Lecture 6 - Effects Of The Industrial Revolution On Human Psychology Flashcards
Who leading up to the industrial revolution had the highest reproductive success?
The upper classes, like merchants and craftsman.
They had higher intelligence, intelligence is 80% heritable and therefore they passed on their intelligence to their offspring.
Why did peasants have such poor reproductive success ? What does that mean for societal mobility ?
Peasants were mostly able to have children but they rarely survived past infancy or birth. With a nearly 100% mortality rate. This means that most of the movement in society was downwards
What was the big change that the industrial revolution caused?
Reversed natural selection acting on humans
Why was natural selection reversed?
The agricultural revolution meant that there was more food available and the industrial revolution made the food accessible. This meant that even peasants had food and resources. Therefore, the had lots of children and more survived.
The industrial revolution starred in England, describe the size of population growth in England, compared to the worlds population
England’s population was growing very rapidly between 1850-1900 (16 million to 32 million) when the industrial revolution was going on.
The worlds population lagged slightly 1800 (1 billion) to 1930 (2billion).
Took a little while for the industrial revolution to spread round and provide food for everyone.
Why, if natural selection has reversed its direction, has intelligence reduced from 1800, evident in 1850?
Became biologically maladaptive to be intelligent, because intelligent women were less likely to have lots of children.
Child mortality dropped incrementally from 50% to less than 1%, meaning that the peasants who were less intelligent also produced a lot more of offspring.
because less died, the mutation load would have increased in the whole population, because more people with deleterious mutations carried them forward to more offspring. Thus reducing the average intelligence of the population
So describe natural selection pre industrial era
Everybody was highly fertile but high child mortality rates meant that only the select few survived
Describe natural selection in the industrial era
Fertility rates drove natural selection, and child mortality doesn’t play much of a role .
When was the industrial revolution approximately ?
1000 - 1800 AD
30 generations leading up to it
