example: "Wow, the sky is beautiful today! What an incredible world we live in," or, "There's Sara! It was so nice of her to help me yesterday."

Noticing the things you're grateful for is just the first step in building a gratitude habit, but you can try other things too, like taking the time to thank people or pausing to appreciate a star-filled sky. Start now. What's good about this moment?

Date reviewed: August 2018

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Gratitude is one of many positive emotions. It's about focusing on what's good in our lives and being thankful for the things we have. Gratitude is pausing to notice and appreciate the things that we often take for granted, like having a place to live, food, clean water, friends, family, even computer access.

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be Grateful for the small things in life, enjoy the poem.

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motivation helps in many ways say you are at a football game your motivation could help your team win. motivation can help in many other ways to such as motivating a baby to walk for the first time (granted they can't understand you)

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motivation can help anyone to do just about anything. it is very beneficial to mankind because it is helpful to people by making them happier.

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What's Attitude got to do with Gratitude?

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What's Attitude got to do with Gratitude?

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Attitude and Gratitude work hand in hand, You have to make attitude to be grateful. If you look at the world in a bad way than you will not be grateful for anything. Look at it in a stuff in a good way and you become grateful about the world.

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Ways to notice Gratitude during the hard times

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Ways to notice Gratitude during the hard times

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be happy for the small things, like your parents making you supper, having a warm shower. Being able to see your friends through the internet.

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1. Finding thing that make you happy
2. Write a gratitude letter for yourself in ten years to look back on
3. make a time each day to look back on what you are grateful for in that day
4. take time to do thing you love throughout like artwork or building. Small projects count to.

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Sonja: Absolutely. There are several ways you can express gratitude.
1. Write gratitude letters.
One strategy that has been test proven to promote happiness is writing gratitude letters. After you spend some time thinking about the people who you most appreciate you sit down to draft a letter to them. The mere act of expression is what is most important, so you don't even need to give them the letters.
2. Express gratitude in person.
Extroverts might benefit from expressing their gratitude in person to a special mentor, sibling, co-worker, or friend. It doesn't need to be formal. Just a simple gesture of thanks is only needed to feel the benefits of this kind of gratitude.
3. Express gratitude in art.
For more artistic folks, you could make a gratitude collage, where you cut out images of things or places or people that you most appreciate. For example, you might find a photo from a special vacation and paste it on your collage with other favorite things, like dark chocolate.
4. Make a gratitude date.
I like to make a gratitude date. By that I mean that I run with a partner and we will discuss all the things we are thankful for, so that the run is a time set aside to count blessings.
5. Devote one time a day to gratitude.
And there are certain times you can devote to gratitude. For example, at the beginning of your meals, or at bedtime, or when your husband gets home from work. Committing to a specific time establishes a practice of gratitude.
Question: I know that one of your suggestions for happiness is to develop strategies for coping with stress and hardships. Could you share with us some specific ways to do that?
Sonja: Sure. Gratitude, of course, is certainly one ... appreciating what you have. And leaning how to think positively, too, for example identifying the steps of action you can take if you are in a bad situation, instead of ruminating on it. Focusing on your strengths is a good way of empowering yourself. And finally, focusing on your relationships: spending time with love ones, and investing in your relationships are definite mood boosters.

To read more of Sonja Lyubomirsky, check out her book, "The How of Happiness," which is available in an iPhone application, as well.

5 Ways to Practice Gratitude

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Sonja: Absolutely. There are several ways you can express gratitude. 1. Write gratitude letters. One strategy that has been test proven to promote happiness is writing gratitude letters. After you spend some time thinking about the people who you most appreciate you sit down to draft a letter to them.

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Way to make yourself get out and do things.

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How to deal with life's setbacks and find your drive

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The science behind Gratitude

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Resilience is the ability to bounce back during or after a hard time to get back to feeling good as before.

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When people say to bounce back it gives you the ability to back is to get over that hard times and get back to being normal.

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Resilience is good for the mind and body read more here.

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What Is Resilience & Why Is It Important to Bounce Back?

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Resilience is a wonderful trait to have with a plethora of positive outcomes.

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Biology, Ecology, Conservation

Image

Photograph by Paul Zahl

In evolutionary theory, adaptation is the biological mechanism by which organisms adjust to new environments or to changes in their current environment. Although scientists discussed adaptation prior to the 1800s, it was not until then that Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace developed the theory of natural selection.

Wallace believed that the evolution of organisms was connected in some way with adaptation of organisms to changing environmental conditions. In developing the theory of evolution by natural selection, Wallace and Darwin both went beyond simple adaptation by explaining how organisms adapt and evolve. The idea of natural selection is that traits that can be passed down allow organisms to adapt to the environment better than other organisms of the same species. This enables better survival and reproduction compared with other members of the species, leading to evolution.

Organisms can adapt to an environment in different ways. They can adapt biologically, meaning they alter body functions. An example of biological adaptation can be seen in the bodies of people living at high altitudes, such as Tibet. Tibetans thrive at altitudes where oxygen levels are up to 40 percent lower than at sea level. Breathing air that thin would cause most people to get sick, but Tibetans' bodies have evolved changes in their body chemistry. Most people can survive at high altitudes for a short time because their bodies raise their levels of hemoglobin, a protein that transports oxygen in the blood. However, continuously high levels of hemoglobin are dangerous, so increased hemoglobin levels are not a good solution to high-altitude survival in the long term. Tibetans seemed to have evolved genetic mutations that allow them to use oxygen far more efficently without the need for extra hemoglobin.

