Midterm 1

Question 1

Emotions ( Evolutionary)

Answer 1

adaptations that help humans meet certain selection pressures related to reproduction, survival, and social cooperation

emotions are adaptations that have helped us meet selection pressures during evolution

Question 2

What are the 3 selection pressures?

Answer 2

1. survival
2. reproduction
3. social cooperation

Question 3

What are selection pressures?

Answer 3

features of the physical and social environment in which humans evolved that determined whether individuals survived and reproduced

Question 4

what are the two components of reproduction ( a selection pressure)

Answer 4

1. intersexual ( btw sexes)

2. intrasexual ( within a sex)

Question 5

Does evolution operate on the level of the gene or the individual?

Answer 5

the level of the gene

Question 6

adaptation

Answer 6

genetically based traits that allow the organism to cope well with specific selection pressures, and to survive and reproduce

Question 7

What are some adaptations that have evolved in the course of human evolution and what problems do they address?

Answer 7

1. distaste for bitterness: avoid eating toxins
2. perceive facial symmetry as beautiful: find healthy mate/ resistant to parasites
3. preference for males with status, resources: share costs of raising offspring
4. preference for mate with youthful appearance: find fertile mate
5. emotional response to baby-like cues: protect offspring

Question 8

parental certainty

Answer 8

males face a problem where they are not sure that the baby is theirs. As a result, of this family members often tell the male that the baby looks like him.

Question 9

genes and our emotion

Answer 9

genes program us through emotions. Our body is just a means for genes to survive and reproduce into the next generation. The body contains them and allows them to reproduce

Question 10

Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness

Answer 10

a description of the environment to which human emotions became adapted as our species evolved during the six million years

Question 11

Darwin’s Theory of Emotion

Answer 11

in human adults, expressions of emotions are obsolete, vestiges of our evolution from out hominid predecessors and of our development from infancy

Question 12

In what era did appreciation of emotion become marked in Europe and America?

Answer 12

Romanticism

Question 13

What are the two assumptions of the cultural perspective of emotion?

Answer 13

1. emotions are constructed primarily by the processes of culture
2. emotions can be thought as roles that people fulfill to play out culture-specific identities and relationships