Question

In your opinion, are behavioral changes to cope with the changes in our environment ever NON-adaptive?  

Answer 1

Human beings have brought about huge amount of changes in the environment, over the past years. To adapt to these changes, behavioural changes are the first response to adapt to the situation.

For example, a person learns to walk, read,cook, work, etc to adapt to his surroundings. While most of the times the behavioural changes are adaptive, they can also be non-adaptive.

A non-adaptive behaviours are those when people try to deal with a problem in their life, but they either fail or end up doing harm to themselves.

A classic example of this is drug addiction. A person may take drugs to get rid of physical pain, but ends up getting addicted to them, thus causing harm to themself.Drug abuse and addiction is often the result of a failed attempt at dealing with intense emotional pressure or pain.

Another example is, a person who is currently living in difficult situations may consider stealing, looting as easy sources of income.