Organisms can also exhibit behavioral adaptation. One example of behavioral adaptation is how emperor penguins in Antarctica crowd together to share their warmth in the middle of winter.

Scientists who studied adaptation prior to the development of evolutionary theory included Georges Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon. He was a French mathematician who believed that organisms changed over time by adapting to the environments of their geographical locations. Another French thinker, Jean Baptiste Lamarck, proposed that animals could adapt, pass on their adaptations to their offspring, and therefore evolve. The example he gave stated the ancestors of giraffes might have adapted to a shortage of food from short trees by stretching their necks to reach higher branches. In Lamarck's thinking, the offspring of a giraffe that stretched its neck would then inherit a slightly longer neck. Lamarck theorized that behaviors aquired in a giraffe's lifetime would affect its offspring. However, it was Darwin's concept of natural selection, wherein favorable traits like a long neck in giraffes suvived not because of aquired skills, but because only giraffes that had long enough necks to feed themselves survived long enough to reproduce. Natural selection, then, provides a more compelling mechanism for adaptation and evolution than Lamarck's theories.

National Geographic Society

July 14, 2022

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Evolutionary adaptation, or simply adaptation, is the adjustment of organisms to their environment in order to improve their chances at survival in that environment.

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Resilience and mental health, we all know that right now is a very hard for many of us. Sometimes our mental health is not the best during these times as well. Resilience gives us the ability to be happy. Therefore when you go through the hard time just know that you will bounce back because your body has resilience built into itself.

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How Can Adaptability Help During The Pandemic 

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How Can Adaptability Help During The Pandemic 

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People with increased Adaptability can have an easier time letting go of past plans and better cope with the current situation.

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the 7 cs to help teens on the daily

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Building Resilience

Our parental instincts drive us to protect our children. Given a choice we'd bubble wrap them. But we can't. We can, however, prepare them to navigate the world. We can support them to develop the character strengths and human connections that allow them to thrive in good times and rebound (maybe even grow) in challenging times. In other words, we can build their resilience.

No Bubble Wrap Needed

Resilience is better than bubble wrap because it is about developing internal strength rather than relying on an external shield. Think of resilience as a process of bouncing back - of rising above adversity. And to do so ideally, with lessons that enable you to better handle the next bump in the road.

It is a mistake, however, to only think of resilience as something that enables us to respond to adversity. The very same characteristics that allow someone to rebound from difficult times will position them to get the most out of life. We want our children to become their best selves, to experience healthy relationships, to make their unique contributions to our communities - to succeed.

Think of resilience as a process of bouncing back -- of rising above adversity. And to do so ideally, with lessons that enable you to better handle the next bump in the road.

Ordinary Magic

Some people are more likely to be resilient in the face of adversity. But resilience is not something you are born with. Instead, it is something that can be built and nurtured as a part of development. Dr. Ann Masten, one of the nation's leading thinkers on resilience, describes it as " ordinary magic." She underscores resilience is not about extraordinary events or heroic measures. Rather, resilience is built when we're offered meaningful support and love from others.

Why Love Matters

Love is seeing someone as they deserve to be seen, as they really are, not based on a behavior they might be displaying or what they might be producing. When you express love, you are helping your children understand that they are worthy of being loved and that has lifelong implications.

Decades of research point to factors that build resilient children and adolescents, and the results are empowering to parents! Young people grow to be resilient when there's at least one adult (more is better!) loving them unconditionally and supporting them to be their best selves by holding them to high expectations.

What does it mean to love without condition? It means that your presence has to be unwavering and reliable. It does not mean approving of every decision or saying, "Good job for trying those drugs!" Instead, when you communicate with your consistent presence, "I'm not going anywhere," that assurance allows your children to take needed (safe!) leaps of development. They leap because they know they have somebody who will have their back.

The fact that our loving presence itself is so vitally important should help parents draw a deep breath. We worry so much about finding the perfect words (and words can matter). But what we say is less important than how we listen, or that our kids know we stand by their sides no matter what. We communicate with our presence a solid commitment to making sure they'll get through challenges.

Have High Expectations

What does it mean to support our children to be their best selves by holding them to high expectations? It does not mean demanding high grades, scores, or trophies, though we certainly can expect effort. The roots of our high expectations stem from knowing our children's character. You know best those strengths they have shown from a young age. Honesty, commitment to fairness, sense of humor. Strength and stick-to-it-ive-ness.

These traits you have noticed from the time your child was small develop further during adolescence. When you celebrate their strengths and see them for who they are, they will have a highly protective grounding. If they stray, hold them accountable and they will return to their better selves.

We're not saying, "Expect an A, they'll get an A," or "Demand a goal, they'll score one." Those kinds of expectations backfire by making young people feel like they're never good enough even though these measures are often out of our their control. Your support, however, can help your children reach their unique potential.

Resilience Doesn't Mean Invulnerability

As we build resilient children, we mustn't believe resilience means invulnerability. Everyone has limits. And we actually don't want to build invulnerable beings. Why? Because we want our youth to be passionate and compassionate. We want them to experience joy. To be committed to lifting others up and building a better world. To do so, they must have emotions - even though feelings set them up to experience pain.

Our goal is not to suppress or deny emotions. Rather it's to help them learn to benefit from emotions, while knowing which ones may undermine their well-being. With that said, we must fully protect our children from " toxic" stressors, those challenges that can be threatening to developing brains and bodies, such as drugs, abuse, neglect, and violence.

