10. toward unified evolutionary psychology Flashcards
mainstream cognitive psychology
-> general-purpose and content free
-> functional agnosticism
information-processing devices responsible for food selection are assumed to be the same as for a mate and habitat selection
functional agnoticism
- view that information processing mechanisms can be
studied without understanding the adaptive problems
they were designed to solve
adaptive problems shape …
attention
memory systems
- women -> cues to emotional infidelity
- men -> cues to sexual infidelity
evolutionary cognitive psychology
-> information-processing mechanisms
functional specialization
adaptively biased
loss aversion
- mind consists of INFORMATION-PROCESSING MECHANISMS
in NS
adaptions produced by natural selection over time in ancestral
environments - mechanisms are FUNCTIONALLY SPECIALIZED to produce
behaviour that solves adaptive problems - ADAPTIVELY BIASED
error management theory -> bias towards inferring danger - LOSS AVERSION
endowment effect -> mug is more worthwhile when you own it
evolutionary social psychology
most human interactions within enduring relationships
- kin: inclusive fitness
- mating: sexual selection theory
- parenting: parental investment theory / parent-offspring conflict
- friendships: banker’s paradox
little attention to these topics
five moral emotions tracking cooperative relationship
- anger
to punish those violating social contracts - guilt
to show harmed party you know you caused harm
motivates confession / motivation to repair harm - shame
reduce social presence / desire to hide and withdraw - sympathy
moving people to help others who are suffering - gratitude
motivate people to be pro-social to one’s benefactors
bias in research WEIRD-sampling
W estern
E ducated
I ndustrialised
R ich
D emocratic
partner selection dilemma
choose spouse based on standardized test?
- people scoring high on marital compatibility score high on marital
satisfaction
three evolutionary theories of language
= adaption -> Pinker
- social gossip hypothesis
info sharing useful to figure out who to collaborate with - social contract hypothesis
to verbalise social / marriage contract - scheherazade hypothesis
to seduce opposite sex -> PEACOCK’s TAIL
-> does NOT explain why we developed language so early
two evolutionary developmental psychology
attachment theory
- adaption to childhood environment
is my parent able and willing to invest?
life-history theory
- trade-off somatic (slow strategy) effort + reproductive (fast) effort
e.g. father’s absence and early menstruation
- slow life history and low fertility issue
fertility declines after 18(+), want to be economically secure
evolutionary personality psychology
different personalities reflect different SOCIAL NICHES or SPECIALIZATIONS
- e.g. extraversion - beneficial in large societies
possibly maintained by FREQUENCY-DEPENDENT natural selection
- e.g. big-five
where does personality variation come from and how did it evolve?
dark triad personality
special case of frequency-dependent selection
not selected against if they are rare in a population
- machiavellianism
- psycho
- narcissistic
evolutionary organisational psychology
study of evolved psychological mechanisms that shape decision-making in work organisations
- selection and recruitment
- leadership
- managerial biases
evolutionary clinical psychology
-> adaptive or maladaptive
-> mismatch
some functional disorders / adaptive repsonses to loss of a valued person or loss of resources
- e.g. depression after divorce
adaptive in certain contexts
- e.g. paranoia among dictators
mismatch between modern and ancestral environment
- e.g. postnatal depression
evolutionary clinical psychology
-> mental health problems emerge when the evolved mechanism …
… fails to become activated
when the relevant adaptive problem is confronted
- e.g. not eating when hungry -> anorexia
… becomes activated
in a context that it was not designed for
- e.g. fear of flying
… fails to coordinate
with other mechanisms
- e.g. self-assessments of mate value fail to guide a person to the
right people
evolutionary cultural psychology
culture
- system of shared knowledge, norms, and values, that members
in the same group hold
transmitted culture
- social learning mechanisms e.g. prestige bias
evoked culture
- culture as adaptive response to a particular envrm. problem
e.g. natural disaster, war, weak institution
