Week 6 -The Evolved Self Flashcards
1
Q
The ‘‘Why’’
A
- Evolutionary Psychology is a major explanatory approach to human behaviour.
- Relates us to non-human animals
- Yet has a relatively small footprint in PSY degrees
- Re-writing your ‘map of the world’
2
Q
The ‘What’
A
“Human nature, behaviour, and mental
life as the product of a universal set of evolved
psychological adaptations to recurrent problems of our ancestral environment”
3
Q
Environment
A
- Pleistocine era 2.5 million – 12k
- Most adaptations came from this period
- Many of these relate to social behaviours
- Very different from modern society-
how? - Smaller and more cohesive groups, identity may have been more stable etc.
4
Q
What kind of problems?
A
- to see
- to speak
- to find someone beautiful
- to reciprocate a favour
- to fear disease
- to fall in love
- to initiate an attack
- to experience moral outrage
- to navigate a landscape
Tooby & Cosmides, 1997
5
Q
Nest of terms
A
- Genetic Inheritance
- Evolution
- Natural Selection
- Sexual Selection
6
Q
Darwinian “Fitness”
A
- contribution of a gene to the gene
pool of the next generation - Spencer’s term “survival of the fittest”
meant the best fitted with the
environment
The phylogenetic tree shows common ancestry of all life
7
Q
What is the brain for?
A
- It is a physical, chemical, and electrical system connected to the body and the outside world
- It receives input and produces MOVEMENT
- Organisms that don’t require movement do not have brains
- Brain is resource hungry and this is largely divided between movement and perception
8
Q
What is ‘‘Supernormal Stimuli’’
A
- Term coined by biologist Niko Tinbergen
- Exaggerations of existing response
tendencies
9
Q
Why the Self?
A
- Self as a collection of neural systems and associated cognitions
- Cognition builds a representational model of the environment
- This model allows individuals to navigate to food, avoid predators etc.
- In addition to representing the environment, we need to represent other agents (predators,
prey etc.)
10
Q
How might this apply to presentation of self online?
A
- Supernormal stimulation
- Large groups
- Importance of group membership
- Theatre for heightened moral judgement, social communication, mating behaviour, threat surveillance
- Yet without some aspects of language
11
Q
Critique
A
- Testability
- Uncertainty about EEA
- Lends itself to politically dubious narratives
- We can choose!
- Applies less in the modern world? (cultural and
environmental evolution)
12
Q
So what?
A
- Evolutionary Psychology gives us a picture of profound interactivity of genes and environment
- Keep in mind the explanations but also the criticisms