Resilience is Uneven

We want our children to be able to bounce back in every setting, but realistically, they'll be able to handle different settings with varied levels of resilience. That's because resilience is uneven. In fact, it might be that precisely because they are showing extraordinary resilience in one setting, that they will "let go" in another. For example, school may present so many challenges that it takes all your children's energy to keep it together there. That may make things more fragile or explosive at home. In this case, take it as a sign of security and trust in the reliability of your love and support that home is where they can display vulnerabilities.

Teach and Nurture Resilience

We can nurture and teach resilience in a variety of ways, including when we demonstrate positive coping strategies to manage stress. Or when we teach skills that help our children navigate their world. We model resilience when we choose healthy coping strategies. Or when we keep things in perspective, and grow from life's challenges.

But some elements of resilience can best be learned through experience. Resilience is solidified when people learn for themselves how to rebound from a bump in the road and how to grow stronger and wiser by drawing lessons from overcoming challenges. We support resilience when we allow for mistakes and recovery within safe boundaries. And when we act as a non-judgmental sounding board as our children learn through experiences.

The Seven C's Model of Resilience

The seven C's model of resilience was first published by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2006. It draws from a framework originally presented by some of the great leaders of the positive youth development movement. It adds to their model by emphasizing "coping" which prepares one to recover, and "control" which gives one the sense that choices make a real difference.

Each "C" is a critical element that parents, schools, communities, youth programs, and professionals can support in youth. The C's are all interrelated - forming almost a net of resilience-building strategies. To learn more about each "C", follow the links provided.

Confidence

Young people with confidence will have the belief in themselves that they will ultimately succeed. They'll be more likely to take the chances needed to learn about themselves. They may be willing to try harder and have less fear of failure. More importantly, they'll rebound from failure, seeing it as an opportunity for growth rather than a catastrophe. Confidence is not gained from an abundance of unearned praise. Rather, it comes from adults authentically noticing effort and nurturing and supporting skills (or competence).

Competence

Youth need to possess real skill sets to be able to navigate the world. Those include communication skills, self-advocacy skills, peer negotiation skills, and academic skills to name a few. Young people also need to be able to make wise decisions if they are going to make the kind of choices that will contribute to, versus undermine, their health and well-being.

Adults can teach and model effective competencies. We can listen to them as they work through solutions to problems. Support their ability to manage school and peers. Talk with them instead of at them. On the other hand, we undermine competence by telling our children what to do, or by talking to them in a way that shuts down their ability to come up with their own solutions. In other words, lectures backfire! Similarly, saying "Let me do that for you," says, "I don't think you are capable of doing it yourself."

Connection

Human connection allows us to more fully celebrate during joyous times and to recover during challenging times. It is the connection with your children - based on knowing who they really are - that is the most protective force in their lives. Hopefully, your adolescent will develop amongst many other protective connections as well. The more, the better.

Character

Young people with strong core values make the strongest contributions, have the best sense of self, and have the most secure and healthy relationships. Think of character strengths as those things that ensure we do the right thing - even if nobody is watching. We need people who know how to do the right thing!

Adults must notice and nurture children's inherent character strengths and teach and reinforce others. We also must never forget that our actions speak so loudly that sometimes our kids can't hear a word that we are saying. In other words, they are watching what we do. We must uphold those character traits that we hope to see in them.

Contribution

Young people want to matter. Ultimately, they want to have a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. When children and adolescents are given an opportunity to make a difference they also gain strong protections for themselves. They learn firsthand of the joy of giving. This means that ultimately when they need to receive from others they can do so without shame. Why? Because they'll understand that the person supporting them does so out of pleasure not pity. When they contribute to other lives they gain appreciation. Youth surrounded by gratitude rather than condemnation thrive. Plus, they earn an extra set of protective eyes to watch over them.

Coping

Life is about making choices. Stress is a part of life - an uncomfortable reality. We do what we can to minimize discomfort. The choices we make to cope with our discomfort can be negative or positive. Negative ones can work in the short run, but bring great harm to us and our communities in the long run. So many of the quick-fix behaviors we hope our children never choose are negative coping strategies. Telling our children what not to do barely makes an impact and sometimes backfires. Instead, when we raise them with a range of healthy coping strategies (and model them as well), they make wiser, healthier choices during challenging times.

Control

Core to resilience is knowing that your actions matter. Without a sense of control we cannot possess hope. And without hope, we crumble in challenging times. How we parent makes a large difference in our children's sense of control. Young people who know that their parents are pro-development - supporting all stages of their growth - understand privileges are earned with demonstrated responsibility. Young people raised being told, "You'll do what I say, because I said so!" do not learn how to make their own choices. We must let tweens and teens understand that they have control over their lives.

The protective forces that allow us to recover after difficult times are the same ones that prepare us to flourish in the best of times. They challenge us and enable us, to get the most out of every opportunity.

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Our parental instincts drive us to protect our children. Given a choice we'd bubble wrap them. But we can't. We can, however, prepare them to navigate the world. We can support them to develop the character strengths and human connections that allow them to thrive in good times and rebound (maybe even grow) in challenging times.

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following is a small list of ways that can help you become more adaptable.
1.  Adopt a Positive Attitude

2. Look at things in Multiple Perspectives

3.  Consider the bigger Picture

4. Become Creative at Problem Solving
5.Be Willing to Learn

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Adaptability is an attractive quality. We all like to think of ourselves as being flexible and adaptable, a team player, "going with the flow". It means that we are not rigid or stuck and that are open to change and challenges. I think if you were to ask most people if they consider themselves to be open and adaptable, they would tell you 'yes'.

