Lecture 4 - Intelligence And Sexual Selection Flashcards
What makes up creative intelligence?
Partly “g” and partly personality variables
List some non functional creative human activities
Language like poetry and storytelling
Art like painting and sculpture
Music like composing and improvising
Dancing like choreography
Pick the likely fitness indicator from the list:
Etiquette, cooking, maths
Etiquette
Also things like sports, humour and rituals
Creativity is sometimes described as abundant novelty. Why is it then, that it is sexually selected?
Creativity like writing and music are full of new things and you can always create novel stimuli. Novel stimuli attract attention and therefore will also attract the attention of a future mate.
If you choose a highly creative mate, what assumptions can you make about their genetic material?
That if they have high creative intelligence they’re likely to have high “g” intelligence. From that you can infer “good genes”
How, in the modern day, do we show our creativity ?
Indirectly, nice clothes, amazing art, concert tickets. Shows that we have taste even if we don’t create the things ourselves
What is the point of assortative mating ?
To filter out mutations by ensuring, on average, those with the most mutations have few of no offspring
How would mating work in a polgynous society? Is this assortative mating?
The males would compete for a harem of females. Therefore the males with lots of mutations would have lost out on the harem because the one with better genes would have won the competition.
No it’s not assortative mating
How does assortative mating work within a monogamous or marriage society?
Men and women pair off in terms of being best suited to one another. Therefore the top intelligent make and female pair off, the middle two pair and then the lowest intelligence and most mutated pair off.
This leads to the lowest pair creating most extra mutated children who are likely to die young or have no reproductive success
What must everyone be looking fir in a partner for assortative mating work?
Everyone has to look for the same trait, for example intelligence, because then you get the highest level of intelligent partner that you can. And pair off.
What is serial monogamy?
What humans use, long term relationship with one partner and then you move onto another partner
So overall, what is assortative mating? What is it a mechanism for?
Purges/ filters out mutations from the lineage because the two most mutated people mate and create non viable offspring. Major mechanism of mutation selection balance especially when child mortality rates are high.
What are fitness indicators? Are they functionally useful? Who can grow them?
Fitness indicators are an honest advert of your heritable fitness. They can be functionally useless, like a peacocks tail and can also put you in danger because a tail is so large it hinders their flight.
Finally, only the fittest individuals are able to grow the best indicators.
