Evolutionary Psych Flashcards
What are 4 features of levels of analysis in life sciences?
Non mutually exclusive
Overlap
Complementary
Most people specialise
What are the levels of analysis in life sciences?
Small/specialised to large/broad
Genetics and molecular biology
Microbiology - very small organisms
Physiology - systems
Botany and Vertebrate biology larger organisms(dogs & people)
Evolutionary biology
Ecology - multiple organisms & interaction multidisciplinary
Where does evolutionary biology come in the levels of analysis?
Bigger picture - how did this organism get built
How should we think about “levels of analysis” in the context of behaviour
Angles of analysis
What are the angles of analysis?
ABA
Development
Behavioural genetics
Neuropsych
Ethology
Evolution
Other
What do we mean by ABA
how the animals behaviour changes in its lifetime
What do we mean by developmental
How animals change during it’s lifetime at certain ages
What do we mean by behavioural genetics
How allele differences affect behaviour
(differences at an individual gene level changing behaviour downstream)
Change one gene - see what happens!
What do we mean by neuro psych?
Going inside the black box!
How does anatomy, electrical and chemical signals mediate behaviour
What do we mean by ethology?
Animals FAPs in natural environments and understanding this
When we have our professional hat on, where do we focus?
ABA
Why do we focus on ABA when dealing with clients?
We need to change a behaviour
How are other levels of analysis useful for us in day-to-day work?
Help understanding, normalising
How are other levels of analysis useful for us in day-to-day work?
Help to understand, normalising
What are some psych specialities
Developmental
Social
Neuropsych
Abnormal psych
Others - experimental, comparative, (non humans animals) organizational
Evo psych
What animal does evo-psych study?
Humans
What question does Evo psych ask about behaviour
What is the AS of this behaviour?
What is AS?
Survival and reproduction
What are we asking in relation to AS is evo psych
How did this behaviour serve the survival and reproduction of humans in the original environment in which it was selected
Why is it about humans in the original environment?
Because there is a lag. Evolution doesn’t know what is going to happen next. Behaviours today are the answers to “old” selection pressures
What was the mortality rate in the original environment?
Very much higher!!
What assumptions are there in evo psych?
The brain is just another organ
What is the job - AS - of the brain in evo psych?
Move the genes that built it through time
What do successful brains do
Leave more descendants than unsuccessful brains
What are the 4 competence areas for all animals?
Get enough to eat
Avoid being eaten
Avoid injury and disease
Reproduce
What is the irony in modern-day societies?
The survival competencies such as getting enough to eat is now something which causes us death and disease! E.g. heart disease!
What can evolutionary psych help us understand
Why things are irrational - e.g. fearing dogs not cake!
Why have traits as eating too much cake not been selected out?
It doesn’t kill us before reproduction age and therefore it is represented in the next generation
What are adaptions
An inherited trait, which is solving a problem better than competing alternatives
What is an example of an adaption?
Fear of predators
Whats a good analagy of adaptions?
There are only so many seats on the bus. This adaption does the job better than its competing genes
What is a by-product?
An artifact without functional value that persists because it’s coupled with an adaption e.g. fear of dogs
What is noise?
Variation due to random environmental events or mutations that are not sufficiently costing to be selected out e.g. fear of canaries
What is fear of predators an example of?
Adaption
What is fear of dogs an example of?
By product (i.e. not a significant hazard but push the “predators” buttons)
What is fear of canaries an example of?
Noise - something pushing our predators buttons which is odd or not serving a purpose
What is the recursive mind modelling hypothesis?
If people sometimes deceive or cheat in social exchanges, cheating detection will evolve
What did the recursive mind modelling experiment involve
tests whether humans perform better in complex logic test if they are framed as social rule-breaking scenarios
What did they find in the recursive mind modelling experiments
Even trained philosophy professors perform better when problems are framed in social terms than as straight logic problems
What is a Sexual selection hypothesis
females have a greater preference for males with resources and deliver cues that they are willing to invest in them and their young
What do the experiments to test the female sexual selection hypothesis show?
human females - across the board - will be pulled in primitive ways to men with resources and those who show cues that they have resources.
What leaps out at people when shown a large number of images?
Spiders and snakes
Why do spiders and snakes jump out at humans?
Prepared fear
What is prepared fear?
Predisposed to learn a stimuli i more salient and feared more often without learning or with minimal learning
What did experimenters find in regard to prepared fear experiments
Big over-representation of things like spiders and snakes, but not things like heart disease, cars, guns etc.
Why do we have prepared fear to things like snakes?
Because it was adaptive for the brains that reproduced to fear those things!
What is the most attractive hip to waist ration?
0.7 or lower
What are the costs of a hip ration of 0.7 or lower?
Strength and speed costs
Why are hip ratios of 0.7 preferred?
It’s about signalling for maximum fertility! “I’m likely to get pregnant and deliver a healthy baby”
The male brains that preferred 0.7 waist to hip ratio were most likely to choose these most fertile females and reproduce and these were passed to their offspring
What is evo psych take on cognitive bias
These aren’t design flaws in brains, but design features (e.g. cheaper!) shortcuts that work in most circumstances
Who said “The extra effort required to use a more sophisticated strategy is a cost that often outweighs the potential benefit of enhanced accuracy”
H.R. Arkes, Ohio State
What are some examples of biased solutions to adaptive problems?
Over-detection of predators
Who wins
A guy (accuracy guy) is right 94% of the time. BUT makes mistakes both way
B guy (bias guy) is right 40% of the time but only makes mistakes on “it’s dangerous let’s get out of here side”
B guy!!
Predator detection -Thinking it’s dangerous when it isn’t is adaptive! These guys win!