If you truly are adaptable then you are more likely to handle change with grace and ease, not be thrown by the unexpected and be a lot happier. Yet most of us are actually a lot more resistant to change than we might perceive ourselves to be.

So we spoke to effective behaviours expert and author of 7 Skills for the Future, Emma-Sue Prince, who shared seven ways to become more adaptable:

Stick at things

Being adaptable doesn't mean flitting from one thing to the next. Adaptability is closely linked to resilience, as well as perseverance. Resilient people stick at things. They keep going, even when the going gets tough. This is about your ability to concentrate, discipline and motivate yourself to complete a task or project. Strong application is underpinned by a sense of self-direction or free will, and these in themselves create robustness. As a consequence, you are able to be more adaptable because you cope better with set-backs and rejection.

Be willing to learn

We never really stop learning. Be willing to learn new methods, procedures and ways of doing things. Take on new tasks. Try something different. Draw conclusions from new information. And how about that foreign language you've always wanted to learn or that choir you've always wanted to join? It's easy to tell yourself you don't have time. But this is your life and it's not a dress rehearsal. Respond with energy to new challenges, the unfamiliar and the unexpected.

Improvise

Don't over-think and second-guess everything that you do. Practise being spontaneous - accept that last-minute invitation, change your weekend plans, walk into the presentation smiling with confidence knowing that you will do well (as long as you've put the preparation in, of course!). Grab that opportunity, it might not come again.

Flex those muscles

It's true that going to the gym will help you be more physically and mentally resilient, and we know that adaptability and resilience are linked, but I am talking about three types of flexibility: a) 'cognitive flexibility', using different thinking strategies and mental frameworks; b) 'emotional flexibility', varying your approach to dealing with your own emotions and those of others; and c) 'dispositional flexibility', remaining optimistic and at the same time realistic. Look for as many opportunities as you can to exercise these types of flexibility. The opportunities are all around you in your day-to-day life.

Adopt a 'can do' positive attitude to change

Even though it is natural to want to resist change, try and build up your ability to adapt and respond positively by literally changing your behaviour next time you are faced with a change. Again, start with small steps. You feel disappointed because of a change of plan? Respond enthusiastically even if you don't feel like doing so. Couldn't get tickets for a show you've been wanting to see? Smile and choose something completely different so you can embrace a new experience. Lost your job? Get upset, yes, but bounce back faster by taking positive action each and every day.

Get creative at problem solving

Research suggests that people who are able to come up with solutions to a problem are better able to cope with problems than those who can't. So, whenever you encounter a new challenge, make a quick list of some of the potential ways you could solve the problem. Experiment with different strategies and focus on developing a logical way to work through common problems. By practising these skills on a regular basis, you will be better prepared to cope when a serious challenge emerges.

Have a survivor attitude

Anything can be turned into a crisis or problem, if we want it to. Really, anything! Refuse to see yourself as a victim in any situation and always look for ways to resolve it. If you've always been quite a reactive person, this may be hard to do at first. Remember that you can never be in control of your circumstances and external events, you can only be in control of your own responses and behaviours. The trick is that if you focus on that, as opposed to the circumstances, chances are you'll influence the situation favourably anyway!
Emma-Sue Prince is an inspirational soft skills and effective behaviours expert and author of 7 Skills for the Future, our 22nd January.
PRE-ORDER NOW 7 Skills for the Future £12.99

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How being more adaptable will make your life easier - and 7 ways to do it

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Adaptability is an attractive quality. We all like to think of ourselves as being flexible and adaptable, a team player, "going with the flow". It means that we are not rigid or stuck and that are open to change and challenges.

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that Teens can bonce back with help from others

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This film displays hardships people can come across in their lives. I wanted to capture moments and decisions that can make us who we are. Thanksss so much to everyone who was a part of this. It was only because of you guys that this movie came to life!

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1. Maintaining and forming relationships with friends and family
2. Exercise, going for a run, taking a hike, taking time to be outside
3. Relaxation, taking time to sit down and think about you day
4. Having Fun doing things you like to do like art or singing
5. Positive attitude, think of only the good things
6. acceptance, being able to accept when things don't go your way
7. Keep Working toward you goals in your life and doing great things

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to read deeper about the strategies listed above

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Stress is one of the biggest reasons teachers leave the classroom early, and for school leaders, helping colleagues deal with stress can be a key factor in staff retention.

I wrote in an post about how stress was the biggest cause of illness leading to absence among teachers.

One way of reducing stress is to remove the factors that cause stress, whether they are workload, unrealistic expectations or pressure from parents.

But in the absence of that, there are steps school leaders can take to help their staff become more resistant to the effects of stress. By building resilience they can help colleagues deal with stress while minimizing the impact on their emotional, mental and physical well-being.

Being resilient does not mean being impervious to stress, but it does mean adapting to and coping with stressful situations. It is not an inherent quality: it can be acquired through learned behaviours, thoughts and actions.

