History and Basic Concepts

Question 1

What were some of the things known before Darwin’s time?

Answer 1

• Primates all had 5 digits on hands and feet
• Wings of birds were similar to flippers of seals
• Embryological development was very similar in species that were very different
• Species seem to have characteristics with a purpose

Question 2

How did the fossil record suggest change over time?

Answer 2

Bones from older geological strata were not the same as more recent strata

Question 3

Variation

Answer 3

There are subtle differences in the characteristics of organisms

Question 4

Inheritance

Answer 4

Differences are passed on to offspring

Question 5

Competition

Answer 5

Some differences increase/decrease survival and reproduction

Question 6

Natural selection

Answer 6

Characteristics increasing survival and reproduction will therefore become more common

Question 7

What causes phenotypic differences?

Answer 7

Adaptations

Question 8

An adaptation

Answer 8

An inherited characteristic that increases an organism’s survival and reproduction in an ancestral environment

Question 9

What are the two forms of exaptations?

Answer 9

Pre-adaptations and spandrels

Question 10

Pre-adaptations

Answer 10

Adaptations selected for one function and then used for a new function

Question 11

Spandrels

Answer 11

Adaptations that are now useful, but not the result of past function and are thus non-adaptive in origin

Question 12

What are the common criticisms of evolution?

Answer 12

• Just a theory
• Gaps in the record
• Simply chance
• Not relevant to the present

Question 13

Empiricism

Answer 13

Role of sensory experience in the construction of knowledge

Question 14

Rationalism

Answer 14

Role of rationality and intuition in the construction of knowledge

Question 15

Nativism

Answer 15

Role of innate ideas in the construction of knowledge

Question 16

Reductionism

Answer 16

Explaining things in terms of their components, starting the highest level and working down

Question 17

Determinism

Answer 17

Things are inevitable outcomes of prior causes

Question 18

What are some of the claims Jonason and Dane use to suggest that people do not accept evolutionary psychology?

Answer 18

• Religious bias
• Human exceptionalism bias
• Environmental determinism bias
• Genetic determinism bias

Question 19

Give an example of religious bias

Answer 19

Gould’s NOMA

Question 20

Give an example of human exceptionalism bias

Answer 20

Rejection of evolutionary principles for human behaviour

Question 21

Give an example of environmental determinism bias

Answer 21

Belief in Standard Social Science Model (a blank slate)

Question 22

Give an example of genetic determinism bias

Answer 22

Belief that evolutionary psychology thinks genes alone determine behaviour