Midterm 4 Flashcards
culture
social units, shared by two or more individuals, persists over time, new practitioners acquire through observation or socially-aided learning
meme
a unit of cultural replication
types of memes
stories and myths; hairstyle, clothing styles; cheering; language, accent; religions; theories; institutions
how culture progresses
a new pattern of behavior is invented/an existing one is modified; innovator transmits pattern to another; pattern is consistent (within and across performers); those who acquire the pattern retain the ability to perform it long after having acquired it; the pattern spreads across social units
universal darwinism and culture
evolution arises in any system of replicators; variation by recombining and imperfect copying
mutations
rare with genes, common with memes
transmission of a meme
memes are often not intact when passed from one person to another; recipient can choose to transform it when they receive a meme
different ways of learning
social facilitation; goal emulation; imitating; teaching
social facilitation
doing same thing as demonstrator at the same time, motor matching due to context
goal emulation
replication of demonstrator’s goal
imitation
precise replication of novel motor action, demonstrator is absent
teaching
knowledgeable individual provides active instruction, learner is ignorant of task and/or goal
culture requirements
behavior must propagate in a social group; behavior must remain stable across generations
chimpanzees imitate
slot machine for apes filled with grapes; train only one on how to complete a series of tasks to get the grapes; spectator apes learn the technique by imitation despite no contact
apes emulate
experimenter shows ape how to complete tasks to receive treat one way, but apes will recognize which steps they don’t need and will remove them to just emulate the goal
chimpanzees have culture
present two separate methods to two different chimpanzees and put them back in their bands; other members of the group will start using mechanism learned from their respective chimp; method of getting food spreads throughout the population
teaching not present in non-human primates
groups of children, chimpanzees, and macaques were given a complex puzzle to solve with three stages; children would teach each other how to complete the puzzle; chimps and macaques would not teach each other so they would pass fewer stages than the children
task of opaque vs. clear box
chimps cut to the chase and skip steps they know don’t contribute to obtaining the treat; children will complete all steps, even if it’s not doing anything to help them get the treat, because they were taught and are predisposed to follow the directions of the teacher exactly
accumulation of human culture
over successive generations of humans, mental representations can increase in complexity; over successive generations of chimpanzees, the complexity of mental representations remains relatively constant
conversations during day vs. night
people tend to talk about economics, complain, and tell jokes more during than day whereas they tend to tell stories and only stories at night
altruism
when someone does something for another person/animal/being without any expectations of something in return; factor of risk (but decided to do it anyway)
altruism is common in the animal kingdom
-nighthawk will fake an injury to get a predator to approach them rather than their nest
-female gazelles will perform stotting to warn others of a predating but it takes time away from their own escape
-older soldier termites will take the front lines when they are in war with other termites/insects to boost life expectancy of the younger termites
-soldier ants will release a toxin from their abdomen that kills them to stop a threat
-honey bees will string a threat even though it will kill them
-sterile worker bees will dedicate their life to the queen bee and raise their offspring despite not being chosen to be queen
why act altruistically?
genes-eye view –> inclusive fitness, kin selection
Hamilton’s rule
inclusive fitness = direct + indirect
altruism will evolve when
rB - C > 0
rB = indirect fitness
C = direct fitness
r = relatedness of social actor and recipient
B and C = changes brought about by social actions in offspring numbers
four types of social action
mutual benefit, altruism, selfishness, spite
relatedness
-alarm calls in squirrels: alarm call frequency increases with increased density of kin relative to the caller
-bee eaters and helping with nesting: increased percentage of individuals that help as the relationship to the nestling increases
study in a polygamous society
taken from the siblings perspective; even though they are all related, people more willing to help those more strongly related to them
observed altruism is a result of
appealing to relatedness of actor to recipients
altruistic behavior is selfish…
from a gene perspective
cooperation
working together so both parties receive benefits
limitation of cooperation
cannot always be 100% sure that the other party will cooperate
prisoner’s dilemma
two criminal suspects; interviewed separately; offers made to suspects; better outcomes for both if they cooperate, but no way for the participants to know this because they cannot interact with each other; most choose to defect
human cooperation
large scale cooperation among non-relatives (ex. military); reciprocity is common; patience; empathy; punishment
summary of cooperation
cooperation is risky; unique ability of humans; morality
moral judgement
automatic, difficult to explicitly articulate; functions like a module
in a situation where participants are presented with a scenario where there is a trolley and a lever that you can choose to flip so that it kills 1 person instead of 5…
decision is the same despite gender, religion, level of education, national affiliation
trolley situation where participant has to choose between two tracks, killing 1 person and 5 people, but death is inevitable
killing seen as foreseen side effect