Among the ways of building resilience to stress are:

∑Maintaining and forming relationships: relationships are often among the first things to suffer when someone is under stress, but good relationships are critical for mental and physical health. Relationships are also a good source of support and a sympathetic ear, while offering help and support to others can make you feel good about yourself;

∑Exercise: physical exertion helps counteract the effects of stress and can also lead to better sleep;

∑Relaxation: easier said than done when you're stressed, but setting aside some time to unwind can be a good way of easing the pressure. Whether it's yoga or meditation, or even a walk in the park, time out of a normal busy schedule can help you get a new perspective;

∑Having fun: laughter can reduce stress and help us feel more positive. Even if you don't feel 'in the mood', making an effort to do fun activities, particularly when they are with friends, can mitigate the effects of stress;

∑Positive attitude: focusing on how things could be better in the future, rather than the seemingly insurmountable problems in the present, can make them feel less daunting. Similarly, changing the way you look at a situation can take away some of its power to frighten you, while it could also be helpful to look at the positive things in your life, rather than just the negative ones;

∑Taking control: people who are stressed often feel at the mercy of events beyond their control, but even initiating small actions can give you a sense of empowerment, which can give you the confidence to take bigger steps;

∑Acceptance: some things you may not be able to change, at least in the short term, so instead of worrying about things that are beyond your control, focus on those things you can alter;

∑Keep working at it: resilience takes time to build, so it's important not to be discouraged if you don't see the effects immediately. Instead, persevere with the strategies you find work best, and be assured that resilience is not innate and is something that can be learned.

The American Psychological Association publishes some useful on dealing with stress and building resilience. Sufferers should also consult a doctor if it is affecting their mental or physical well-being.

But it is important to recognize that stress does not have to take a heavy toll. It may be hard to avoid, but it can be tamed.

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Eight Strategies For Building Resilience

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Stress is one of the biggest reasons teachers leave the classroom early, and for school leaders, helping colleagues deal with stress can be a key factor in staff retention. I wrote in an post about how stress was the biggest cause of illness leading to absence among teachers.

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Gratitude, it is said, is "the healthiest of all human emotions". But is it an emotion shared only by humans, or do animals feel it as well?Some argue that ani

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Hello There

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Abstract

A central feature of Darwin's theory of natural selection is that it explains the purpose of biological adaptation. Here, I: emphasize the scientific importance of understanding what adaptations are for, in terms of facilitating the derivation of empirically testable predictions; discuss the population genetical basis for Darwin's theory of the purpose of adaptation, with reference to Fisher's 'fundamental theorem of natural selection'; and show that a deeper understanding of the purpose of adaptation is achieved in the context of social evolution, with reference to inclusive fitness and superorganisms.

Keywords: natural selection, fundamental theorem, Darwinism, inclusive fitness, social evolution, superorganism

1. The purpose of adaptation

Darwinism is a theory of the process of adaptation, i.e. the appearance of design in the biological world. The problem of how to explain adaptation is an ancient one, and it famously provided the basis for William Paley's [ 1] argument for the existence of an intelligent, divine designer. This problem was decisively solved by Charles Darwin [ 2], whose theory of evolution by natural selection-in which heritable variations associated with greater survival and reproductive success are identified as being more likely to accumulate in natural populations-explained the adaptation of organisms in purely naturalistic, mechanical terms.

Darwinism is also a theory of the purpose of adaptation, i.e. the design objective of biological organisms. Darwin argued that, as a consequence of natural selection preferentially retaining those heritable variations associated with greater survival and reproductive success, organisms will appear as if they are designed to maximize their survival and reproductive success-that is, their Darwinian fitness.

Indeed, Darwinism is the only scientific theory of the purpose of adaptation. While some continue to maintain that mystical forces-such as external, divine interventions or internal, vitalistic drives-are responsible for adaptation, none of these hypotheses yield clearly justified, testable predictions as to what the resulting adaptation is actually for (). The question of purpose is often dodged, or else a purpose is asserted without clear justification. Strangely, whereas one might expect different drivers of adaptation to be associated with different design objectives, those who dispute natural selection's role in biological adaptation often nevertheless regard organisms as striving to maximize their Darwinian fitness. For example, anti-Darwinist James Shapiro [ 3, p. 137] views organisms as vitalistic beings that inexplicably strive to maximize their 'survival, growth and reproduction' for reasons that have nothing to do with the action of natural selection.

Table 1.

The idea of adaptive purpose does not imply that the design objective is perfectly realized. Paley [ 1] emphasized that the hallmark of design is not perfection but rather that an organism's or organ's apparent purposiveness is evident from its adaptive complexity, or 'contrivance and relation of parts'. Comparing organisms and their component parts to human artefacts like pocket watches, he noted that even a broken watch manifests purposiveness in its intricate design. However, Paley-and Darwin after him-marvelled at how, in practice, nature abounds with exquisite adaptation that seems to border upon perfection.

In recognition of the distinction between purposefulness and perfection, it is useful to separate adaptationism into weak versus strong forms [ 4]. Weak adaptationism is the idea that organisms manifest apparent design and purpose, on account of the action of natural selection. Weak adaptationism makes no commitment to the idea of perfection, and recognizes that multiple forces in addition to natural selection-such as spontaneous mutation and random drift-contribute to the evolutionary process in an often deleterious way. By contrast, strong adaptationism is a caricature of Darwinism in which organisms are regarded as entirely optimal in their form and their behaviour. As a scientific hypothesis, strong adaptation is trivially falsified by empirical observation.

