Mental Disorders Flashcards
Mate Choice
attractiveness + estimation of own sexual appeal … no longer accurate bc our perception of attractiveness based on small minority - drastic responses
Food
diets different - 55% milk, sugars, cereal, alcohol now; fat consumption 5x at least; more salt…..
risk: cancer, hypertension, heart disease
School
no natural basis for reading in brain architecture… ADHD (some maybe just more playful)
Fight or flight
can’t flee now in stressful situations.. such as sitting in traffic
Daily life differences
working more, living in huge groups (strangers don’t have our best interests in mind)
Design trade-offs
while some genes may enhance fitness in some ways, bring about other “disorders”
– not necessarily same effects in different people (ie. homosexuality)
Depression
An adaptation?:
- Yes heritable (monozygotic)
- Yes Adaptive – means of seeking help/conserving resources; bargaining strategy; involuntary subordinate strategy
Postpartum depression & seeking help/conserving resources
Adaptive… seeking help/conserving resources… correlated with:
- insufficient investment from father
- problems w/pregnancy
- hostile environment
- large opportunity costs (more profitable to direct investment toward survival of other offspring)
Depression & bargaining strategy
willingness to impose costs on rest of group unless he/she is helped to overcome a problem … withdraws efforts entirely from group - gains to genes related to suicide may outweight losses
Social competition hypothesis - involuntary subordinate strategy
- prevents indivs from making a comeback
- communicates submission
- facilitates acceptance of defeat, promotes behavior leading to termination of conflict .. pessimism toward likelihood of success
Psychopathology
characteristics:
- antisocial personality & behavior (failure to show empathy/remorse/accept consequences)
- deceit & manipulation (commit crimes relying on trust of others)
- emotional make-up (shallow emo.s, impulsive, crave excitement)
Possible causes of psychopathology
- Pathology: resulting from developmental trauma (ie. pregnancy difficulties, stress during delivery, low bw)
- Adaptation: such characteristics enhance fertility
Psychopathy an adaptation?
- Heritable? YES - children of psychopaths adopted away from parents show tendency for criminality, for psychopathy
- Adaptive? Advantages - pays to defect in society where people cooperate (this is a minority strategy! only in ~1% of pop.)
Schizophrenia
“Fragmenting of the mind” - 1% prevalence in all cultures, delusions, disorganized speech, visual dysfunction, etc.
Schizophrenia an adaptation?
- Heritable? YES 80%, slightly more than height
2. Adaptive? Maybe. hi fertility costs to indiv., but maybe group benefits (spreading of related genes)
Schizotypes
+ heterozygotes = schizotypes = have some of the characteristics (Einstein, Dickinson, Van Gogh, Newton)
- activation of R hemisphere dramatically greater than schizophrenic & avg subjects = enhanced creative ability, but still organized thought
Autism
- qualitative impairment forming social relationships (lack of eye contact, poor facial recognition)
- qualitative impairment communicating (limited use of speech to maintain conversation, little grasp of metaphor)
- restricted, repetitive stereotypical patterns of behavior (obsessive adherence to routines)
People & thought relation
Autistics unable to think about others’ thoughts - think that sally knows where object is, not Anne
Autism an adaptation?
- Heritable? YES - one of most heritable conditions
- Adaptive?
a. assume change is agentive (=some intentional consciousness is at work)
b. assume change is physical (natural or mechanical systemizing)
… autism may occur from union of parents with both highly systemizing (physical) genes
- lack of social motivation (no activation in reward areas - no natural motivation, so won’t build social structure necessary)
+ chimps - we are motivated to cooperate.
