Evolutionary psychology Flashcards
What is evolutionary psychology?
Evolutionary psychology is a theory used to explain the emergence of Food Taboos that is based on psychology. It will focus on emotions and it is supported by psychosocial processes (normative moralisation, egocentric empathy and socially-mediated conditioning).
What are the psychological processes that generate taboos within the evolutionary psychology theory? (4)
- Normative moralization
- Egocentric empathy
- Socially mediated ingestive conditioning
- Biased transmission, direct observation, and self-serving manipulation (mentioned in the article, but not lecture…)
What is normative moralization?
It is the process in which a shared predisposition becomes a patterned behavior and standard. Moral sentiments are the motivation for defining violations.
What is the role of punishment in normative moralization?
Once there is a shared standard for behavior, which has become moralized, cooperation is ensured by punishing noncooperators. And then there is third-order punishment, which means individuals are punished if they fail to punish noncooperators.
How does normative moralization relate to food taboos?
The theory explains the process of how standards are shaped and held in place, because it has become moralized. This applies to what is deemed unacceptable to eat and how the shared behavioral pattern of avoidance has become a standard.
What is egocentric empathy?
Individuals experience others’ behavior as if it were their own, yet ignore others’ subjective states, relying on their own dispositions instead. Disgust and fear are the principal emotions associated with it.
Why is egocentric empathy advantageous?
Disgust and fear relate to the prospect of harm. The capacity to egocentrically empathically experience these emotions may therefore have been advantageous in that it led individuals to either distance themselves from others engaging in potentially dangerous actions or seek to prevent such actions from occurring.
How can egocentric empathy contribute to the formation of taboos?
When a significant fraction of a group experiences the same aversive response to a given action, egocentric empathy can contribute to the formation of taboos, as observers seek to prohibit actors from doing things that cause the observers pain.
What is an example of egocentric empathy?
Adults experience disgust when watching a toddler consume his own feces even though the child displays no signs of revulsion.
How does the socially mediated ingestive conditioning theory explain the generation of food taboos?
Humans acquire food avoidance by seeing other humans have an aversive reaction (sickness, disgust, toxicity) to a new food. This food avoidance eventually leads to food taboos. So humans use social information to respond to new foods and that response eventually leads to food taboos.
True or False : The socially mediated ingestive condition theory can give an answer to the “Omnivore’s Dilemma”
True
In the article Meat Is Good to Taboo, the authors introduced the term “Omnivore’s Dilemma”, can you explain what they mean by this ?
Humans are omnivores and this flexibility in our diet has allowed us to be able to populate varying habitats. However, at the same time humans are neophobic and can fear new foods.
True or False : Socially mediated ingestive conditioning can explain why we have nausea and disgust when witnessing others vomiting.
True
What is prestige-biased transmission?
Prestige-based transmission is imitating beliefs and practices of high-status individuals (which are the same gender or age as the imitator).
True or false: Humans do not seek out causal relationships between events in addition to our dependence on socially transmitted information.
False, they do