Yet, strong adaptationism is the central conceit of a hugely successful programme of scientific research, based upon optimization theory [ 5]. Practitioners of the optimization approach consider what organisms would be like if they were optimally fitted to the particular circumstances and challenges of their environment, and thereby derive predictions that although acknowledged to be only approximate are nevertheless, in practice, often useful ones. Indeed, when there is a marked discrepancy between prediction and empirical observation, this usually means that a key aspect of the organism's biology has not been properly understood and remains to be incorporated into the optimization model. Accordingly, by an iterative process of model adjustment, testable prediction and empirical test, the optimization approach provides an investigative tool by which scientists learn how the biological world works.

The optimization approach is made possible only because Darwinism yields such a clear prediction as to what biological adaptation is actually for. Without knowing what organisms are designed to do, it would be impossible to decide which of a range of possible phenotypes represents the optimum. This point clarifies why typical critiques of the adaptationist research programme are misguided: the perennial complaint that adaptationists fail to consider 'other hypotheses'-for instance, that organisms may be to some degree maladapted [ 6]-mistakes adaptationism for a hypothesis when it is actually a research method. The maladaptation view is strictly correct but also completely useless if it does not yield specific, testable predictions. And it is detrimental to scientific progress if it obstructs the application of the successful adaptationist approach (cf. [ 7]).

2. The population genetics of purpose

The formal basis for evolutionary theory is the domain of theoretical population genetics. Accordingly, it is proper that Darwin's theory of the purpose of adaptation be framed in genetical terms. This was accomplished by Ronald Fisher [ 8, 9], with what he termed the 'fundamental theorem of natural selection' ( box 1). Fisher's theorem provides a formal foundation for the view that natural selection leads organisms to maximize their fitness-in the sense that it will appear as if this is their purpose, rather than in the sense that they will necessarily perfectly realize this goal-and he rightly regarded it as taking centre stage in his masterpiece The genetical theory of natural selection [ 8]. But it has had a turbulent history.

Box 1.

Price's equation-In very general terms, evolutionary change can be expressed as a sum of selection and transmission components. This is captured by Price's [ 10, 11] equation, based upon a general mapping between two populations of entities. Typically, one of these populations is descended from the other, and they are denoted 'parents' and 'offspring', respectively.

To derive Price's equation, assign every individual in the parent population a unique index i ∈ I and assign indices to every individual in the offspring population according to which parent individual they are descended from. When a given individual in the offspring population has more than one ancestor in the parent population (as in a sexual population), each ancestor is awarded its genetic share of the offspring. Denote the relative abundance of the ith parent as , where ∑ = 1. Typically, = 1/ N, where N is the number of individuals in the parent population. Similarly, denote the relative abundance of the ith parent's descendants in the offspring population as ′. This allows a definition of the relative fitness of any individual in the parent population as = ′/. Finally, assign each individual in the parent population a value for any character of interest, and denote the average character value of their offspring as ′ = + Δ. The average character value over the parent and offspring populations is E( z) = ∑ and E( z′) = ∑′ ′, respectively. Hence, the change in the population average value of the character of interest is ΔE( z) = E( z′) − E( z), which may be re-written as:

where: cov denotes a covariance and E an expectation, each taken over the set of all individuals in the population. The covariance term describes the change ascribed to the statistical association between an individual's character and its relative fitness, and defines selection. The expectation term describes the change ascribed to character differences between a parent and her offspring, and defines changes associated with transmission.

Natural selection is a particular type of selection that involves genes, the fundamental units of heredity. Here, the character of interest is not an individual's phenotype per se, but rather her (additive) genetic value for any phenotypic character of interest, i.e. the heritable portion of her phenotype [ 10, 12]. Moreover, change is defined across a single generation. Denoting the genetic value by , the action of natural selection is given by

That is, the change in the average value of the heritable character ascribed to the action of natural selection is equal to the statistical covariance of that character and relative fitness, across all the individuals in the population. Importantly, equation (B 1.2) describes the action of natural selection only, and not the entirety of evolutionary change.

Without loss of generality, this may be re-written as

where var( g) is the heritable variance in the character of interest and β( w, g) = cov( w, g)/var( g) is the least-squares linear regression of relative fitness against the heritable character. This form of Price's equation highlights the basic Darwinian logic that natural selection will act to drive change in the heritable constitution of the population (Δ NSE( g) ≠ 0) if and only if there is heritable variation (var( g) > 0) in a character that is associated with individual fitness ( β( w, g) ≠ 0).

Fundamental theorem-If the character of interest is taken to be fitness itself, then this may be decomposed into its genetical and environmental components, w = g + e. It follows that β( w, g) = 1, and substituting this into equation (B 1.3) obtains:

That is, the increase in average fitness ascribed to natural selection is equal to the genetic variance in fitness.

Fisher's clearest verbal statement of the fundamental theorem is: the increase of average fitness of the population ascribable to natural selection is equal to the genetic variance of fitness [ 9]. The salient point here is that, as variances are non-negative, there is a fundamental directionality to the action of natural selection, always pointing in the direction of increased fitness. That is, Fisher's theorem describes the optimizing quality of natural selection.

Despite Fisher's clear focus on the immediate action of natural selection, the fundamental theorem has long been interpreted as a statement about the total change in the population's fitness from one generation to the next. The idea that this would always increase was at first uncritically accepted and then, decades later, suddenly rejected when simple mathematical models revealed that population fitness is capable of decreasing from generation to generation [ 13]. This led to a widely held view that the fundamental theorem is not generally correct and-more damagingly-that any notion of fitness maximization, or of there being a clear purpose to Darwinian adaptation, is embarrassingly naive.

