week 5- problems of survival Flashcards
what are the 2 main problems of survival discussed in this course?
- challenges of obtaining sufficient nutrition
- challenges of avoiding food toxins
what kind of adaptive problems does “obtaining nutrition” involve?
adaptive problems related to recognizing, acquiring, handling, consuming, and digesting food
do we have innate preferences when it comes to food?
yes, some
how do we avoid the adaptive problems of recognizing, acquiring, handling, consuming, digesting food early in life?
by breastfeeding
how has our preference for sweet foods adapted/why have they adapted?
an adaptation that efficiently, economically, reliably, and precisely solved the adaptive problem of
helping us identify the greatest sources of calories
explain Zverev (2004) study on taste preferences and its results
-showed that participants were more
sensitive to sweet and salty tastes after a temporary period of fasting than after a meal. So, when hungry, things taste better (sweeter and more salty) which encourages you to eat
-Sensitivity to bitterness was not altered by being hungry.
how/why has our dispreference for sour tastes evolved?
-dispreference for sour tastes may be an adaptation to help us avoid unripe, but perhaps especially spoiled, foods
how/why has our dispreference for bitter tastes evolved?
A dispreference for bitter tastes may be an adaptation to help us avoid foods that naturally contain toxins
Although we are all born with a dispreference for bitter tastes, some of us taste bitterness ___________ than others. why?
more intensely
-this is linked to certain genes
how are innate dispreferences changed?
flavour-nutrient learning
what is flavour nutrient learning (FNL)
humans acquire liking for certain foods by associating the flavour of food with the positive consequences of nutrient ingestion, leading to either acquired liking or learning about satiety
what is neophobia
strong aversion to new foods
how do people with neophobia act when exposed to new foods and why is this evolutionarily beneficial?
-they only eat new foods in small doses and separately from other foods
-this is beneficial because it gives you an opportunity to learn if a new food is going to make you sick, we may have evolved to easily learn associations between food and illness
when does neophobia emerge most often in humans?
preschool years
describe Garcia and Koelling’s (1966) study on food aversion and rats and its implications
Garcia and Koelling conducted experiments where rats were exposed to a compound stimulus: a sweet taste (the “tasty water”), along with a bright light and a clicking sound (the “bright-noisy water”). Some rats were then exposed to radiation or lithium chloride, which induced illness, while others were exposed to foot shock. The key finding was that rats developed a stronger aversion to the taste (tasty water) when paired with illness (radiation or lithium chloride) than to the bright-noisy water. Conversely, when paired with foot shock, the rats developed a stronger aversion to the bright-noisy water than the taste. This demonstrated that the strength of learning depended on the correspondence of the cue (taste or bright-noisy) to the consequence (illness or pain). It showed that animals are biologically predisposed to form certain associations, like taste and illness, more readily than others. The rats developed neophobia and refused to drink the water even when the stimulus would come on.
what pov did Garcia and Koelling’s study prove wrong
previous behaviourists who said the conditioned stimulus has to be IMMEDIATE, obviously it does not
what is prepared learning?
If something makes you sick, learn that quickly and avoid that food in the future.
what is the disease avoidance hypothesis?
food disgust evolved because it helped protect people from disease. We may be biologically prepared to readily learn to be disgusted by certain things
how does the disgust expression itself relate to evolutionary disgust? give examples
is thought to be relevant to
the function of disgust.
-ex. Narrowing or closure of the
eyes, nostrils, and mouth. Sometimes, tongue protrusion
is the disgust expression universal? what is the evidence of that
yes, its produced even in those
blind from birth (so not likely learned)
If the hypothesis that disgust protects us from disease is true, then the things that make us (universally) the most disgusted should be the substances most likely to _________
carry disease or make us unwell
what are the individual differences in disgust (even though the expression/triggers are universal)
women show more disgust than men
when in pregnancy is morning sickness most likely to occur?
