3.2 Genes & the Psychosocial Environment Flashcards
What are the 3 major principles of Darwin’s theory?
- Heredity
- Variability
- Natural Selection
What are the 3 products of evolution?
- Adaptations
- By-products
- Noise
Discuss adaptation
Characteristics that stuck around because they help the organism survive better
Discuss by-products
Adaptations can create by-products
They do not solve a problem or increase chances of survival but are related to adaptation
Discuss noise
Random effects generated by genetic drift and chance mutations that do not affect survival
Define exaptation
Features that did not originally arise for their current use but rather were co-opted for new purposes
e.g. birds’ feathers
Discuss the “blank slate”
Differentiating between mind and brain
The mind is completely blank at birth
Needs experience in order to deduce rules, expectations etc
What does evolutionary psychology challenge and why?
The Standard Social Science model is challenged because it has largely ignored the role of evolution in shaping human behaviour
What did Steven Pinker say the ultimate goal of the mind is?
“The ultimate goal that the mind is designed to attain is maximising the number of copies of the genes that created it”
The goal of the mind is ensuring that the vehicle of the gene is doing a good job
The purpose of every organism is to pass on their genes
Taking the gene level perspective to understand physiology and our behaviour
What is the technical term use to refer to the environment in which we evloved in?
Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness or EEA
Refers to evolution over last 200,000+ years
What are the 2 views of the mind?
The Standard Science Model & the Evolutionary Psychology Model
Discuss the Standard Science Model of the mind
The mind has general mechanisms that can adapt to everything
Resonates with Watson and Skinner behaviourism
Mind is a blank slate that is shaped by experience
Discuss the Evolutionary Psychology Model of the mind
Mind is constituted by a series of specialised cog processes
At birth, we already have a substantial amount of knowledge about the world - sounds unintuitive and has generated a lot of resistance to evol. Psych
What were problems faced by ancestral humans?
Survival, mating, parenting, aiding genetic relatives
They need to reach puberty in order to reproduce so need to survive past this
Once they have reached puberty, need to find a mate
Responsibility from a genetic perspective to increase the chances that the offspring reproduces at a later stage - need to support them
Need to help people who share many of these genes in order to help carry on passing of your own
What was one of the most fatal things that killed ancestors?
Parasites - killed more individuals than predators
There was selection pressure and so evolved defensive mechanisms
Discuss disgust and whether it is learnt
Disgust is not learnt
You can see disgust on the face of a new born in reaction to certain stimuli eg. Bad smell
Creates by-products
Discuss disgust and facial blemishes
Facial blemishes unrelated to pathogens but studies show individuals looking at these facial blemishes show a level of disgust
Creates a desire to put distance between you and the source of the disgust
How were pathogens explained before germ theory?
Most cultures had conventions and norms to guide people in how to reduce potential illnesses etc - often shown to be useful as it puts distance between themselves and the pathogen
Many taboos about food are related to how that food is potentially dangerous
Discuss diff levels of dealing with norms when threats are high and low
Conforming to the norm when threats are high is valuable
When threat is low, potentially conformity is not v useful because it reduces creativity, engineering etc
What is the correlation between fear of germs and conformity?
People who fear germs show a stronger liking to people who conform
Discuss the experiment that shows the germ and conformity correlation.
Ps asked to put a penny in the plastic cup representing what they support
Manipulated how many pennies already in the cup: 3 in 1, 25 in the other
Found that individuals who were led to think about infectious disease affecting them were more likely to conform
Penny with the majority
What does the germ fear and conformity correlation show?
Shows behavioural manifestations that are not really learned and are context dependent
How we distance ourselves from things that may harm us
What did Trivers (1972) argue?
A driving force behind sexual selection is the degree of parental investment each sex devotes to their offspring
Define parental investment
“Any investment by the parent in an individual offspring that increases the offspring’s chance of surviving at the cost of the parent’s ability to invest in other offspring”
What is the female reproductive strategy?
They have more to lose than males so they look for certain criteria: physical and behavioural
They compete with other females for the right to choose the desirable male
They seek quality in their matings, not quantity
What physical features do females prefer in males?
Size and strength which confer dominance and so preferential access to resources
What behavioural features do females prefer in males?
May indicate willingness to invest or good parenting skills
What is the male reproductive strategy?
Less to lose so are less choosy
Not tied to offspring and so seek quantity
Prefer a superior female but not fussy
When presented with sexual opp, they take it
Males compete vigorously with one another for fertile females
Reproductive success varies - some males may never mate
What did Buss (1989) find men and women prefer?
Males prefer young, physically attractive and chaste mates
Females show stronger preference to earning capacity and ambitiousness-industriousness of potential partners than men do