With regard to its correctness, George Price's [ 14] careful exposition of Fisher's derivation established that the fundamental theorem is indeed mathematically sound ( box 1). Price clarified that the fundamental theorem concerns only the part of change in average fitness across the individuals in the population that is due to the action of natural selection per se and not to other, non-Darwinian changes that Fisher [ 8] referred to collectively as deterioration of the environment. provides an illustration of which parts of the evolutionary change in average fitness are ascribed by Fisher to the action of natural selection versus environmental deterioration.

Price admitted to being disappointed that this partial result 'does not say more'-presumably feeling that a description of the entirety of evolutionary change in population fitness would be preferable. However, it is precisely because the fundamental theorem is a partial result that it is so important [ 15]. In isolating the part of the evolutionary process responsible for adaptation-that is, natural selection-the fundamental theorem illuminates what is being adapted (the individual) and for what purpose (maximizing her fitness). Those individuals who achieve higher fitness are those whose heritable constitutions will predominate in future generations, and accordingly it is these individuals who point out the direction of the population's evolutionary future.

For example, in the scenario depicted in , individuals vary in their level of selfishness, with relatively selfish individuals having relatively higher fitness and relatively selfless individuals having relatively lower fitness, in comparison with their peers. Accordingly, the fitness-maximizing quality of natural selection leads to an increase in selfishness-as this is what directly increases the individual's fitness. (A secondary consequence is that all genotypes suffer reduced fitness on account of their carriers' social partners now having a greater tendency to behave selfishly, and this deterioration in the social environment results in a net decrease in average fitness.) That is, the idea that individuals strive to maximize their fitness correctly predicts the direction of evolutionary change.

It is not clear why a mathematical account of the total change in population fitness would be of much interest anyway. The relationship between population composition and population fitness does not point out the direction of the future. For example, in the above scenario, a population in which selflessness predominates enjoys greater fitness, but evolutionary change proceeds in the exact opposite direction: increased selfishness. This recovers the population geneticists' discovery that population fitness is not maximized [ 13], and makes clear that what they had rejected was not-as they had supposed-the idea that fitness is maximized, but rather the idea that adaptation works 'for the good of the species'.

3. The purpose of social adaptation

The personal-fitness-maximization design principle emerging from Fisher's fundamental theorem is not a fully general result. It may fail when social interactions occur between genetic relatives. The application of the fundamental theorem to social evolution serves to underline how Fisher intended the theorem to be understood and yields deeper insights into the purpose of adaptation.

In the absence of social interaction between genetic relatives-including, for example, the model of selfishness presented above-any correlation between an individual's genotype and her fitness may be taken to reflect a direct, causal relationship ( a). That is, if an individual's heritable constitution is associated with higher fitness, this is because it actually increases her fitness. Accordingly, on account of natural selection favouring those traits that are associated with higher fitness, individuals will appear designed to maximize their fitness.

By contrast, if genetic relatives interact, then any correlation between an individual's genotype and her fitness may instead be due to her genotype being correlated with that of her social partner, and her social partner's genotype modulating her own fitness ( b). That is, an individual's heritable constitution might be associated with higher fitness---and hence favoured by natural selection---even if it actually directly decreases her fitness. Accordingly, natural selection need not lead the individual to appear designed to maximize her personal fitness.

To be clear, social interaction between genetic relatives does not invalidate the fundamental theorem (the increase of average fitness of the population ascribable to natural selection is equal to the genetic variance of fitness, irrespective of social interaction between relatives; box 1). It merely prevents the fitness-maximization design interpretation from being drawn. So it is revealing that Fisher felt it necessary to assume the absence of social interaction between genetic relatives in his prelude to the fundamental theorem. That Fisher made this assumption indicates that he, too, drew the fitness-maximization design interpretation from his theorem.

Does this correlation-causation difficulty mean that natural selection is not responsible for organismal design in the context of social interaction between genetic relatives? Fortunately, this is not the case. The fundamental theorem may be reformulated using an alternative fitness measure- inclusive fitness-which is defined by subtracting from the individual's personal fitness all fitness effects due to the actions of her social partners, and adding all the fitness effects experienced by the focal individual's social partners as a consequence of her own actions, each increment or decrement being weighted by the focal individual's genetic relatedness to the corresponding recipient ( box 2; c; [ 19]). That is, the fundamental theorem may be alternatively expressed as: the change in average inclusive fitness ascribed to the action of natural selection is equal to the genetic variance in inclusive fitness ( box 2; cf. [ 20]).

Box 2.

Kin selection-On the assumption that there is heritable variation in a focal character (var( g) > 0) then, from box 1 equation (B 1.3), natural selection will act to increase the average value of this character (Δ NS E( g) > 0) if and only if the character is positively associated with individual fitness ( β( w, g) > 0). There are two ways for a heritable character to be associated with greater personal fitness: first, the character may directly improve the individual's fitness (direct fitness benefit); and, second, the character may be present among the individual's social partners, such that its expression increases the individual's fitness (indirect fitness benefit). Using the mathematics of multiple least-squares regression, this may be expressed as:

where β( w, g | g′) = − C is the effect of the individual's own heritable character g upon her own fitness w, holding fixed the heritable character of her social partner g′; β( w, g′ | g) = B is the effect of the individual's social partner's heritable character g′ upon her own fitness w, holding fixed her own heritable character g; and β( g′, g) = r is the statistical association between these social partners' heritable characters (i.e. the kin-selection coefficient of genetic relatedness; [ 18]). For simplicity, equation (B 2.1) assumes that the focal individual has only a single social partner, but the approach readily extends to scenarios in which the focal individual has multiple social partners.