The condition co-occurs with the period of greatest vulnerability
of the embryo
how would an evolutionary psychologist explain morning sickness in pregnancy
as an adaptation for embryo protection
is the morning sickness adaptation hypothesis have support? what is it
women who experience morning sickness are way less likely to experience a miscarriage than women who do not experience morning sickness
why do one’s eyes go wide when they have fear? (adaptively)
facilitating a greater field of view
why does one scream when they have fear? (adaptively)
to alert others your distress and transmit fear
what is special about the acoustics of screaming vocalizations that distinguishes them from other vocalizations?
Roughness, or an especially rapid modulation of volume, from high to low and back again
what part of the brain does hearing screaming activate
amygdala
what are some behavioural reactions of fear
fight, flight, freeze, submit, play dead, faint
what are some physiological reactions of fear
glucose release in muscles, increase in respiratory rate, heart rate increase, blood diverted to muscles from digestion
what fear situation would one freeze in
If you are not sure you’ve been seen, or don’t know where the threat is, freeze and remain alert (you might avoid being detected)
what fear situation would one flight in
If you know you’ve been spotted, try to flee!
what fear situation would one fight in
If you can’t get away, and you stand a chance, then try to fight!
what fear situation would one submit, faint, or play dead in?
if you don’t stand a chance, then signal non- aggression: submit to (try to appease) a conspecific or perhaps faint, or play dead with a predator
where do the most common fears/phobias come from?
the commonest fears are not always the things that perhaps pose the greatest dangers to us in our current environments
Instead, the commonest fears appear to be the things that were likely the greatest dangers in ancestral/traditional environments (e.g., snakes, spiders, other animals, heights, social rejection)
Developing these fears is not automatic, but may
be a form of ______________
prepared learning
explain Mineka and Cook’s (1993) biologically prepared fear learning study
Rhesus monkeys who watched other Rhesus monkeys display fear of snakes, then became afraid of snakes themselves.
But Rhesus monkeys who watched other Rhesus monkeys display fear of other stimuli (flowers or bunny rabbits), did not become afraid of those things
explain Ohman, Flykt, and Esteves (2001) about spider and snake detecting and what it means
Our biological preparedness might
extend to having evolved perceptual processes that scan and analyze the
perceptual field for certain stimuli that capture attention.
– People faster to detect spiders and snakes among mushrooms and flowers than vice versa
explain some snake and spider “pop out” replication studies
- Sulikowski (2012) Ps are faster to detect spiders and snakes versus similarly-shaped benign animals (beetles and caterpillars).
– Although spider and snake phobics are even faster to spot them, the effect applies to non-phobics too
– The same effects were found in 3- to 5-year- old children, cross-culturally
what is a hypothesis as to why people can detect spiders so fast
It may even be that young infants have a “spider template” active as early as 5 months, that means the objects resembling spiders draw and hold attention for longer
what did Lazarevic’s (2020) replication spider pop out study show
Lazarević et al. (2020) recently conducted a
close replication of LoBue and DeLoache
(2008) that included:
– the same pictures LoBue and DeLoache used
– pre-registration
– a bigger sample size (N = 545 vs. N = 144, 48, 48)
* …and they did not find significant differences
between searches for snakes among frogs or
caterpillars versus for frogs/caterpillars among
snakes.
how has height evolved to be a fear?
perceptual mechanisms that exaggerates the perceived distance down from (but not up to) a particular height to help us avoid being harmed by falling from a height
what is the descent illusion?
people judge vertical distances as greater from the top, looking- down, than from the bottom, looking-up
Why should we physically be more cautious coming down than going up?
-Climbing straight up means leading with the more dexterous hands.
-Climbing down means leading with
the less dexterous feet as well as angling your body out from
the surface (to see where to put your
feet)
Why should we (riskily) be more cautious coming down than going up?
The risks of coming down are greater than of climbing up
what is error management theory? give 2 examples of things that fit into this framework
No perceptual process is ever going to be perfect, never making a mistake.
– Given this, our perceptual systems seemed to have evolved with a bias so that errors will be more in the direction of the less costly mistake.
– We “manage” the errors, by having perceptual systems that are biased towards making “false alarms” rather than “misses”
-ex. the descent illusion and spider/snake detection skills
describe the error management theory chart
see docs
