Lecture 2: Evolutionary Social Psychology

Question 1

Variation

Answer 1

animals naturally vary in their traits so morphologically (e.g. appearance), physiologically (e.g.) how well stomach digests food) and behaviourally (phenotypes).

Question 2

Selection

Answer 2

Some phenotypes are reproductively more successful than others

Question 3

Heredity

Answer 3

The traits that you have aren’t just random but depend on to an extent inherited by your parents (genes). So the successful phenotypes and the genes underlying them are passed on.

Question 4

Adaptations

Answer 4

Adaptive/functional phenotypes that promote survival and reproduction.

Question 5

Biological determinism

Answer 5

The belief that genes account for all Phenotypes. Twin studies show that this is not the case and that there is always an interaction with the environment.

Question 6

Naturalistic fallacy

Answer 6

The mistaken belief that just because something has evolved it Must be right e.g. Eating meat.

Question 7

Maternal perinatal Association (MPA)

Answer 7

This means the opportunity to observe your mother caring for another child or infant. May be a way for a sibling to detect that a younger child is kin (Lieberman, 2007).

Critique: surveys about altruism relying on memory and could be prone to biases. Questions about kidney donation etc. rely on affective forecasting, which we are not good at.

Question 8

Criticisms x 7

Answer 8

1) Biological Determinism
2) What about culture / society?
3) Learning?
4) Intelligence / Rationality?
5) Just so stories
6) Not falsifiable and testable?
7) Novel environments?

Question 9

Just so stories…

Answer 9

Evo Psyc accused of making post-hoc explanations.

De Bruin (2005) argues that poor ev psych does that but good evo psych uses established biological theories to predict patterns of behavior.

Question 10

Not falsifiable and testable?

Answer 10

Confer et al (2011) evidence of testable theories:

1) Adaptive memory.
2) Error management theory (Haselton & Buss, 2008).

Also homosexuality as adaptive has been falsified.

Question 11

Recent / Novel environments

Answer 11

Confer et al (2011)
Interaction between adaptive mechanisms and modern env. 2 things could happen:

1) Evolved mechanism no longer adaptive e.g pref for fats and sugars can cause diabetes in modern env.
2) Modern env can trigger evolved mechanism even if it’s not adaptive e.g. sexual arousal to porn that doesn’t lead to reproduction.

Question 12

Culture / Society

Answer 12

What about the way we conform to societal norms?

Confer et al (2011) Labelling something as culture is just a description, not a causal explanation.

Question 13

Learning

Answer 13

What about learnt behavior? we do things because we see others doing it.

Confer et al (2011) Env. psych provides an interactionist framework i.e. learning happens within the evolved mechanisms in the brain that allow for learning to take place.

Question 14

Intelligence / Rationality

Answer 14

What about rational planing and working out best course of action?

Confer et al (2011) - explanations such as this don’t account for phenomena such as sex differences in romantic jealousy.

Question 15

Practical applications x 2

Answer 15

1) Clinical Psych - Ilardi et al (2007) Devised a treatment for depression based on assumption that there is a mismatch between modern and ancestral environments, which can account for at least some depression. Treatment involves increasing omega-3 intake, increasing exercise, practising good sleep hygeine, and socialising more.
2) Law - Confer et al (2011) Can help to inform legislation around sexual harassment, sexual assault and infanticide.

Question 16

Kinship x 4

Answer 16

1) How do human know who is genetically related to them?
2) Important in terms of genetic mutations resulting from inbreeding.
3) Important so that we can behave more altrusitically to our kin.
4) We haven’t evolved a biological mechanism for kin detection but we have developed heuristics and evolved disgust towards incest.

Question 17

Iceland phone app

Answer 17

Iceland is a small country with low genetic variation, important therefore for people to know whether the person they want to date is related closely to them.

An app has been developed, which tells people how closely related they are to another.

Question 18

Criticism of evolved incest aversion x 2

Answer 18

Presence of strong incest taboo around world could indicate cultural rather than evolved. Kinship mechanisms don’t exist - disgust transferred via culture (Fraley & Marks, 2010). Found pps attracted to faces like their own and also when sub primed with face of opp sex parent. However children not explicitly taught not to have sex with their siblings. Also, Lieberman et al (2011 say that F & M’s arguments rest on a poor understanding and application of biological and social psych theories. They have misinterpreted their results, which actually support the Westermarck effect!