Accordingly, the condition for natural selection to favour an increase in the average value of the heritable character ( β( w, g) > 0) is − C + Br > 0, i.e. Hamilton's [ 19] rule of kin selection, expressed here in its personal fitness (or 'neighbour-modulated fitness') form.

Inclusive fitness-Noting that the statistical aggregate impact of social partners on the fitness of individuals within a population is identical to the statistical aggregate impact of individuals upon their social partners in that population (i.e. β( w, g′ | g) = β( w′, g | g′), where w ′ denotes the relative fitness of an individual's social partner), the kin selection partition of natural selection into its direct and indirect components may alternatively be expressed in its inclusive fitness form:

With some algebra, the action of natural selection can be expressed as:

where h = β( w, g | g′) g + β( w′, g | g′) β( g′, g) g is the focal individual's inclusive fitness, i.e. the sum of her heritable character's impact on her personal fitness and also on the personal fitness of her social partner, the latter being weighted by the degree of genetic relatedness between the two parties [ 19].

Fundamental theorem-If the character of interest is taken to be inclusive fitness itself, then this may be decomposed into its genetical and environmental components, h = g + e. It follows that β( h, g) = 1, and substituting this into equation (B 2.3) obtains

That is, the increase in average inclusive fitness ascribed to natural selection is equal to the genetic variance in inclusive fitness (cf. [ 20]).

By virtue of its definition, inclusive fitness is under the individual's full control, such that the correlation between an individual's genotype and her inclusive fitness reflects a direct causal relationship. Accordingly, as a consequence of the action of natural selection the individual appears designed to maximize her inclusive fitness.

Though Darwinian adaptation is conventionally viewed as occurring at the level of the individual organism, recent years have seen growing interest in the idea that whole social groups may be viewed as 'superorganisms' in their own right, wielding their own adaptations for their own purposes. In some cases, this is simply a return to the woolly thinking of the first half of the twentieth century, when many biologists unreflectively regarded natural selection as always working for the good of the group or species. However, in other cases, there is a legitimate recognition that-on rare, but important, occasions-groups of socially interacting individuals have undergone a major transition in individuality, such as the transition from unicellular to multicellular life, and from cooperative breeding to eusociality [ 21, 22].

The fundamental theorem approach may be brought to bear on this question of group-level adaptation. Specifically, the action of natural selection may be decomposed into the component operating at the within-group level and the component operating at the between-group level, and in taking group fitness itself to be the character of focal interest a fundamental theorem of multi-level selection emerges that states: the change in average group fitness owing to the action of natural selection is equal to the genetic variance in group fitness if and only if there is no selection within groups ( box 3; [ 24]). This result clarifies why certain animal groups-like the Portuguese man-of-war, a jellyfish-like colony of clonally related zooids, within which there is essentially no genetic variation and hence no scope for within-colony selection-can be considered adapted superorganisms in their own right, but most animal groups-within which there is scope for conflict as well as collaboration-cannot.

Box 3.

Multi-level selection- In a group-structured population, the action of natural selection may alternatively be separated into its between-group and within-group components:

where I have assigned every group a unique index j ∈ J; and, within a given group, I have assigned every individual a unique index k ∈ K. The first term on the r.h.s. defines between-group selection and the second term on the r.h.s. defines within-group selection [ 11, 23].

That is, the increase in average group fitness ascribed to natural selection is equal to the genetic variance in group fitness if and only if within-group selection is absent [ 24].

4. Conclusion

Explaining the purpose of adaptation is a central achievement of Darwinism. Being able to predict what it is that organisms are striving to achieve not only sets Darwinism apart from intelligent design and other forms of mysticism, but also sets the hugely successful adaptationist research programme apart from scientifically sterile anti-adaptationist thinking within evolutionary biology. Getting to grips with the purpose of adaptation is especially important in the context of social evolution, where different biological agents are expected to have different, conflicting purposes, and where naive notions of group-level adaptation are liable to be strongly misleading. Happily, there is a maturing body of formal theory that equips the evolutionary biologist with the tools required to navigate these issues and to break new Darwinian ground.

Acknowledgement

I thank Steven Frank and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and discussion.

¹In full: 'The increase of average fitness of the population ascribable to a change in gene frequency dp will be 2 αdp. Hence the rate of increase in the average value of the Malthusian parameter ascribable to natural selection acting on a single factor is 2 pqaα, and the rate of increase due to all factors will be 2∑ pqaα, equal to the genetic variance of fitness due to all factors' [ 9].

²Spurious correlations between genotype and fitness may be classified as owing to chance (in which case, they may be removed by defining fitness in terms of an expectation taken over uncertainty; [ 16]) or to class (which is explicitly controlled for in Fisher's [ 8] treatment, but neglected here for simplicity; see also Price & Smith [ 17]).

³'There will also, no doubt, be indirect effects in cases in which an animal favours or impedes the survival or reproduction of its relatives; as a suckling mother assists the survival of her child, as in mankind a mother past bearing may greatly promote the reproduction of her children, as a foetus and in less measure a sucking child inhibits conception, and most strikingly of all as in the services of neuter insects to their queen. Nevertheless such indirect effects will in very many cases be unimportant compared to the effects of personal reproduction' [ 8, p. 27].

Data accessibility

This article has no additional data.

Competing interests

I declare I have no competing interests.

Funding

I am supported by an Independent Research Fellowship awarded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/K009524/1).

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