HC 9

Question 1

Mainstream Cognitive Psychology

Answer 1

Assumes that cognitive architecture is general purpose and content free
– The information-processing devices that are responsible for food selection are assumed to be the same as those for mate and habitat selection
– These general-purpose mechanisms include the abilities to reason, learn, imitate, calculate means–ends relationships, compute similarity, form concepts, and remember things

Question 2

Mainstream Cognitive Psychology

• Functional agnosticism

Answer 2

The view that information-processing mechanisms can be studied without understanding the adaptive problems they were designed to solve

Question 3

Evolutionary Cognitive Psychology (4)

Answer 3

• The human mind consists of a set of evolved information-processing mechanisms embedded in the human nervous system
• These mechanisms and the developmental programs that produce them are adaptations produced by natural selection over evolutionary time in ancestral environments
• Many of these mechanisms are functionally specialized to produce behavior that solves particular adaptive problems, such as mate selection, language acquisition, and cooperation
• To be functionally specialized, many of these mechanisms must be richly structured in content-specific ways

Question 4

Attention and Memory

• Women vs Men

Answer 4

• Women more than men remembered cues to emotional infidelity
• Men more than women remembered cues to sexual infidelity

Question 5

Problem-Solving and Cognitive Biases
• Human adaptive problem solving—which our ancestors must have done reasonably well or else they would have failed to become our ancestors—always depends on three ingredients:

Answer 5

– the specific goal being sought (the problem that must be solved)
– the materials at hand
– the context in which the problem is embedded

Question 6

What Adaptive Problems Did Language Evolve to Solve? (3)

• The dominant theory of the function of language

Answer 6

• The dominant theory of the function of language is that it evolved to facilitate communication—the exchange of information between individuals (Pinker, 1994)
• Information exchange could help with an almost limitless variety of tasks: warning friends and family of danger; informing allies about the location of ripe berries; coordinating a coalition for hunting or warfare; providing instruction for the construction of shelters, tools, or weapons; and many others
• Language, gossip, and grooming (Dunbar, 1993)

Question 7

Evolutionary Social Psychology
• Most human social interaction has taken place within the context of enduring relationships, name the following theories:
– Kin: ?
– Mating: ?
– Parenting: ?
– Cooperation: ?

Answer 7

– Kin: Inclusive fitness
– Mating: sexual selection theory
– Parenting: Parental investment theory
– Cooperation: reciprocity theory

Question 8

The Evolution of Moral Emotions

• Anger vs Guilt

Answer 8

• Anger:
– evolved to punish those who violate social contracts
• Guilt:
– evolved to signal to the harmed party that you know that you have inflicted a harm: It motivates confession and apologies. It also signals that you are motivated to repair the harm

Question 9

The Evolution of Moral Emotions
• Shame
• Sympathy
• Gratitude

Answer 9

• Shame:
– motivate the desire to hide and withdraw, reducing one’s social presence
• Sympathy:
– moving people to help others who are suffering
• Gratitude:
– motivating people to act more pro socially to one’s benefactors)

Question 10

Evolutionary Personality Psychology

• Frequency dependent selection in psychopaths(2)

Answer 10

– Psychopaths pursue a deceptive or “cheating” strategy in their social interactions, especially with interaction partners who they don’t expect to interact with in the future
– Psychopaths pursue a social strategy characterized by exploiting the reciprocity mechanisms of others (adaptive when trait is infrequent)

Question 11

Evolutionary Clinical Psychology
• Once an evolved psychological mechanism is described and its proper function is identified, a clear criterion exists for determining dysfunction (3)

Answer 11

– The mechanism fails to become activated when the relevant adaptive problem is confronted (no fear of snakes)
– The mechanism becomes activated in context that it was not designed for (sexual attraction to genetic relative)
– The mechanism fails to coordinate with other mechanisms (self-assessments of mate value fail to guide to right people)

Question 12

Evolutionary Cultural Psychology

• Evoked Culture vs Transmitted Culture

Answer 12

• Evoked Culture
– phenomena that are triggered in some groups more than in others because of differing environmental conditions
• Transmitted Culture
– representations or ideas that originally exist in at least one mind and are transferred to other minds through observation or interaction

Question 13

Evolutionary Cultural Psychology

• Sexual selection and the display hypothesis

Answer 13

Proposes culture is “an emergent phenomenon arising from sexual competition among vast numbers of individuals pursuing different mating strategies in different mating arenas” (Miller, 1998, p. 118)

Question 14

The Evolutionary Psychology of
Religion Adaptation or By-product hypotheses?
• Fitness benefits for individual believers
– Hyperactive agency detection device
– Theory of mind adaptations
– Attachment system

Answer 14

• Fitness benefits for individual believers – e.g., health benefits of prayer, reputation benefits, cooperation
• Religion as by-product
– Hyperactive agency detection device
• Leads us to infer that unseen forces are human agents
– Theory of mind adaptations
• We infer unseen beliefs, desires, and intentions
in other people
– Attachment system
• Originally evolved in the context of mother–child bonds for protection and nurturance