trolley situation where participant has to choose whether or not to push a fat man onto the tracks to save 5 people
killing seen as intended means
Means Principle (Doctrine of Double Effect)
harm intended as the means to a goal is morally worse than equivalent harm foreseen as the side effect of a goal
Action Principle
harm caused by action is morally worse than equivalent harm caused by omission
Contact Principle
harm caused by contact is morally worse than equivalent harm caused by non-action
Omission Bias
people tend to react more strongly to harmful actions vs. inactions (harmful actions = less moral)
moral knowledge intact in psychopaths
similar results between convinced psychopaths, non-psychopath delinquents, and age/sex matched controls; shows psychopaths have morality and omission bias, but choose not to care
definition of intelligence
no one definition agreed upon
general factor (G)
your intelligence; innate and cannot be improved
G is broken down into different functions
fluid reasoning, comprehensive knowledge, visual processing, auditory processing, processing speed, short-term memory, long-term retrieval, quantitative ability
positive manifold in G
if someone tend to do well in one function of G, they tend to do well in the rest too
G can decrease with…
age, substance abuse, external factors
IQ equation
IQ = (mental age/chronological age) x 100
IQ bell curve
reliable and accurate; 68% of the population will fall at an IQ between 85 and 115 with the average around 100
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
most widely used intelligence test, subtests of verbal and performance (nonverbal)
Wexler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)
similar to WAIS, but for school children
heritability of intelligence
more similar level of intelligence the closer in relatedness
components of heritability in chimpanzees
1) spatial abilities
2) problem solving
3) communication
4) causality reasoning
- heritability shown in g, component 1, and component 3
gifted IQ
> 140
intellectual disability IQ
< 70
approaches the theories of intelligence were based on
1) biological approaches
2) cognitive approaches
3) contextual approaches
4) systems approaches
biological approaches
intelligence the result of a biochemical/biophysical process; neurotransmitters, neuronal connections, brain structures
cognitive approaches
specific mental representations and cognitive abilities; problem solving, reasoning
contextual approaches
people’s differences in the real world
systems approaches
biological foundations and influences; context in which people are using these skills
Are intelligence tests culture free?
no tests are culture free
diagnostic tests bring about stereotype threats
ex. when men and women are told they are taking a diagnostic calculus test, women tend to do worse because they are trained to believe math is hard for females even though they tend to perform better in high school calculus grade-wise
Raven’s “Culture-Fair” Test
series of visual “complete the series” problems of increasing difficulty; designed to be free of cultural bias; less influenced by sociocultural factors than other IQ tests; no such thing as completely “culture-free,” but can be minimized
biological approaches
- goal: finding internal locus of abilities
- consider the brain and central nervous system (hemispheric specialization, nerve conduction speed, brain size)
does brain size matter
between species, increased brain size increases intelligence; between humans, no difference in intelligence no matter size of brain
IQ by type of milk feeding
breastfed tends to score a few points higher than formula fed across all ages
birth weight and intelligence
with children of normal birth weight, mean IQ increases with birth weight
socioeconomic status and intelligence
growing up in wealthy families increases IQ by 12-18 points
enriched environments and intelligence
enhance learning and memory
Why did humans end up with higher intelligence than all other animals?
visual animals, group living, hands different than other animals, hunting (hunted large animals with large amounts of protein centuries ago)
John Locke
empiricism; things are learned
Immanuel Kant
nativism; do have knowledge that is gained from experience, but also have core knowledge systems
three main questions of the course
1) What are we?
2) Where did we come from?
3) What makes humans special?
What are we?
when human adults exhibit complex, uniquely human, culture-specific skills, they draw on a set of psychological and neural core knowledge systems with two distinctive properties
core knowledge systems
building blocks for uniquely human skills; help understand intelligence
types of core knowledge systems
- eye gaze
- depth perception
- path integration
- view-dependent snapshots
- object tracking
- object recognition
- number representation
- face processing
Where did we come from?
evolved from some single celled organism and began to differ from other primates at some point
What makes humans special?
we have very special hands and thus makes very special tools to fit those hands; language; teaching
two distinctive properties of core knowledge systems
1) they evolved before humanity; thus, are shared with other animals
2) they emerge early in human development; thus, are common to infants, children, and adults
at least two things unique to humans
language and teaching
language increases number of possible thoughts
language consists of words and rules; words can be coined for entities in any conceptual domain; rules conjoin words irrespective of conceptual domain
what the teaching mechanism gives us
enhanced learning about functions of tools and artifacts; provides way to preserve information across generations; new way of seeing people (as sources of information)
language and thought - navigation
language combines object and direction
language and thought - number
language facilitates the construction of natural number concepts
language - social groups
language makes belief/desire reasoning more salient and accessible
