Behaviour ecology: Evol psych

Question 1

What is behavioral ecology?

Answer 1

The study of the evolutionary basis for organism decision-making and behaviour due to selective pressure from the enviroment imposed upon the organism

• explaining the behavioral variability through time within population or btw poplulations at a given pt of time by reference to relevant aspects of enviroment variability
• explain idividual differences and cultural differences in psychology

Question 2

What is adaptive phenotypic plasticity?

Answer 2

Organisms of the same species/genes can develop different traits that are most adaptive to specific enviromental conditions

Question 3

How does natural selection comes into play for behavioral ecology?

Answer 3

If organisms, over their evolutionary history, encoutered enviroments that vary across time and location, natural selection would favour the evolution of flexible characteristics sensitive to enviroment changes

Question 4

Are cultural and individuals differences a result of adaptive phenotypic plasticity?

Answer 4

Human ancestors faces changing ecologies –> posses adaptive phenotypic plasticity that reacts predictively to specfic ecological circumstance -> result in variation in psychologies and behaviours -> cultural and individuals differences reflect different outcomes of universal flexibilities that evolved to deal with adaptive problems posed by specific ecologies

Question 5

What is life history theory?

Answer 5

Energy is limited and comes at a cost - so organisms cannot expend unlimted resources, maximising all life domains simultaneously
* energy allocations are traded off between life domains
* energy investment towards development is energy not available for reproduction

Question 6

What is a slow life history?

Answer 6

Energy may be preferentially allocated to the development and maintenance of bodily growth and competitive abilities - both mental and physical
* leading to delayed reproduction
* Planning for the future, quality > quantity
* enviroment is predictable and stable

Question 7

What is a fast life history?

Answer 7

Organisms may opt to rapidly achieve sexual maturity to focues on reproductive effort with little investment into further growth and maintenance
* live fast, reproduce early, die young
* Enviroment is unpredictable and harsh

Question 8

What are the enviromental dimensions affecting behavioural ecology?

Answer 8

1. Population density
2. Genetic relatedness
3. Sex ratio
4. Resource availability - absolute amt of resources
5. Resource patchiness - variability in resoruces across space aka some places have high concentration of resources
6. Resource unpredictabilty - variability in resource across time
7. Mortality likelihood
8. pathogen prevalence

Question 9

What is the difference between resource availability vs patchiness?

Answer 9

ecology with few resources would lead to greater territoritality and aggression btw individuals as they attemtp to protect their scarce resources.

when resources are evenly distributed within the ecology, there are no inventives to be aggressive and attempt to monopolize resources that can be obtained elsewhere, where cost of aggression outweighing the benfit

Question 10

What is the difference between resource availbility vs predictability?

Answer 10

• Inviduals from lower SES group tend to have lower delayed gratification
• however, when resources are predictability low, individuals may adopt a more planful future orientated approach with higher delayed gratification
• immediate consumption of resource before they are consumed by others is more adaptive response in an enviroment with unpredictable low resources

Question 11

How does population density affect behavioural ecology?

Answer 11

High population density on humans tend to lead to slower life history and show slower level of prosociality e.g. Singapore.

*may follow an n-shaped curve as extreme levles of pop density may result in harsh enviroment

Question 12

How does genetic relatedness affects behavioural ecology?

Answer 12

High genetic relatedness on humans leads to inclination towards altruism and higher willingness to provide costly-help + greater within group trust and cooperation + alloparenting + tendency for women to move btw grps more + migration

E.g. farmers of rice vs wheat - rice farmers are more collectivist

Question 13

How does sex ratio affect behavioural ecology

Answer 13

• Direction of intersexual compeitio and sex roles
• increased intrasexual compeition for the sex biased in the pop
• Increased empahsis on matching female long term prefernce when pop is male biased
• Increase empahsis on men’s short term preference when pop is female baised

Question 14

How does resource availability affect behavioural ecology?

Answer 14

Low resource availbility leads to preferntial allocation of time and energy towards survival over reproduction
* delayed reproduction
* lower delay gratification
* avoidance of risk and costly comepiton
* higher resource seeking behaviour

Question 15

How does resource patchiness affect behavioural ecology?

