Intro/History 1 Flashcards
What are Darwin’s ideas?
- There is VARIATION in individuals.
- This variation is HERITABLE- mothers eye colour.
- Variation produces differential reproductive success-traits affording greater reproductive success eventually dominate.
Who created social Darwinism and what does it suggest?
Francis Galton-
Argued that psychological traits such as genius and talent are inherited- EUGENICS
What does behaviourism and John Watson suggest?
Every behaviour is due to learning.
What does sociobiology suggest and who coined it?
Edward Owen Wilson-
Documented social behaviour in animals e.g mate choice
Social behaviours are HERITABLE
Must mean natural selection will shape our behaviour.
What is an oppositional argument to sociobiology?
Stephan jay Gould-
Investigating the genetic basis of behaviour and culture is immoral.
Don’t deny that there is a genetic component.
Sociobiology leads to genetic determinism.
What is genetic determinism?
Suggesting that genes are the sole reason for behaviour.
What prompted the birth of evolutionary psychology?
The standard social science model (SSSM).
Who wrote ‘The Adapted Mind’?
Cosmides and tooby
What does the SSSM suggest?
5
- biology basically unimportant in understanding human behaviour.
- Humans born blank slates
- Brain is a general purpose computer.
- Culture programmes behaviour.
- Culture free to vary in any direction on any given trait.
What is the first principle of evolutionary psychology?
The brain functions as a computer with circuits that generate behaviour appropriate to environmental circumstances.
Neurons and supporting structures= CHEMICAL REACTIONS.
What is the second principle of evolutionary psychology?
These neural circuits are designed by natural selection to solve problems our ancestors faced in our evolutionary history- by using appropriate behaviour for our species.
Brain is specialised
What is the third principle of evolutionary psychology?
Behaviours we find trivially easy reflect the functioning of complex neural circuitry.
Parts of the brain that detect contrast the goes to colour then a face processing area= face reference circuit.
Then the end product is finding a face attractive.
What is the fourth principle of evolutionary psychology?
Different neural circuits are specialised for solving different adaptive problems.
Watson card selection task
Brains are domain general they’re domain specific.
What is the fifth principle of evolutionary psychology?
The mind is adapted to deal with problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors in the upper Pleistocene period-10,000 Years ago.