Freud - children repress desire to have sex with their opposite sex parent. But it’s Freud!

Question 19

When heuristics fail…

Answer 19

Either triggered when someone not kin (e.g. children raised together before marriage (MINOR MARRIAGE) = higher infertility and divorce rates) or not triggered when someone is (e.g. siblings raised apart going on to have relationshp).

Westermarck effect is an example.

Question 20

Westermarck effect

Answer 20

Kinship illusion.

Kinship is inferred by spending a lot of time together before the age of 6 which causes kinship heurstic to fail. Another example of a false negative being less costly that a false positive.

Evidence: minor marriage, kibbutz children.

Question 21

Maternal Perinatal Association (MPA)

Answer 21

Lieberman, Cosmides & Tooby (2007)

Child observes a sbilbling being cared for by mother from birth and assumes they are related. Only works for older siblings. For younger siblings that duration of co-residence is used as a back-up mechanism (see Westermarck effect).

Also similarity - looks similar = likely to be kin.

Lieberman et al found that use of MPA or co-residence was associated with more altrusim and sexual disgust towards perceived kin. MPA alone could predict this in younger siblings.

Question 22

Cost Benefit Analysis (kinship)

Answer 22

Park & Ackerman (2011)

An evolutionary cost / benefit analysis is carried out when determining kinship. Can lead to over-application in certain contexts.

E.g. women especially likely to treat other women as kin.

Men more likely to do so during inter-group conflict.

Findings could have implications for fostering and adoption policy.

Question 23

Familiarity

Answer 23

Could explain why many married couples become less sexually attracted to each other over time - they become more like siblings.

Question 24

Similarity

Answer 24

De Bruine (2005) found that self-resembling faces were deemed more trustworthy and less attractive for short-term relationships, whereas they were favored for long-term relationships. There was more sexual aversion and more altrusim towards self-resembling faces.

Relevance - similarity may lead to attraction when looking for friendship or LT relationships but not for a one-night stand!

“Trustworthy but not lustworthy”.

Question 25

Why do we need evolutionary explanations?

Answer 25

Other explanations can be intuitive, shallow and not able to fully explain behavior.

Why do we have certain capacities e.g. language that other animals do not?

Question 26

Limitations of evolutionCleaary psychology

Answer 26

Cannot explain behaviour that doesn’t lead to increased survival or reproduction e.g homosexuality or suicide (Confer et al, 2011)

Question 27

Summary

Answer 27

A lot of evidence to support the idea that certain behaviors have evolved to serve an adaptive function, however they can and do break down.

Question 28

Optimal Outbreeding Theory

Answer 28

De Bruine (2009) balancing avoiding the costs of inbreeding with those of outbreeding e.g. Mating with the wrong species.

Question 29

Penton-Volk (1999)

Answer 29

Women in fertile phase of cycle preferred photo of more masculine photos, women in less fertile phases preferred more feminine faces.

Question 30

Kin selection

Answer 30

Not just survival of the fittest. Also evolved to care about those we share genetic material with.

can’t explain all group behaviour - there’s also group selection.

Question 31

Group selection

Answer 31

Co-operation -> survival.

“Eusociality” = glue that Holds groups, tribes and societies together.

In groups tend to be co-operative.

So selection does happen which makes us often competitive and individualistic but we also co-operate for the good of the group.

Question 32

Out groups

Answer 32

Groups inflict violence on other groups even when they pose no direct threat. e.g. genocide in Rwanda, and Nazi Germany.

Eagleman: Needle / cotton-bud empathy experiment.

Question 33

Influences of kinship x 3

Answer 33

Altruism.

Aggression.

Mating.

Question 34

Kinship: A case of instinct blindness

Answer 34

Lieberman et al (2008)

It is such an automatic process that it has been overlooked by science.

Question 35

Kinship as fundamental social category.

Answer 35

Lieberman et al (2008).

Using MCP found that kinship was as strongly used category as sex and age.