Answer 15

Higher resource patchiness leads to social attitudes that favours competition, higher prevalence of resource-focused emotions (jealously), competition related antisocitality and aggression and introlerance to strangers

Question 16

What is resource unpredictability affect behavioural ecology?

Answer 16

effect of higher resource unpredictability: higher openess, pathological hoarding, decreased delay gratification, hedging osical and romantic affliation

Question 17

What are the two types of mortality?

Answer 17

Extrinsic mortality - death threat attributable to uncontrollable factors in the enviroment

Intrinsic mortality - death threats that can be influenced by the organism
* often as a result of a trade off (aggression + risk taking)

Question 18

What are the effects of high mortality likelihood affect behavioural ecology?

Answer 18

fast life hsitory, lower boldness (avoidance to travel too far away from hoe), higher vigilance, increased social conformity, increased agreeablebess towards familar others but to to unfamilar

Question 19

What are the effects of high pathogen prevalence on behavioral ecology?

Answer 19

faster life history, pioritising physical attractivness in mates, lower openness and extraversion, lower sexual permissiveness, lower exploratory behaviours

Question 20

What is dual inheritance theory?

Answer 20

Biological + psychological evolution→ affect individual capacity for cultural behaviour and evolved psych mechanism of cultural behaviour

behavior is shaped by a dynamic interaction between genetic inheritance, which affects our physiological and psychological traits, and cultural inheritance, which influences our behaviors, beliefs, and values through social learning and transmission

Question 21

How does culture emerge and spread?

Answer 21

Variation: individual endorses values practices and beliefs in variety of ideas and norms → transmission, when individual learns, often by copying selective copying from a successful referent, ideas are adapted and modified as per the demands of the local environment → selection, group selection takes place as culture content (idea, practice, values) that allows groups to grow and outcompete neighbouring groups can be favoured by selection

Question 22

Where does culture comes from/starting point?

Answer 22

Local ecology evokes culture as adaptive solutions → provide cue inputs to psychological mechanisms → generate adaptive output become culture when systematically expressed by members of local environment
* Local ecology as non-accidental origins of cultural differences

Question 23

How does cultural differences arise?

Answer 23

cultures are part of the enviroment of multiple ecological dimensions -> each culture has a distinct ecological background -> cultural differences can arise from the complex interaction of differences in various ecological dimentions

Question 24

What are subcultures?

Answer 24

Subcultures are cultures within cultures –> arose due to the proximity one is to ecological effects e.g. city vs countryside (geographic)

Question 25

Does being in the same country means everyone practices the same culture?

Answer 25

No! cultures in close geographic proximity are more likely to be similar to each other than cultures in differnt geographic regions due to ecological regions

Question 26

How does culture change?

Answer 26

Cultural change is due to ecological change e.g. rise in pathogen prevallence = more collectivism

Question 27

What is culture-gene coevolution?

Answer 27

Cultural practices and innovation may exert selective pressure on the genes responsible for adaptations themselves.

Question 28

Is learning a evolved psychological mechanism?

Answer 28

Social learning is an evolved psycholoigcal mechanism shaped by natural selection.
* Asocial learning (domain general) such as trial and error, is nergetically and temporally costly and inefficient

social learning -> time and energy can be saved by carefully observing others and their goals and copying their action to solve adaptive problems

Question 29

What is the cultural evolution perspective of social learning?

Answer 29

Social learning assist culture as an adaptive solution when:
* environments fluctuate too unpredictably over generations for genes to track them
* Fitness-relevant challenges become too hard to be easily and asocially reconqured by each individual
* A species has the cognitive preadaptations to kick-start high-fidelity social learning

Question 30

What causes the variation in learning biases (phenotipic plasticity)?

Answer 30

effectiveness of learned behaviour in solving adaptive problems depends on who we learn from - natural selection would favour learning biases that favour learning from successful models

Question 31

What are the learning modules that affect our learning baises?

Answer 31

Presitigious models - models who have demostrated prior skills and success
Similar models - models who are similar to the learner in some way, indicating experience with similar adaptive problems
Frequency models - adopting the beliefs and practices most prevalent in others via conformity